Gabriel Hament: City elections akin to a House of Cards

Shuffle the cards. Cut the deck. Place your bets. On a week-long cruise to the Western Caribbean I grew fond of this evening-time activity. Win or lose, the fast pace and collegial nature with fellow card players takes the edge off as losses mount. A stiff scotch “neat” doesn't hurt, either.

The objective of the game is not to hit 21 but rather to beat the dealer. If you have the discipline to walk away while you're ahead, count yourself as lucky.

This week at sea has allowed me pause to reflect on the direction of our city, a city rebounding, a city growing into its own as a regional influence, a city finally finding its sea legs.

Investment is pouring in. Community bankers finance new projects. Architects and engineers draw up plans. Working people are working again. Bricklayers lay foundations, plumbers run pipe, electricians illuminate hallways, as the city's purse quickly fills with newfound blue chips. Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! abound and it appears a major wager has been placed -- going “all in” on Sarasota.

But some believe, and want you to believe as well, that’s it’s just all too much and they want it to STOP. And if they have their way, it will. And then?

At the junction of U.S. 41 and the Ringling Causeway, on what was for many years a vast vacant lot, now stands an unfinished glass paneled building--barely entering its late stages of construction. In a crafty political strategy to gain control of City Hall, The VUE, as it is called, has become a political piñata placed center stage in a cynical attempt to drum up anti-development fervor amongst voters.

Their argument in a nutshell is this:

STOP! asserts that a formal public-input process would prevent such structures from sprouting out of the ground. That belief holds no merit other than in their own minds.

Up until 2005 when the property in question was rezoned along with 1,800 other properties in and around downtown, the very process this group praises, was in effect, and what did it achieve? In the history of redevelopment in our city that process, "their" process, never resulted, not once, in a reduction in height, mass, scale, or density. The review process now in place guarantees property owners the right to avoid the merry-go-round of “public input”, which a rancorous minority will no doubt abuse and artificially extend to stall and bring down new projects for which they do not care.

Prominent examples built using their desired public input process are the Kanaya, 1350 Main, 5 Points Plaza and perhaps most notably and tragically the Ritz Carlton whose construction required / allowed the removal of the historically significant Ringling Towers and the Owen Burns Realty, aka the Bickel House.

The Downtown Master Plan, a product itself of a truly public process; charette planning, is the source document for today’s Downtown Code. If the current code is producing projects that disturb one's aesthetic, then we can advocate for modifications to the code and we can work on that together.

But, as the waves splash up against the hull of this floating metropolis, I realize this fussing and fuming about a building is all a ruse. Koch and cohort want you to “look over there! The big building!" 

The great hypocrisy being foisted upon city voters by one candidate for city commission is that these same defenders of public input have steadfastly refused to even consider the ultimate public input, the voters. Koch, if elected, will never allow our embarrassing, off-year, lowest of the low, turnout March/May elections to move to a high turnout even-year November cycle.

Koch shakes her head at the thought of expanding voter participation because low-turnout elections in March and May allow special interest groups like STOP! to manipulate the conversation and most times even the result. Discussion of issues that impact working families like workforce housing or economic development to the north and eastern areas of the city are tabled indefinitely.

So more “public input” against the property rights of taxpayers, but fewer "public input" voices at the ballot box?

Hypocrisy abounds. The house of cards folds in, onto itself.

One card lands face-up.

It's a Joker grinning back at us.

Blackjack.

Gabriel Hament is a financial adviser in Sarasota