Consider the consequences

When city commissioners take up the volatile topic of the development review process, they should probe deeply the likely effects of adding more regulation.

By Matt Walsh
| 9:20 a.m. June 13, 2019

Sarasota
Opinion

When Sarasota Mayor Liz Alpert takes up agenda item VI.3. Monday at the City Commission meeting, watch for citizens in the audience to sit up a little higher and the apprehension levels in the chambers to rise.

Once again, the City Commission is on the precipice of taking up an issue whose outcome will have economic effects for years to come that either will be disastrous or delightful.

The issue: administrative review of development projects and site plan public hearings.

If you follow City Hall machinations at all, no doubt you’re aware of the organization aptly named “STOP.” Its members don’t like a lot of the new downtown development projects, in particular those that are developed with little setback.

Those projects, by the way, are all within the requirements of the city code. STOP members just don’t like them.

The organization’s advocates especially don’t like the city’s zoning codes, in particular the part that allows the city’s planning staff to approve some development projects through the administrative review process. If a developer submits plans that fall within certain thresholds and meet code, the city staff can approve the project without a public hearing.

STOP members want to tighten the thresholds to include more projects, and they want more public hearings. In essence, they want more opportunities to be able to stop projects they don’t like.

Case in point: the $110 million Epoch development, discussed in the adjoining editorial. Neighbors say the project doesn’t fit in, and its setbacks are not far enough. They want to force changes via more public hearings with the city’s planning commission — even though the project met all existing city codes.

Predictably, this is a volatile issue — the no-growthers and strongly controlled growthers versus the pro-growthers and capitalists.

As city commissioners listen Monday to the voices from both sides passionately arguing one way or another, we urge commissioners to keep the following top of mind:

Actions have consequences, and most actions have unintended consequences.

Before taking definitive action, commissioners should probe deeply for answers to these questions: What will be the consequences — good and ill — if the city staff’s recommendations or STOP’s recommendations are adopted? What will be the consequences if they are not?

It should not take much analysis to know that any time more layers of government are added, costs go up. It’s a disastrous domino.

If you reduce the amount of developable land, the cost of land goes up. If you increase the cost of a developer obtaining permits, the cost of development goes up. If you increase the cost of development, the cost of housing goes up. If you increase the cost and process to obtain permits, you lessen the attractiveness of your community to future development. You stifle growth, wealth, jobs and economic opportunity. You end up with a community of a few haves and a lot of have-nots.

Understand the consequences before you act.

Perception is reality: Normile should recuse herself

Do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons.

Sarasota City Planning Board Chair Eileen Normile should recuse herself from all of the Planning Board meetings affecting residents’ appeals to stop Seaward Development’s Epoch condominium on South Palm Avenue.

Heretofore — and probably at the Epoch appeals hearing scheduled today (after press time), Normile steadfastly has maintained she can be an impartial participant in the quasi-judicial hearings affecting the future of Epoch.

“I’m making an enormous effort to do everything appropriate in this case,” Normile told our Deputy Managing Editor David Conway. “That’s my primary goal, to do everything that’s appropriate and not to make any missteps.”

She can say that, and she can do that. She can say she is convinced she can render an unbiased decision. But she should put herself in Seaward owner Patrick DiPinto’s shoes.

Here is what he sees:

Neighbors are trying to stop and force a major change to a development project in which he and his partners already have millions of their money invested — and spent. They are trying to force a major alteration to a $110 million project for which he and his associates have gone through months of painstaking steps to make sure the project meets the city’s development code requirements.

And the neighbors want to force changes — if not stop altogether — DiPinto’s project even after he has received all of the city approvals.

And now this appeal is to go before a board whose chair is one of the founding members of STOP, an organization that for the past three years has been advocating for changes in the city’s development setbacks and administrative development review process.

These are the very issues that are the subject of the Epoch appeal.

What’s more, three of the 22 residents who filed the appeal against Epoch are also members of STOP’s advisory committee.

From DiPinto’s rational and emotional perspectives — from any rational person’s perspective — how could he possibly expect Normile not to be influenced against his project? She believes passionately that city setback rules and the administrative review process need changing.

Surely, Normile understands the widespread saying that “perception is reality.” And especially those involved in government should know that even a hint, or perception, of a conflict or a bias is enough to sour the public’s trust.

Imagine this outcome: The planning board rules against Seaward. We all know how that will reverberate. The city of Sarasota forever will be branded: Don’t go there; you won’t get a fair hearing.

We say this a lot: Capital flows where it is welcome. It flees where it is unwelcome.

It doesn’t matter if Eileen Normile follows the letter of the law in this case. The perception is that she is tainted. She should do the right thing: Recuse herself from the Epoch appeals hearings.