- June 3, 2025
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On May 6, the Manatee County Commission voted 6-0 to begin steps to determine whether it can terminate a contract with Schroeder-Manatee Ranch to co-pay for a roundabout at University Parkway and Legacy Boulevard.
The next day, Schroeder-Manatee Ranch CEO Rex Jensen learned of the commission’s surprise vote.
What follows is a May 12 memorandum from Jensen to six of the seven Manatee commissioners — George Kruse, Amanda Ballard, Carol Felts, Jason Bearden, Tal Siddique and District 5 Commissioner Robert McCann.
“I am fed up with the disregard for the law,” Jensen told us.
It’s yet another embarrassing blemish on the antics of the Manatee County Commission and Commissioner McCann.
— Matt Walsh
Forgive the tone of this memorandum as it is necessitated by your unilateral, inconsiderate and ill-advised knee-jerk action.
Commissioner (Mike) Rahn is copied as opposed to being directly addressed because he did not participate in the travesty that I’m about to discuss.
On May 6, on a 6-0 vote, you as a group were attempting to terminate a legally enforceable and binding contract for the construction and cost sharing of certain traffic improvements at the intersection of Legacy Boulevard and University Parkway. This contract was approved by UNANIMOUS vote of the prior commission (which included four of you, so it wasn’t a BOCC from Mars) on Nov. 12, 2024.
This effort to terminate was made at the behest of the District 5 commissioner who falsely claimed (as usual) that SMR “forced these improvements on the County,” and that his legal experience (which frankly is rather limited) led him to believe that the county had the right to terminate this agreement or rescind.
I believe that your very capable real attorney saved you from immediate legal action by having you cast the vote as a request to negotiate a termination. You were wise to listen to her, instead of the District 5 commissioner with the “law degree.”
Because you elected not to include me in the deliberation, I would like to discuss your conduct openly and in public via a public record memorandum (hence this memorandum to all of you) so that the District 5 commissioner is not free to misquote me.
What you did was not right in any sense of the word and not respectful of the usually good and decades long mutually beneficial relationship between SMR and the county.
This item was added to your agenda at night after the deadline in direct violation of your vaunted pledge of transparent conduct.
We, a party to the contract, were not even given notice or the courtesy of a telephone call or an email.
Commissioner Kruse was correct in thinking this was the case.
Do you not have telephones? Do you not have professional manners?
You couldn’t have given proper notice and allocated a later time to discuss this?
Can you not communicate to someone with whom you have a contract? Did any of you think your high-handed and unilateral actions would be well received?
We have multiple joint projects underway that serve the broader community’s interests. That makes the lack of communication all the more troubling, particularly in light of the longstanding, collaborative relationship between SMR and the county. It seems to me that mutual respect and basic professionalism should guide our interactions — even when opinions differ.
You also believed and acted upon the lies, distortions and hyperboles (and terribly stupid jokes) of the District 5 commissioner, despite the fact that all of you know that this man neither cares about facts, nor is capable of keeping them straight.
Yet you believed him, knowing from other situations that he lacks credibility. Just like in the earlier post-hurricane drainage situation, he either can’t understand the truth or doesn’t care or maybe both.
In support of his attempt to turn what should be an engineering process into a political one, a few citizens were paraded to the podium in show trial fashion who opposed the roundabout. One of the District 5 commissioner’s star witnesses admitted to being legally blind as his reason for opposition to a roundabout. Seriously?
And you fell for this tripe? I even saw one of you nodding your head in agreement with this nonsense when I watched your spectacle after the fact. Also, with due respect, I doubt there were 5,000 emails; not many more than 5,000 people live in the community under discussion.
The assertion SMR forced the roundabout on the county is false, politically motivated and completely unproductive.
Attached as Exhibit A is the sketch of improvements to the intersection that we proposed to make in our first meeting with the county. You can readily see that it is a signalized intersection with turn lane improvements and not a roundabout.
In that initial meeting, however, county staff made a persuasive case that a roundabout would be a better long-term improvement. My staff agreed with their rationale.
Because a roundabout is much more expensive than a signalized intersection, a cost-sharing arrangement was suggested, to which we also agreed and the BOCC (again, including four of you) unanimously approved the same on Nov. 12, 2024.
We began performance under that contract immediately since time is of the essence in fixing that intersection, and unlike you, we have a sense of urgency in accomplishing our projects. In the seven months of the life of the contract we have spent significant sums and spent very valuable time on improvements that are your suggestion, not ours.
SMR has moved forward in good faith and at considerable expense, believing we were working with a partner who shared our goal of improving public infrastructure. The suggestion that this decision was imposed on the county or lacked public process is revisionist and inaccurate.
There are a variety of ways to deal with this — ranging from professionally to not so much.
You have behaved in a rather unprofessional manner with your May 6 action. Would you like a return serve?
One way of moving forward is to say that we have a valid contract, and we are in the middle of performance, and this is the position that I am taking. (In fact, we may even have gotten around to tying up materials due to rapidly rising construction and material costs. I’d have to check on that to be sure.)
We are taking the legal position that we have every right to continue performing, build the improvement and collect the agreed-upon reimbursement. If you fail to pay, you will be sued for damages, costs and attorneys’ fees.
As to negotiating a termination, such termination would minimally require things like:
1) A written public apology from each of you individually
2) Reimbursement of every cent spent together with interest
3) The acknowledgement that the delays that you’ve caused us have resulted in highly increased per unit construction costs and your agreement to front (not reimburse) these costs to us as liquidated damages, and we could then build what we initially proposed and not the roundabout
4) If, however, a future analysis shows the need for a roundabout, the county will, as part of the settlement, contractually and irrevocably assume full liability to fund and complete that improvement, not SMR, as we were prepared to do so under the approved contract which you are wanting to terminate.
There would certainly be other things that would go into this termination, but I am not prepared to take that approach. As you can see, a termination would be an economically worse deal for taxpayers.
You, as stewards of public funds, should consider that fact.
The better approach is to continue with our valid and enforceable contract. Our experts agree with your staff that the roundabout is the best long-term solution.
To do less may mean tearing up the intersection multiple times if other improvements are required in the future. We are not accustomed to wasting money, whether it’s our money or yours. This roundabout is the improvement that provides the greatest long-term capacity.
The community and residents deserve the right long-term improvement, not the most popular improvement, and that’s what we are going to give them.
Traffic optimization wins, not who writes the most and nastiest emails or wears the most T-shirts, and that’s an end to it.
I don’t always favor roundabouts. They have pros and cons. In fact, I opposed one at Players Drive and Lorraine Road. The reason for that opposition was that:
1) It didn’t physically fit the site. (The Country Club gates were too close to provide adequate storage for morning construction and service traffic.)
2) It was imposed by another political opportunist solely to curry favor with her neighbors. (I hate politics, can’t you tell?)
3) There is a disproportionately high number of golf cart crossings in that location.
4) Your staff agreed with me that a signalized intersection was best in this situation.
In this case, however, the roundabout does fit the physical footprint. Moreover, the roundabout is the right solution. That intersection is not always busy. There have been many times that I have personally sat there with little or no oncoming traffic waiting for the light to turn.
At many times of the day a roundabout would allow traffic to proceed without much, if any, delay. At busier times (morning and afternoon Out-of-Door Academy times) traffic stacks up artificially because the light must cycle for each movement. I believe a roundabout would speed up peak traffic to a degree as well because of this fact. Additionally, we are working with ODA to create a back entrance through the corporate park that would remove much of its pickup/drop-off traffic. This would make the roundabout even more efficient.
There are other positives to roundabouts. First, they have been shown to be safer. According to the Federal Highway Administration, roundabouts reduce injury crashes by 75% and fatal crashes by up to 90% when compared to traditional signalized intersections. (Many of you commissioners have expressed on several occasions you want to eliminate traffic fatalities.)
With roundabouts, accidents are typically fender benders, not head-on or high-speed collisions you see with signalized intersections.
Second, roundabouts work during hurricanes that knock out the power. (Some of you commissioners have expressed on countless occasions your concerns about hurricanes and big storms.) Roundabouts work in all weather!
Remember from Hurricane Milton, signals don’t work in the aftermath of such storms and we all need to work to increase resiliency.
Third, the maintenance is reduced; there is no need to ensure the signal timing is correct or to replace traffic lights.
Fourth, just modifying turn lanes may require additional future improvements. The improvement we are designing under the contract provides the maximum capacity that we can achieve for that intersection.
We are not going to set ourselves up for multiple construction projects in the future and knowingly disrupt the community more than once in a key location by going halfway.
This is a crucial intersection that needs fixing now, and we are only tearing it up once, not twice. To delay the project by redesigning it again doesn’t serve anyone who travels through it on a daily basis.
I am not making my community suffer twice just because you get emails. You encourage them with your behavior, so enjoy the emails and stop worrying about your convenience. Think of those stuck in traffic.
The choice should be about what’s right. The roundabout may not be politically popular, particularly at first impression. Popularity, however, shouldn’t be the basis for infrastructure decisions. Traffic engineering should be left to the professionals.
Your staff and mine have the expertise to evaluate the best improvement. They have already done that. We are not revisiting it.
In all future road improvements, should we just count T-shirts and not cars on everything we do??
My community deserves the right functioning improvements NOT THE POLITICALLY CORRECT IMPROVEMENTS.
We also aren’t terminating valid agreements every time a politician wets his pants or seeks public relevance over emails. I’m sorry that you are getting emails, but you will live.
We have never done improvements by a vote. I’m not starting now and won’t do it in the future. When I see someone’s name on a check that pays our property taxes, I’ll listen … otherwise not so much.
Roads shouldn’t be political, and communities aren’t built by polls. In the roundabout I opposed, for example, the county told me the opinion split was about 50/50. What would you do with that? The right thing should prevail, and that should be an end to it. We have an agreement, let’s stay with it.
Meantime, I have referred this matter to legal counsel (with a real law degree rather than one from the ACME school of law or whatever).
I realize this communique could have been more civil. Next time, pick up the phone and act with civility if you want civility in return.
Your interference with a binding legal obligation in the middle of a project isn’t appreciated. We have no intention of rescheduling our trains every time the District 5 commissioner’s cuckoo clock sounds.
