Tempest in a teapot
Construction of the new sidewalk has started. It might turn out to be one of the most significant steps in the destruction of the beauty of the GMD.
AL GREEN
Contributing Columnist
green@lbknews.com
As most of you know, the Town Commission by a vote of five to four decided to not reappoint David Brenner to the Planning and Zoning Board.
The reasoning of the majority was that Mr. Brenner in his capacity as Chairman of the Economic Development Council for the Chamber of Commerce demonstrated a specific point of view and would not allow him to make unbiased decisions. Their major concern was that his membership on the Board was tending to politicize their deliberations.
Brenner almost immediately upon hearing of his dismissal demonstrated that the commissioners were certainly correct in their concerns. Not a week after the vote, former Chairman Brenner sent out an email to a carefully selected group of citizens asking them to meet at his condo to discuss a way “to fix the Commission”. There is certainly nothing wrong with a citizen calling like minded citizens to form a committee to change the political makeup of an elected organization. However, no one could describe such an action as non political. David Brenner’s actions only went to reinforce the reasoning behind The Commission’s action.
Although his email went out to a carefully selected group, it appears that the careful selection wasn’t careful enough since one of the selectees immediately forwarded his email to quite a few people including members of the Town Commission. I know, I got a copy; as a matter of fact I got four copies so the call to “fix the Commission” got a lot of exposure.
A fascinating aspect of this infamous email is that at the bottom of the message, there is a further statement calling for the “breaking” of Steve Reid because of his newspaper’s publishing of both Dick Hershatter and yours truly, Al Green. Looking at the email and the added varia at the bottom, it appears that the recipient of the original letter added this bit of information along with names of some of the potential participants before forwarding on the original document. It could be assumed that the allusion to the ‘breaking of Steve Reid” is from this unknown person’s personal discussion with Brenner. When the reporter from the Longboat Key News asked Mr. Brenner about it, he said he didn’t want to discuss it. However it must be noted, he did not deny or disown the thought. I guess the Brenner Group doesn’t believe in supporting all commercial enterprises on the Key.
I don’t think that even at the height of the split between PIC and the Longboat Observer did anyone think that closing down the Ralph Hunter Observer was a worthy objective. Everyone knows that being a giveaway paper depending upon advertising to survive; it was only natural for the Observer to back the interests of their advertisers. All that PIC wanted to do at that time was to publish another side of the argument.
It surely reflects great prestige on the publisher of the Longboat Key News to find that his attempt to defend the best interests of the Town as a whole is perceived to be so horrendous that it should be the goal of this faction to destroy the newspaper and with it a person’s livelihood.
Much of this controversy has to revolve around the Longboat Key Club expansion and hopefully when this issue is addressed, cooler heads will prevail. This is an issue that will have to be addressed. The facilities of the club especially the condition of the golf course need some very expensive attention and there will have to be some compromise that will supply enough funds to accomplish this. Calling for the destruction of a newspaper is not an example of rational behavior and will not contribute anything worthwhile to the discussion.
A major objection to attempting a resolution of the Club’s application at his juncture is a belief that the current ownership has no plans to do anything. Self described ‘insiders’ have been saying that any site plan adjustment would be used only to facilitate a sale. That being the case, I think it would be in the best interest of Longboat Key to negotiate with the actual ownership that will be doing the work and following up on the final resolution.
Everyone knows what happened when the Town Commission arrived at an agreement with Arvida only to find that they should have been dealing with the Shannon Corporation. I cannot conceive of an agreement that would involve escrowing the millions of dollars required to repair the courses that could be transferred both legally and more importantly, be enforceable.( I intend to address some additional possibilities regarding the future of the club in my next report.)
Promises are great but it sometimes require legal action to insure that they are kept and historically the Town Commission of Longboat Key has chosen to walk away from a fight rather than pay the legal bills that fighting requires. Those who ignore their history will be forced to relive it.
On another note, construction of the new sidewalk has started. It might turn out to be one of the most significant steps in the destruction of the beauty of the GMD. Unless the owners of the properties adjacent to the new bike path treat the portion of their frontage as part of their property, the newly created ‘no man’s land could turn out to be as unattractive as its Bayfront counterpart.
