We continue to think we are just figures in a Norman Rockwell painting, but as the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movements both demonstrate, the natives are getting restless.

The Town Commission has decided that not only should they change whatever rules bothered the judge in the Longboat key Club lawsuit, but they should also go back and rewrite all the rules and codes.

The IPOC/Loeb Realty Partners decision gives the town the opportunity to retake control of their own destiny. The proposal by Loeb for a $400 million extravaganza of condos, hotels and a conference center was too much for a group of untrained community volunteers to assimilate so they just said ‘yes’ without considering the full extent of their folly.

The judge in the case of the IPOC against the major expansion of the Longboat Key Club has been rendered and probably to no one’s surprise, the judge came down on the side of the residents. There are many facets to this decision but a basic one is the issue I have been pounding at from the beginning; how can the Town Commission allow an individual developer to come in and walk all over the great majority of the adjacent landowners when the codes say otherwise?

The town manager has suggested that the town purchase the balance of the land that abuts the new Publix project. This would finally bring together the original thinking of Arvida and the town to make the entire area a town center with walkways, band boxes and more of the landscaping that has been done so effectively on the other side of the road in front of Town Hall — a true town center.

Very few people would argue that the current Publix on Longboat Key needs to be bigger and better and that the entire shopping plaza needs a facelift.

Everyone remembers the old chestnut about a camel being designed by a committee, well from press reports it appears this was the method chosen by the new manager, Dave Bullock, to arrive at his decision on how to handle Monica Simpson, the now former head of the Planning and Zoning Department.

The day after it was announced that there was to be a candidate to oppose current Vice Mayor Dave Brenner, I received the following message: “Ray Rajewski is a neighbor in the bayou and friend of mine. We served together for five years on our board. Ray has good creds, e.g., he got the Bay Isles Master Association to reduce the assessment rate after pointing out that it was higher than the ad valorem taxes imposed by LBK! If he wins against Brenner

The Longboat Observer is conducting a straw ballot that is trying to throw light on how the citizens feel about the proposed cell tower adjacent to GMD on the property of the Longboat Island Chapel. These are legitimate questions but unfortunately straw votes are about the worst way you can go about getting the right answers. Straw balloting along with referendums is a lousy way to govern.

The tragedy involving the molestation of young children has hit my town and the university located here with the punch of Katrina. Not since the Kennedy assassination have I seen so many people so involved and so distressed. It has touched almost everyone living here.