Today one in five American households is multi-generational. The only segment of the new house market that is growing is the “accordion” home designed to accommodate several generations of a family living together in one structure. Parents with children under 21 are not included when counting multi-generational households in America.

You and I were born into a unique period of world history where there was immense growth in the middle class, for a period of 60 years, based on the emergence of automated manufacturing and the revolution of “technology.” When I was a young child, plastic did not exist as a manufactured material. We have lived through an amazing period in human existence. Democracy and capitalism spread over the entire globe. Agricultural and medical science saved humanity from famine and disease while improving the human condition. Amazing times.

We are seeing, in this interminable national election cycle, the beginnings of a necessary reality adjustment in our country. We are beginning to accept the fact that blue-collar manufacturing jobs have been largely replaced by numerically controlled machines and robots. The factories that produce Apple products will install 1 million additional robots in the next three years. We are not the only society that is entering the new technology age.

The manufacturing jobs are gone and it wasn’t the result of “outsourcing.” The jobs were gone 40 years ago with the advent of the semiconductor and cheap computing. In the ’70s I started a company that automated several labor-intensive aspects of the gaming industry. My company would charge unconscionable prices for our ideas and products, only to see them pay for themselves in a few months of reduced labor costs. We, my company, were the suckers, not the casino managers, who were usually pretty sharp business people.

I think we are all beginning to recognize that an economic colossus, the size of the American industrial base, took decades to be seriously affected by the new technology age, which has replaced hands and sweat with robots and automated machines.

Plastic and engineered materials have largely replaced metal. The pencil has been replaced by the computer. Vastly improved modes of transportation have ushered in the age of distributed manufacturing and assembly. The Internet will soon marginalize national borders.

The manufacturing sector is not coming back. The brief period in history where a single society, representing less than 8 percent of the global population, was able to afford to consume 25 percent of the earth’s resources, both natural and produced, has ended. Humanity is moving on. We, as a society, will necessarily begin the painful process of downsizing. American consumption and consumerism will have to come into line with the other peoples on earth. Nationalism is perhaps the first thing that will have to disappear for all countries. Global economics are out in front in this area. When I was a child, Americans would chuckle at the “made in Japan” label on imported products. Now we cannot get foreign-made iPhones fast enough.

I do not know what will become of the blue-collar segment of our society. I do know there are millions of clever people looking for a way to get rich by inventing something or some computer program that reduces costs for someone. If I worked in a Chinese iPhone/iPad factory, I would be looking for something else to do real soon. There is a robot in his/her immediate future.

Japan entered the global manufacturing market in the late ’50s. American manufacturers underestimated the viability of a highly educated and organized industrial base. America lost market share and jobs. It took fewer than 35 years for Japan to enter permanent economic decline, as other countries entered the global marketplace, made possible by improved transportation technology including the jet plane. Now no one would dream of manufacturing something in Japan. It’s too expensive. There too the Japanese laborer has been replaced by the robotic assembly line. China may well pass through its period of manufacturing expansion in fewer than two decades. Already some U.S. manufactures are returning jobs to America, but not necessarily North America. Mexico may soon become the new China.

One in five U.S. households are multi-generational. This translates to a diminution of the American standard of living. We can elect whomever we want, but times have changed. There is no way to regain our golden age of the middle class. At least not as blue-collar workers.

We as a nation need to “get real.” We are just another society caught up in a world of too much violence (the result of too many people having too little), too many human beings, too much pollution, too little available water to support the global agricultural expansion that will be required to feed everyone and too much stuff. We need to start smelling the flowers instead of buying another flowerpot on the Internet.

How did the mantra of “cheap goods” ever become the sacrament of American society? Do we all need all the stuff we posses? Look up “hedonic assimilation” as it relates to happiness. Basically, we all quickly get use to our new stuff and need more and better stuff to get another consumption high. America, and much of the modern world, is on a never-ending consumer treadmill.

The working class will have to find something else to do, since there is no longer an expanding need for their services or efforts. How’s your robot today? Capitalism is based on an expanding market. Recent studies show Japan’s population decreasing 30 percent by 2050. As societies industrialize, their birthrates decline. Without 1 million illegals entering the United States each year, we also would have a declining population growth rate.

Contributing Columnist

burgum@lbknews.com

President Obama’s State of the Union Address was a bit of a disappointment at our house. It was a combination of failed programs and more debt. He laid out an array of plans that ignored political realities. Take his plea to end oil industry subsidies, if you recall, he couldn’t get that old bromide through a Congress with an overwhelming Democratic majority.

The confused thinking didn’t end there. He talked of an immigration overhaul that he couldn’t get past Democrats and tuition tax credits that failed even with many in his own party the last time around. Even worse, he talked of ending tax credits that encouraged companies to move jobs overseas — tax credits that don’t exist. He didn’t mention that we penalize companies who want to do business in the United States by imposing the highest corporate tax in the industrial world.

But, what he didn’t say was far more revealing about the State of the Nation than anything he said. Mr. Obama not only ignored the deficit but what passes for his energy policy received the barest of mentions.

How can a president who had just requested authority to raise the debt ceiling $1.2 trillion for a total of $16.4 trillion virtually ignore the deficit problem in the State of the Union address? There was a time when he did not ignore deficits. When the Senate was considering President Bush’s request to raise the debt ceiling $11.3 trillion, Sen. Obama said, “The problem is that the way Bush has done it in the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion from the first 42 presidents. No. 43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome. So we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back. $30,000 for every man woman and child. That’s irresponsible, that’s unpatriotic.”

Maybe the president should get a pass on this one. It’s a bit tricky trying to justify $5.1 trillion in deficit spending in three years when he earlier had said running up $4 trillion in eight years was unpatriotic.

He brushed by energy policy with a simple statement that, “I’ll not walk away from the promise of clean energy.” Gone from this State of the Union were the former promises of 5 million green jobs, a nation powered by the sun and wind, a nation free from the curse of demonic fossil fuels.

Had Mr. Obama talked about clean energy, he might have had to admit that the solar and wind energy projects were not smoking hot. He might even have had to admit they weren’t even smoking. He might even have been forced to tell us that the wind and solar industries were in the tank.

Just one week after the State of the Union speech, California-based Amonix announced it was laying off about 200 people from the 300 currently employed in its solar manufacturing plant in North Las Vegas. This loss of jobs announcement came on the heels of BP, famous for it’s “beyond petroleum” motto and a mishap in the Gulf two years ago, announcing it’s closing its solar operation at a cost of 1,750 jobs. Seems the sales just aren’t there.

Wind farms aren’t doing much better. Germany is moving away from its wind program because the indeterminate nature of the power supply is threatening to destabilize Germany’s electric grid. Denmark and Norway are scaling back wind farm development. They have found it is too expensive, the power is unreliable and the manufacturing jobs are most likely located in Asia.

Europe’s experience is not unique. Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, has condemned wind farms and the wind industry in general. “The industry is a destroyer of wealth and negative to the economy,” he told a Canadian audience. Moore said there wouldn’t be wind farms without subsidies, “They are ridiculously expensive and don’t work half the time… And no matter how many are built, they won’t replace coal, gas or hydro or nuclear plants, because they are continuous and wind is not always reliable.”

The president did not feel it necessary to reiterate his preference for coal or natural gas-fueled vehicles — or electric-powered vehicles as he calls them. In last year’s State of the Union Address, the president set a national goal of having a million electric vehicles on the road in the United States by 2015 — a goal that would be achieved, Obama said, by taking money out of the oil industry and investing it in new technology.

More recently the president said, “In three years, our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries.” Everyone took this to be a reference to a $118 million stimulus grant to develop electric-car batteries given to Ener1. Shortly after the president’s glowing report Ener1 filed for bankruptcy. The principal reason for Ener1’s troubles is that very few are buying the electric cars that Mr. Obama is so anxious to see on our highways. The Chevy Volt, for instance, was several thousand short of the 10,000 a year goal set by G.M. for 2011. All of them had to be recalled because of a fire hazard.

Actually, I would like to hear the president explain just how the electric cars or hybrids are going to get all the electricity they need when his EPA is shutting down between 12 percent and 18 percent of our current generating capacity while ignoring the Federal Energy Administration’s projections that America will need to increase current generating capacity 40 percent by 2030 just to accommodate the additional population. One would believe we will require a good deal more electricity if everyone is plugging in their hybrids and Volts.

In short, we have an energy policy that works against itself. That is always difficult to talk about. And that is why sometimes you can divine more from what is not said than you can from what is.

Community center: The $10 million speculative adventure being proposed by Mayor Jim Brown is encountering a fair amount of community opposition, despite claims by the mayor that “the community is behind” his project. Several taxpayers have pointed out that in these difficult economic times, the town needs to be fiscally responsible. The commission should propose a public fundraising option to build a community center rather than proceed with using taxpayer funds.

There is no defensible reason not to follow the successful private fundraising efforts used to create the Anna Maria Island Community Center and Christ Church here on Longboat Key. We are in more difficult economic times than we were when the proposal to build a community center was rejected by a referendum several years ago. The community may once again reject the efforts of our activist mayor and his efforts to spend much-needed public funds on this multi-million-dollar project. We need to pay down debt, not create more public debt. I wonder what Mayor Brown thinks has changed?

Commercial real estate: The current activist commission is strongly advocating that the town radically change our building codes and Comprehensive Plan, to the extent that the commercially zoned land at the north and south ends of the island will become too juicy to be ignored by developers. We are making it easy for developers to build whatever they please, regardless of the ambiance or desires of the resident taxpayers. The commission is planning to give developers public streets too, as we did at the Conrad Beach development, a project that is still unfinished after more than a decade.

What the commission is ignoring are all the taxpayers who live at the north and south ends. Does the commission actually believe that legislating a seven-story condo-tel at Whitney beach Plaza will do anything but adversely affect the north end ambiance? Based on what empirical evidence? Have they asked the local residents what they want, instead of assuming what some developer would want? Handpicking a group of like-minded business people and residents to carry out some sort of phony study does not constitute anything but a violation of the public trust. The commission should be ashamed of itself.

It may be time to consider reigning in the practice of the commission of using appointed, unofficial committees to formulate, and supposedly validate, radical departures from existing town policies. Essentially this is stealth government and should be unacceptable in any community.

Granted the residents of Longboat Key have exactly the government they were too uninvolved to elect. An appointed government has no incentive to be responsive to the people. In our particular case, Longboat voters and residents are so uninvolved in their own local destinies, that the current people in power are relatively sure that their regime will last for decades of appointment after appointment to the Town Commission and the Planning and Zoning Board. I believe that most residents have abandoned any interest in local politics. Perhaps what is happening is a natural process that occurs when the residents reach a certain age demographic and are only seasonal residents.

Increasingly, spending $18,000 on a local election, with the major newspaper, the real estate community, the Chamber of Commerce, PIC and the Garden Club behind the incumbent pro-business candidate, each for their own political ends, is a waste of taxpayer money. The development and business interests now own Longboat Key. The voters of the island appear not to care anymore and have abdicated their rightful role as an electorate. Instead, a few powerful special interest groups effectively control who gets to be on the commission and the Planning and Zoning Board. They even decide who is today’s town manager.

Most residents don’t know what is really going on in town government. And many residents who vote get their information from a pro-business newspaper and PIC, a sham community organization. Uninterested ignorance prevails, while taxpayers passively accept a stalled real estate market, crippled by the uncertainty of the future of commercial tourism on the island. No one wants to invest in property that may be rendered worthless in a few years as a result of actions being undertaken by the current, predominantly appointed, activist town government.

I am sympathetic with the plight of our new town manager, who daily must live or die by a political sword in the hands of self-anointed, appointed, professed pro-development activists, who control both the Town Commission and the Planning and Zoning Board. These appointees can have the town manager’s head on any given day, as they have recently demonstrated, appointing four town managers in a month’s time. A town manager can only be effective when allowed to function as a sort of technocrat. As far as I can see we no longer have a stable, powerful town manager. That position has been superseded by a self-appointed, political, fairly radical clique within our community.

Ask yourself if your life and financial situation on Longboat Key is better or worse than when the current pro-business commission came into power two years ago.

Change is good, or change is bad;

One never really knows;

But bad or good, it’s sometimes sad

To see where money goes.

Last year on Longboat Key was notable for a number of significant changes.

First was the decision, after lengthy, sometimes contentious, hearings, to grant the application of the Longboat Key Club & Resort for massive additions on its Islandside golf course.

Then, in September, the Town Commission, by a 5-2 vote, forced the resignation of 14-year veteran Town Manager Bruce St. Denis.

Police Chief Al Hogle was appointed “acting” town manager, to serve until an “interim” town manager could be selected while the commission sought a permanent replacement.

Acting Town Manager Hogle had no sooner taken over, when an employee grievance reached his desk that Planning, Zoning & Building Director Monica Simpson was creating an “unfavorable work environment” in her department.

Hogle then did what chiefs of police (but not town managers) would do under such circumstances. He delegated one of his officers to investigate, and after due investigation, that worthy reported back that yes, indeed, the employees working under Ms. Simpson were unhappy with her management methods.

Hogle promptly fired Simpson. Mayor Jim Brown then moved to reinstate Simpson and fire Hogle as acting town manager. The commission, again by a 5-2 vote, endorsed the action.

Shortly thereafter, the Town Commission hired David Bullock as “interim” town manager, who, after looking into the matter, fired Monica Simpson again as director of Planning, Zoning & Building but kept her on as a “consultant,” whatever that means.

We rehash all these minutia, not to criticize any individual or group. The facts are the facts, and the public can make up its own collective mind as to the efficacy of any one of the actions taken.

What does concern this column, however, is the loss of services of the former Planning, Zoning & Building Department director.

Whatever her management “techniques,” Simpson is an acknowledged professional and expert at the intricacies of planning and zoning under the police powers of the state. Because actions taken under PZB regulations are in derogation of a property owner’s right to do anything he wants with his property, the person interpreting and administering those regulations must walk a narrow tightrope between the individual’s rights and the needs and wants of the community.

The nature of the job, therefore, often engenders enmity. Simpson has always had the courage of her convictions, even taking exception to the enormity of the Key Club’s requested changes.

In her dealings with subordinates, Simpson’s problem was that she does not suffer fools gladly, and her own brilliance and impatience often led her to be curt and given, sometimes, to the use of four-letter words to emphasize her displeasure with a defective report or result.

With proper guidance from higher management, however, procedural problems can be corrected. It was not necessary to throw the baby out with the bathwater and deprive the town of the expertise of a professional whose years of devotion and familiarity were, by all accounts, invaluable.

Last month’s work session of the Town Commission spotlighted a probable expensive consequence of the loss of Ms. Simpson’s services.

Because discrepancies existed between the Key Club’s planned project and the town’s Comprehensive Plan, steps had been initiated by the Town Commission to resolve what were termed “ambiguities” in that plan, which had been in effect since 1984.

When the court, early this month, ruled that the commission had been entirely wrong in just about every aspect of its approval of the Key Club’s project last summer, the commissioners realized that changes to the Comprehensive Plan needed to be undertaken with extreme care and expertise.

Town Manager David Bullock has recommended that a “holistic review” of the overall Comprehensive Plan be effected as soon as possible.

At Mayor Brown’s suggestion, an outfit based in Washington, D.C., by the name of Urban Land Institute was contacted for an estimate of costs to revise the present code.

By telephone presentation, the group described what it does and has done in other communities, large and small.

It proposed to come to town as a consultant for a week, review the nature of the community, the problems with the present situation and interview citizens, and come up with a plan, all for a cost, including hotel rooms and meals, of $125,000.

Simpson is already familiar with the nature of the community and the problems with the present situation. She has no need to interview citizens, and the town is not required to provide her with meals or hotel rooms.

If she is brought back on staff, her managerial deficiencies can be corrected, or the department realigned so that friction is reduced.

$125,000 is not an insignificant sum, especially in these times when local funds are tight and problems exist with under-funded pension funds.

Furthermore, not to disparage the Urban Land Institute, but does anything good ever come out of Washington, D.C.?

Richard L. Hershatter is a retired Connecticut lawyer and novelist who writes an occasional column of interest to Floridians. He can be reached at hershatter@lbknews.com.

The order of Judge Roberts to grant a Writ of Certiorari and to “quash” the ordinance approval for the Longboat Key Club redevelopment project on seven counts is cause enough to thoroughly reexamine highly flawed, vague and contradictory Comprehensive Plan and land use regulations. Instead the Town Commission’s knee jerk reaction was to rush to appeal the decision.

The commission did so without placing this item for consideration on its docket, nor did it advertise and give notice to the public to allow testimony and debate in whose interests the commission was serving in appealing this decision. Only two citizens spoke out about the possibility of appeal and perhaps more citizens would have in protest or in support had this decision been advertised.

I would ask the town attorney to address this issue and cite how this decision was legal and provided due process and fair notice of the actions the commission was considering on behalf of the people. While suggesting that appeal was in order, the town attorney also suggested that the Town Commission get its act together to repair a Comprehensive Plan that he admitted was legally flawed. So in effect, the town attorney said let’s challenge a judicial decision that the plan was flawed and let’s fix the flaws. So now there is a two-pronged effort to holistically fix the comp plan and less holistically tinker with the Planned Unit Development regulations.

As to the Gulf Planned Development District there really is nothing to fix because there is really nothing broken. The GDC was developed under the land use regulations that prevailed prior to the Town Commission’s approval of the LBK Club application. The entire site was built out; each land use element supported and complimented the whole as a planned development with predominantly residential uses supported by recreational facilities and a hotel as ancillary uses. These uses were physically and functionally integrated as one development.

In my experience as a planner once a PUD is approved, the PUD is the zoning. There are no residual rights unless the approved plan has not completed all phases of the development, in which case there would be a designated landbay or parcel approved for future development. There is no underlying zoning; that gets extinguished when the PUD is approved because the underlying zoning is not what is desired and is not consistent with the plan or policy since the PUD is the plan and does reflect the land use policy of the town.

Since residents bought their homes under the terms of the PUD, the town cannot arbitrarily change those terms. On the other hand a PUD can’t be viewed as immutable for all times. There may be a finding of compelling public interest such as blighted conditions, physical or economic obsolescence, and other changed circumstances that would warrant a reexamination of the terms and conditions of the PUD approval to prevent public harm and a better outcome. And if such were the case, the town would engage in extensive studies and hold public meetings and work sessions with the affected parties within the PUD properties and the public at large to find consensus that there was a problem and how that problem might be addressed.

None of this happened or was found in the case of the Gulf Development District, yet the town proceeded to approve a massive increase in density on land designated for recreational uses and introduced uses that were not contemplated in the district nor were they physically or functionally integrated or compatible with the existing development. This is not to say the proposal submitted by the Key Club could not have been made more compatible; it’s just that none of this was in any town policy or plan that got vetted by the public independent of the Key Club proposal.

The developer really had to no right to submit an amendment to the GPD that was inconsistent with the PUD. As it stood the Planning, Zoning & Building director recommended denial of the application with all its “departures.” Departures in my planner’s dictionary are elements that do not conform to established town land use policies and plans and are grounds for denial of the application.

Judges don’t dwell in ‘Plannerland’ and it is not their role to decide on the merits of local land use policies, yet this is really the crux of the issue. Judge Roberts ruled on the illegality of approving a major development project that had no rules.

Larry Grossman is a resident of Longboat Key.

My first roommate in my freshman year of college at Saint Louis University never owned a bar of soap. He rarely laundered his clothes, took a shower or cleaned up after himself. Having said that, he was a decent guy and I liked him. This made maneuvering him out of roommate status delicate work. I managed the transition by finding another obsessive compulsive with a roommate who had the same hygiene challenges as my roommate. Nine weeks into our first semester at college, Larry and Bill successfully switched roommates and began a friendship that lasted many years.

Bill lived in a remote and sparsely populated rural area called Pewee Valley, 20 miles southeast of Louisville, Ky. I was invited to his home during spring break in 1961. One evening, after a round of golf in town, we were having one of those college freshmen conversations that stretched into the wee hours of the night.

Sometime around 3 a.m., we grabbed a couple of beers, bundled up for the chill outside and retired to the backyard to finish our conversation. We gathered rocking chairs from the porch and took them into the backyard. Everyone in the house was asleep and all the lights in the house were out. If you are wondering what can this be leading to, you are correct: another “first.”

All of us have seen a starred-filled sky, but only a lucky few of us have seen the Milky Way Galaxy without interference from the light of the moon, urban lights or suburban lights. The Milky Way Galaxy has an estimated 200-400 billion stars. The sky becomes a white blanket suspended above you. As your eyes hopscotch this blanket, you are dazzled by its physical scale and humbled by thoughts of its origins. If you live in a rural part of the world, you will clearly view your world differently than one who lives in an urban setting.

Each time I am confronted with a circumstance that overwhelms my intellectual capacities, I revert back to my Catholic upbringing and its attendant theology. Brother Toomey was my senior year religion teacher at Cathedral Latin High School. He was a man I respected because he was not exclusively dogmatic and was open to others’ points of view.

I can remember the class where the discussion was centered on agnosticism and atheism. As with any conversation involving those topics, it was circular and without conclusion. Brother Toomey ended the day’s lesson with the observation that “no one in this room is smart enough to be either an agnostic or an atheist.”

I remember that incident because it reminds me that not all things can be explained, even by the most brilliant among us. At the end of the day, we find our solace in our core beliefs and core faiths. The discovery of the Milky Way Galaxy, as viewed from Pewee Valley, Ky., introduced me to another of those phenomena that pass through our lives without rational or intellectual explanations.

How can any of us expect to digest and come to grips with the concept of 200-400 billion stars? Faith is not an accidental concept; it is humanity’s firewall against all the mysteries and unexplainable acts that pass through our lives.

Just to complete this story, I attended the abortive rally for Sen. Rick Santorum at Dolphin Aviation Sunday afternoon, Jan. 29. It was, by my account, a non-event as the senator was at home attending to his hospitalized baby daughter. There were a few stand-ins who tried to rally the crowd. They failed to rally me.

Santorum and Dr. Paul have since withdrawn from the Florida race. So, we continue with the main story as promised.

Romney won! He won big. Statewide the tally was Romney 46 percent, Gingrich 32 percent. On LBK in Sarasota County Romney was favored by an amazing 72 percent; in Manatee County Romney tallied 64 percent. Voter turnout was excellent.

The Florida Republican Primary is complete. The fifty delegates to the convention to be held this summer in Tampa are decided. The winner takes all here in Florida. The Republican National Committee cut the number of delegates in half (100 to 50) as a penalty for holding this primary earlier than the committee wanted.

I said in last week’s column that maybe we’d see how I did. Well, I had endorsed — if that’s the word — Gov. Mitt Romney. I also said that in a more perfect world I would favor Sen. Rick Santorum, but did not. I still do not.

My results: I endorsed the winner. I claim no special political insight. I do claim to be an observer of the political scene in our locale. I made the effort to see all the candidates who came to our city. Maybe it pays to get out there. The candidates all came to us.

The strategy seems to be to keep the primary race running as long as possible — to late spring or early summer. This plan is to make it difficult for the president’s election handlers to concentrate on a single target opponent. I might agree that this will be helpful to the opposition. When the incumbent is talking of raising, and spending, a billion dollars on his reelection bid, the GOP should delay spending their far more meager war chest to as close to November as possible. Seems plausible.

Meanwhile, Romney pulls ahead in the delegate count — the real goal of course. The debating and advertising in Florida these past few weeks were intense.

Many thought it all rather negative. Yet Romney said on primary night, “A competitive campaign does not divide us; it prepares us.” Left unsettled in all that last-minute activity were Santorum and Paul. I sense that they will stay in the hunt for a while longer. There is the question of economic inefficiency here. Santorum’s resources might be better spent in the general election battle to come. He looks like a guy that wants a seat there. Dr. Paul is, I think, chasing a more elusive goal. That is recognition for a movement. He’ll stay in the Grand Old Party. Gingrich, as now the number two, will clearly keep at it. We’ll see more and more debates, news stories, TV ads.

Some of the Republican faithful, I hear, hunger for a newer, maybe fresher candidate. I fielded a telephone interview question the other night, which asked me if I was planning to vote in the primary, who I planned to vote for and would I have preferred the opportunity to vote for another candidate. Mitch Daniels and Jeb Bush were suggested among others. I think this is a long shot, but one never knows. The prize is very large. A brokered convention this summer in Tampa is the dream of some. With this week’s almost overwhelming victory by Gov. Romney, his position as the leader is solidified. I don’t think we’ll see any radical movement within the GOP. The next few months will play it out.

It’s a long way from that day in summer when Mitt Romney shook my hand at the Sarasota Yacht Club. Personal politics do pay off.

As I said last week, it was informative; more importantly it was fun.

The Town Commission is considering a proposal from the town manager to hire a consulting group to help the commissioners in their attempt to modernize the codes.

It sounds like a good idea. When I was on the commission we discussed the ambiguity of some of the codes, but Town Attorney David Persson felt that any attempt to update the rules would make the town vulnerable to the Harris Act, a state law passed in the nineties.

That law allows a property owner to challenge any zoning code that the owner feels impinges upon their property rights. The law states that any codes written prior to the passing of the act would not be held to be applicable, leaving the LBK existing codes grandfathered. Consequently, he felt it best to let sleeping dogs lie.

Obviously Mr. Persson has changed his opinion, and possibly there is some additional legal history to back up his revised position. The area that perplexes me is his concerns about the PUDs.

On Longboat Key, any 10 acres of residentially zoned land can be designated as a PUD. The buildings can be situated using the amount of density and lot coverage allowed in any way that is agreeable to both the owner of the property and the town. To put it bluntly, PUD zoning is spot zoning with a degree of flexibility not found in regular zoning codes. I don’t know what would have to be changed. The amount of acreage required could be changed but that wouldn’t be a big deal.

The exception to this rule concerns commercially zoned property. There, all you need is one acre to be classified as a PUD. I call this the Michael Saunders/Art Fall rule but it does allow a lot of leeway for anyone who would want to build commercially on the key.

Once the site plan is approved, everyone understands that the agreed upon plan is the final say. If you want to make a change, you have to amend the plan. Since the site plan is a contract, both sides of the agreement have to be a part of any amendment.

When Shane Eagan wanted to close down the Islandside tennis courts and use the property to build villas, he obtained the backing of the tennis players and the Islandside residents. With these groups in agreement, he was able to negotiate a residential development to be built on the plot, thereby amending the plan. Because this proposal had a kicker — it waived all future development rights — it didn’t sit well with his boss, Joe Lesser, and consequently Shane and the development was history. It did however demonstrate how interested parties could work out differences if they agreed the site plan needed changing.

What is it about these procedures that is of concern to the town attorney? Are there other methods he wishes to put in place? Is the town by appealing the decision of the judge trying to say that amendments in an ODP, GDP or site plan could be changed without agreement of both sides of the contract? Most importantly, where multiple owners are involved, what decides who is a party to the contract?

Uncertainty is a killer in real estate. That is why there are zoning codes, outline development plans, condo rules, FEMA rules and sundry other restrictions. The codes of Longboat Key were written a long time ago by a very able attorney, whose name was coincidently Abel (Harvey) and they could use some adjustments, but this idea should be completely separate from the legal issues at the Longboat Key Club. If revisions should in any way convey the appearance of making changes just so one developer can benefit, it will lead nowhere except to more bitterness and a less inviting place to live.

Meet Larry Kassouf: columnist, Longboat Key Dentist, occasional grump as well as a delightfully classy and surprisingly sensitive gentleman from a bygone era.

And Larry has the successful-in-the-private-sector attitude toward Town Hall. The “They are all a bunch of overpaid idiots who haven’t got a clue” sentiment.

And that is his disposition before Larry gets denied by a staffer for something he wants. Then you can watch the pressure in Larry’s head like an overinflated tire make his face pulse menacingly. And All this week, Larry’s face was pulsing and I am worried what contortions next week may bring.

Signs of hope

Kassouf opened his practice at Mediterranean Plaza a couple of years ago and immediately learned that his signage options included begging, pleading, growing angry, frustrated and resentful. Those were his options and he exhausted them.

Kassouf even went in front of the Town Commission asking for assistance in being included in the Town’s Wayfinding signs program (the signs that when you arrive on the island tease our intelligence by noting the obvious that everything is ahead but with no distances noted).

Larry was rebuffed by the Commission and Mayor with no offer of help, no out of the box thoughts, no examination of the sign code or alternatives.

A brush with Taoism

So Kassouf tried the middle path — a dental Taoism of sorts. He goes to Lowes and cuts two-by-fours and inserts little PVC pipes and paints in funky colors a series of toothbrushes, which he displays in two flowerpots outside Mediterranean Plaza.

And the brushes do not mention his name or advertise anything — but they are a cute and funky decoration. They resemble in tone the dolphin sculptures in front of the blue dolphin or large chef sculptures in front of Nosh a Rye and Ciao Italia.

Well, the good times for Larry and his toothbrushes lasted a few weeks and this week the owner of Mediterranean Plaza was alerted that Kassouf’s toothbrushes are a code violation.  And the owner likely does not want to fight a battle for Kassouf’s brush with art, nor does he want code violation mail from the Town.

So that leaves Kassouf doing what all frustrated people do —thinking of all manner of actions and options — all the while growing a bit more weary and cynical. “Maybe I should put hockey sticks in there or tennis rackets. Then it is ok ?” Kassouf asks. “I cannot believe these people. I try and make some nice and they make you take it down.”

Lynching the code

It all harkens to the Lynch sisters battling Town Hall. They were cited about a decade ago when they had their Lynches Landing restaurant located next to the old Albritton property. The Town cited the sisters for violating the sign code for a painted ice cream cone on their building as well as a ceramic leprechaun holding a cone that was a lawn ornament of sorts. Well, the ladies argued the cone and leprechaun were decorative and not signs. The Town argued they were signs in that they refer to items or services sold or provided on the premises. If they did not sell ice cream, then the cone gets to stay.

So the spirited sisters put a rusty shovel in the leprechaun’s hand as a statement of protest against what they saw as policies that hurt their business and its character.

I spoke with them about Kassouf’s issue and they say that is what is delightful about having their business on St. Armands Circle. Ethna Lynch said the City allows them to decorate their property and they even have the menus now in the leprechaun’s hands — something that would have been prohibited on Longboat.

A developing irony

Granted, Larry is not going to restore the island‘s lost tourism with his dental practice. Maybe the Town ought not rewrite the entire sign code for Larry. But the fact remains — we are willing to ignore, twist, bend and break our rules for certain VIP applicants, while the bottom feeders get treated as if they have no standing or significance — they are the Rosa Parks of our business community.

And I raise this not because Larry is a friend and I believe he deserves a sign, I raise this because it shows the institutionalized insanity of a town that on one hand is courting development in the most obnoxious let-us-rollover-and-rewrite-all-our-rules manner. Yet when a new professional comes to town and invests and wants to add a service, in two years he cannot get any sort of solution. And when he attempts to tastefully not junk the island up with signs but create awareness through a decoration, he again is denied.

So we lost the Lynches and a decade later we are frustrating our sole dentist on the Key. I do not believe we should look the other way, but we do need a code that recognizes tasteful attempts to create awareness of business without destroying or damaging the beauty of our island. We need to make sure any business that with a little help, with a little attention can be retained, ought get that attention.

Larry will not resolve this with attorneys and briefs and proscribed whereas clauses. No, Larry will sadly take down the brushes because he will not want to have an issue with his landlord.

But the problem will not go away. In fact, one of our code officers admitted that the toothbrushes would be consider art and could stay if Larry was no longer in business — that is the way the code reads. The same toothbrushes can stay if he is out of business, but are a code violation if he is in business. That is mind numbing.

We need James Joyce

As in all things, life exceeds art. It is too bad James Joyce is not retired on Longboat Key. Instead of writing Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake, he could have given us a Comprehensive Plan, a zoning code and the crown Jewel — a sign code.

Land use would be exciting — we could debate with attorneys every word, get ourselves confused and occasionally act like we get the meaning of what the author meant. If all else fails, we could always throw up our hands, say this stuff is impenetrable and declare that it pretty much means whatever one wants it to mean.

Oh, I forgot — that is what we are already busy doing at the Colony, with cell towers and with the Key Club.

After I finished my latest column and was preparing it for mailing, the death of Joe Paterno was announced. As I watched the TV and especially the two-hour long tribute to
JoePa, I couldn’t help but remember that wonderful last scene in the movie,” Goodbye Mr. Chips” where one after another, former students give testimony to what a single teacher in one small place can accomplish.

Joe expected two things from his players: one, they play as hard and as well as they can and two, they do the same with their academics.

On the bulletin board at the entrance to his office that he saw every day, was the list of the players and their current academic averages. If a reporter asked about a player and Joe answered he could do better, he could as easily be referring to his GPA as his play on the field.

I once asked Joe if he would ever reveal his All Paterno Team that is the best of the best in each position. It would have been a best seller. He said he never would. “What you give to one, you take away from another” and in Coach Paterno’s book, you were successful if you did the best you could, on and off the field.

He will be missed.

• • •

I attended a seminar on governance last week where the speaker referred to the makeup of the Supreme Court as five Republicans and four Democrats.

Not one single person in the audience appeared to disagree or even comprehend the implications of that statement.

This is one of the most shocking descriptions of the politicization of the country.  No one spoke up and pointed out that the Supreme Court is supposed to be above politics.

By accepting the premise that the justices are members of a political party, you are saying that every decision of the Supreme Court is merely a reflection of their political agenda and not their considered legal judgments. This is talking abut the most respected jurists in the land. I don’t know about you,  but to me this is scary.

Another anomaly that bothers me is this new approach by the United States Senate that every controversial issue should be filibustered makes the idea of a majority vote no longer the valid operative procedure.

I added up a recent vote where the minority of 40 Senators held up a decision. The dissenting Senators represented 20% of the overall population of the country. In short, 80% of the electorate was disenfranchised by a relatively small minority.

Now I understand that if you are a Republican or Tea party person, you might say, this is the way it should be. But if you are watching the news, people are getting restless and ignoring the view of eight out of 10 voters, selecting Presidents, deciding important issues involving life changing decisions, some care should be taken.

The Founding Fathers in Philadelphia knew that if they wanted to get anything done, they were going to have to make little states feel like they had a say so they allocated two Senators to each State. They also avoided the issue of slavery and it eventually killed more Americans than all other conflicts that we fought put together. They didn’t mean for that to happen but they surely didn’t intend for the small states to control the Senate.

This problem also shows up in the Electoral College. It created a racist South because of the compromise in the disputed election of 1876 (Hays vs. Tilden) and could have had severe consequences in the Nixon/Kennedy election and the Bush/Gore contest. If you really think that democracy works, why not have a national referendum on the presidency? At least everyone would understand it.

For the moment, latent racism, gun rights, gay marriage, abortion, immigration have pretty much split the working class and diminished their clout. But if the recession gets worse and if the Republicans win the White House and don’t do any better than we are doing, currently, that could change. This could happen if this majority ever figures out they haven’t been participating in the fruits of their labor and in many cases pay more taxes than some of their “betters”.

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.