Englewood Edge - Englewood Florida's own online daily newspaper

Out with the old year

Friday, December 31st, 2010 by Mark Chapman

What a year.

2010 has been a bumpy ride all the way around. It’s had its ups and downs, and it seems to be going out the hard way.

It’s been a year of divi­sive pol­i­tics, of unem­ploy­ment, of peo­ple los­ing their homes.

It’s been a year in which we have seen some bounce-back in spend­ing; peo­ple who can afford to travel are trav­el­ing, and Engle­wood has expe­ri­enced some bet­ter times in some of its restau­rants and shops.

Things have been a lit­tle strange around Engle­wood. The Char­lotte County Com­mis­sion awarded Sharky’s a beach con­ces­sion con­tract, then bowed to pub­lic out­cry and dropped the idea. The same com­mis­sion­ers pre­sented a plan to upgrade Placida Road that included round­abouts, enhanced light­ing and a wider road, and faced an angry upris­ing of res­i­dents. The Char­lotte board suf­fered from infight­ing, includ­ing a very pub­lic erup­tion over travel and other expenses that brought the sim­mer­ing feud between Robert Skid­more and Bob Starr into the open. Part of the feud stemmed from the uncer­e­mo­ni­ous dump­ing of Roger Baltz as county admin­is­tra­tor against Starr’s wishes. Baltz was just one of many purged from the county gov­ern­ment that was pub­licly labeled by some com­mis­sion­ers as “dysfunctional.”

On the other side of the county line, Englewood’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the County Com­mis­sion, Shan­non Staub, resigned after help­ing Englewood’s Com­mu­nity Rede­vel­op­ment Area obtain approval for what amounts to a down­town makeover — a green one. But like the nation’s health care plan, Englewood’s Low Impact Design must still be funded, and there are already forces at work to drop cer­tain parts of the project from the plan, includ­ing the storm water dis­posal and treat­ment that was the entire basis of the project.

The Engle­wood Water Dis­trict said a cou­ple of good-byes this year, first to its plan to install dis­trict sewer lines in a large area off Man­a­sota Beach Road, then to admin­is­tra­tor Rich Rollo, who retired to indulge his new pas­sion — film­mak­ing. Mike Ray assumed the posi­tion and set the dis­trict on course to revisit the sew­er­ing project in a dif­fer­ent way and with longer notice to the residents.

The Engle­wood Area Fire Con­trol Dis­trict got a new chief. Brian Gorski, recently retired chief of the  Sara­sota County Fire Depart­ment, was the over­whelm­ing choice of the Board of Fire Com­mis­sion­ers to take the reigns of the depart­ment and set about find­ing ways to save the dis­trict money while con­tin­u­ing to upgrade equip­ment and facilities.

A major dis­agree­ment over plans to enlarge the Lemon Bay Play­house blew up into an ugly pub­lic brouhaha. Play­house mem­bers who have never agreed with the vision of a 300-seat the­ater — espe­cially one with a restau­rant, office space, retail space and county meet­ing space — wanted to slam the breaks on after the county agreed to sell the play­house a prime piece of land between West Dear­born and Green streets. The squab­bling resulted in changes on the Board of Direc­tors and in the­ater man­age­ment, lots of finger-pointing and he-said, she-said accu­sa­tions.  Through­out it all, though, the play­house has con­tin­ued to func­tion and sell out most of its in-season shows.

Pub­lic fig­ures’ per­sonal lives spilled over into the pub­lic arena dur­ing the same week in mid-November. Com­mis­sioner Skid­more was ver­bally and phys­i­cally attacked by his step-daughter’s father at the Music City 2010 fundraiser at Oys­ter Creek Park. Bruce Pow­ers was arrested and charged in the assault. Then Lemon Bay High School award-winning the­ater direc­tor Jen­nifer Kelly’s estranged hus­band showed up at a school play rehearsal and attacked one of the adults involved in the pro­duc­tion. Matthew Joseph Kelly was arrested and charged in the attack. Then, days later, Jen­nifer Kelly was sus­pended by the school dis­trict pend­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion  into “pro­fes­sional prac­tices.” The results of that inves­ti­ga­tion have not been released.

As Englewood’s weather turned unsea­son­ably cold in Decem­ber, we lost two well-known fig­ures. Bob Seneca, a dec­o­rated fire­fighter who served until los­ing his seat in Novem­ber on the Engle­wood Board of Fire Com­mis­sion­ers, died unex­pect­edly at 73 on Dec. 13. Then, on Christ­mas Eve after­noon, we lost Pit­ter Pat  — Pat New­ton, co-owner of the Engle­wood Revue, face painter, clown and one of those Engle­wood res­i­dents always ready to help some­one in need — after she waged a long, hard fight to recover from meningitis.

Then, on Wednes­day, Dec. 29, Antiques + owner Jef­frey Mazur, 64, was beaten and robbed in his East Engle­wood shop. Mazur was flown to Lee Memo­r­ial Hos­pi­tal in Fort Myers, where he fought for his life before suc­cumb­ing on Fri­day, Dec. 31.

And Engle­wood Edge did not escape the year unscathed. After a period of rapid growth in read­er­ship, we finally went to a sub­scrip­tion model, as we had planned and adver­tised from the begin­ning. Read­er­ship fell, as expected. Many read­ers sub­scribed, but not nearly enough to sup­port two full-time and one part-time peo­ple. Adver­tis­ing rev­enue was light, and a cou­ple of  eager entre­pre­neurs who assured us they would make the ads hap­pen didn’t fol­low through. That meant we had to find full-time jobs, and those jobs hap­pened to be in Nor­walk, Conn. I left in early Sep­tem­ber, and Nancy was a few weeks behind. We have since been try­ing to keep up via long dis­tance while work­ing 50-hour weeks at our pay­ing jobs.

We miss Engle­wood, and we feel bad about not being able to deliver as much news as we did for nearly a year before the move, and hope to find a rem­edy for that soon. We asked Santa for an investor or two. Let’s see if he plans a late delivery.

We are now ready to enter a new year. To some, that means a fresh start. To oth­ers, it means more uncer­tainty. And oth­ers just see it as another flip of the cal­en­dar page.

To all of our read­ers, we wish a happy and more pros­per­ous New Year.

Drop a dime

Sunday, December 19th, 2010 by Mark Chapman

Merry Christ­mas everyone!

In an effort to take a bite out of crime and Char­lotte County’s never-ending bud­get woes, County Com­mis­sioner Robert Skid­more has, accord­ing to a press release, coor­di­nated with county admin­is­tra­tion to insti­tute new tools in the effort to uncover fraud­u­lent home­stead tax exemp­tions. If a per­son sus­pects that some­one may be fraud­u­lently claim­ing a home­stead exemp­tion, there is now a ded­i­cated phone line into the county offices that they can call. Last week Char­lotte County des­ig­nated 941−743−1593 as the hot­line to report sus­pected fraud. An e-mail address has also been des­ig­nated for report­ing: records@ccappraiser.com.

To put it sim­ply, Char­lotte County wants you to play Big Brother and narc on your neigh­bor if you find out he or she is evad­ing the Home­stead Exemption.

How does one know?

Con­tinue read­ing this story…

Too cold for crooks

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010 by Mark Chapman

It’s cold. It’s really cold.

OK, where I am right now is colder than where most of you are, assum­ing most of you are in Engle­wood and envi­rons. I am in Con­necti­cut, and it is in the 20s.

But it isn’t a whole lot warmer in Engle­wood as I write this (Tues­day night), and I feel the pain.

Con­tinue read­ing this story…

Open for business

Sunday, November 14th, 2010 by Mark Chapman

Buzz­words and catch phrases — they’re all so, well, buzzy and catchy.

One of the favorites around gov­ern­ment cir­cles seems ti be “open for busi­ness.” I’m not quite sure what that means, but if I were a politi­cian I would likely avoid telling peo­ple that I am open to doing busi­ness. The con­no­ta­tion is not nec­es­sar­ily positive.

Con­tinue read­ing this story…

Stepping back, forging ahead

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 by Mark Chapman

Updated 11:23 a.m. Tues­day with com­ment from LBP Trea­surer Bob LaSalle:

So Thurs­day is, or was (depend­ing on when you are read­ing this), Vet­er­ans Day. How apropos.

I say this because bat­tles raged on two fronts in Engle­wood Mon­day night, and while the hos­til­i­ties sub­sided, there were no win­ners and the wars are not over.

This is not to seem flip when it comes to the real vet­er­ans, those who fought in our real wars when sent to do so by var­i­ous politi­cians for var­i­ous rea­sons, some bet­ter than oth­ers. It really didn’t mat­ter to these peo­ple. They were asked by their coun­try to lay down their lives, and they did. It really doesn’t mat­ter whether they ulti­mately saw action; the mere fact that they answered the call and could have seen action qual­i­fies them all as heroes and earns them our undy­ing thanks.

There were no heroes Mon­day night. There were angry peo­ple and there were con­fused peo­ple and there were peo­ple try­ing to explain it all and keep things under con­trol. And, in the end, noth­ing good happened.

At Lemon Bay Play­house, three mem­bers of the Board of Trustees who believe the board is con­duct­ing itself improp­erly resigned their seats. The three had been part of an effort to build a new and big­ger play­house down the road, but had also begun ques­tion­ing how the the­ater was con­duct­ing its business.

The remain­ing board mem­bers decided to call a halt, at least tem­porar­ily, to any fundrais­ing activ­i­ties for the new build­ing and to pro­ceed with fact-finding to see if the project, as designed, is eco­nom­i­cally fea­si­ble. The board, accord­ing to Pres­i­dent Sherie Ragan, wants to get answers to play­house mem­bers who want to know where the tens of thou­sands of dol­lars they claim has been spend on fundrais­ing activ­i­ties has gone, and what they are get­ting for it.

Fair ques­tion. Per­haps it should have been asked, and explained, before the money was spent.

Some mem­bers asked for account­ing reports, some wanted a trea­sur­ers report. The requests went for naught. Trea­surer Bob LaSalle report­edly said a treasurer’s report was unavail­able and he didn’t know when it would be ready.

LaSalle responded to Engle­wood Edge Tues­day morn­ing with this statement:

“There was a Treasurer’s report and it explained the prob­lem with pro­duc­ing a coher­ent Profit and Loss state­ment at this time. The pre­vi­ous board, of which I was not a mem­ber, had decided to split the Cap­i­tal Cam­paign from our play­house oper­at­ing accounts. Accord­ing to our audi­tor, this is not good prac­tice, so I have been work­ing with our book­keeper to put the two accounts back together. This is going to take a good bit of time and right now we are in the mid­dle of the process, so a P&L state­ment will not really reflect actu­als until the merger is com­pleted. Hope­fully this will be done by our next board meeting.

“One of our mem­bers did ask for a P&L any­way and I told her that I would pro­duce one for her and for any­one else that wanted one.”

Seems like a rea­son­able answer.

The board, led by Ragan, wants to tamp down the rhetoric, have every­one take a deep breath, and get some answers to everyone’s ques­tions before mov­ing ahead.

That’s a good move. And doing it pub­licly would make even more sense and would help restore the community’s faith and trust in their com­mu­nity the­ater that depends on ticket sales and dona­tions. Unfor­tu­nately, the rum­blings are that they really don’t want to share, nor are they required to. Not exactly a con­fi­dence builder.

Mean­while, down on the Cape Haze penin­sula, some­one in the crowd of 100-plus described the scene as a “lynch­ing mob” as res­i­dents squared off with two of the county’s five com­mis­sion­ers and oth­ers involved in the project intended to widen and improve, both struc­turally and aes­thet­i­cally, Placida Road.

Englewood’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the board, Robert Skid­more bore the brunt of the assault, but hung in there. Bob Starr  was there, too. But Com­mis­sioner Tri­cia Duffy skipped the event, as did the two recently elected com­mis­sion­ers, Stephen Deutsch and Chris Con­stance. One would have thought the new­bies would want to see what they were deal­ing with, or at least make a show of car­ing about the peo­ple who voted for them less than a week ear­lier. when you have more than 100 peo­ple turn out for a com­mu­nity meet­ing to make them­selves heard, it is a major event.

Skid­more made the obser­va­tion that “thou­sands” of peo­ple from the area had vocied their sup­port for the project, inti­mat­ing by con­trast that the nay-sayers were in the vocal minority.

So why hold the meet­ing? If minds are made up — the project is 60 per­cent designed, per­mits are pulled — how much influ­ence will Mon­day night’s crowd have on the project?

Some­how, I can’t help but feel that we have not heard the last of the shots fired in anger on either one of these fronts.

Here they go again

Sunday, November 7th, 2010 by Mark Chapman

If you are dri­ving near the Lemon Bay Golf Club, 9600 Eagle Pre­serve Drive, between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. this evening, look up in the sky — you may see fire­works. At the very least, the rum­bles of thun­der should be audi­ble as the Char­lotte Board of County Com­mis­sion­ers brings its Placida Road widen­ing project back before the residents.

The last time gov­ern­ment met res­i­dents, it wasn’t pretty. Despite the fact the county had been talk­ing about the project for months, that it had been dis­cussed by var­i­ous boards and a ques­tion­airre had been put online seek­ing input on the details, many peo­ple claimed that the meet­ing was the first time they had heard about the plans.

Well, it is doubt­ful that any­one in Engle­wood, or at least in the Placida Road cor­ri­dor, has not heard about plans to widen the road to four lanes for its length, upgrade the light­ing, add side­walks and signals.

Com­mis­sion Chair­man Bob Starr went so far at a com­mis­sion meet­ing to say that, if the major­ity of peo­ple along Placida Road were against the project, he would vote to put the money into some other project.

Still, word is the plans are 60 per­cent com­plete and the county is forg­ing ahead with the project. And there is a group of peo­ple who are forg­ing ahead with their oppo­si­tion. The Save Placida Road move­ment (http://saveplacidaroad.com/), spear­headed by a group call­ing them­selves Cit­i­zens for a Bet­ter Placida Road.

Accord­ing to the web­site, “Our county com­mis­sion­ers are pro­ceed­ing with their plan widen to Placida Road… The road today is con­sis­tent with the char­ac­ter of our scenic coastal com­mu­nity. A four lane divided high­way with medi­ans, turn­ing lanes, bike paths, side­walks and city light­ing is planned…”

Unlike some move­ments that just say no and offer lit­tle or no alter­na­tive, this group has its own pro­posal. Accord­ing to the site, “We are propos­ing a more appro­pri­ate upgraded road with three lanes, bike paths, side­walk on one side, and lim­ited light­ing — sim­i­lar to improve­ments recently required by the county on some sec­tions of the road.”

The site points to the nearly 500 sig­na­tures col­lected against the project after the first pub­lic meet­ing last spring as proof the res­i­dents don’t want it, and sug­gest that, with two new board mem­bers, there may be an oppor­tu­nity to make changes. There is even a pre-written let­ter to the board that peo­ple can sim­ply copy and paste and sign:

“Dear Com­mis­sion­ers:

I am aware that you are con­tin­u­ing with your plans to widen Placida road to a four lane divided high­way with medi­ans, turn lanes, bike paths and side­walks with city light­ing. This design will destroy the char­ac­ter of the com­mu­nity where I live and I ask you to recon­sider. I believe that a three lane road with bike paths, side­walk on one side and lim­ited light­ing will pro­vide a suit­able upgrade for many decades, improv­ing our com­mu­nity with­out need­less waste.

Sin­cerely, ”

The group posted a let­ter from newly elected Com­mis­sioner Chris Con­stance while he was still a can­di­date for Adam Cum­mings’ vacated seat:

“The pro­posed widen­ing to Placida Road is con­sid­ered nec­es­sary, and has been slated to go for­ward for sev­eral rea­sons. The road is in need of numer­ous repairs, sched­uled main­te­nance and drainage improve­ments. The work is also intended to beau­tify the road, improve safety aspects, and play a vital role in the evac­u­a­tion of the south­west­ern por­tion of Char­lotte County. For this to hap­pen prop­erly, it is vital that this pro­ceeds in con­cert with the planned improve­ments in the Win­ches­ter Blvd exten­sion and ulti­mately in asso­ci­a­tion with a more robust River Road evac­u­a­tion route.

“I am com­mit­ted to work­ing to pro­vide what is nec­es­sary, so that the wants and needs of the peo­ple affected by this action will be supported.”

Doesn’t sound like a whole-hearted endorse­ment of either posi­tion. And Stephen Deutsch, who dis­placed Dick Lof­tus, was not rep­re­sented on the site.

Englewood’s com­mis­sioner, Robert Skid­more? He sent a let­ter invit­ing pub­lic com­ment and urg­ing pub­lic input. If there is enough push­back, Skid­more could turn against the project, as he turned against the beach con­ces­sion after cham­pi­oning it ear­lier. Starr and Tri­cia Duffy are on the record in favor of the project.

Tonight is the time for res­i­dents to make their feel­ings known, espe­cially to the small-government con­ser­v­a­tives who were elected to the board Tues­day. Deutsch was heav­ily backed by Starr, and Con­stance was sup­ported by Skid­more. Starr and Skid­more have often been at odds, and the rift seemed to be grow­ing into the fall. This issue could be a good indi­ca­tion of how things will line up on the board mov­ing forward.

Shooting the messenger

Friday, November 5th, 2010 by Mark Chapman

When you spend enough time in the news­pa­per busi­ness, you are going to tick off lots of peo­ple. If you are hon­est and do the job right, most often you can;t help but tick off some peo­ple because, well, some­times the truth isn’t very flattering.

And then there are times when you tick peo­ple off — or cause undue angst — because you screwed up.

This is a tale of both sides of that coin.

First, my mea culpa.

Early Wednes­day morn­ing I posted elec­tion sto­ries indi­cat­ing nar­row vic­to­ries for the two Engle­wood Water Dis­trict incum­bents and one of the three chal­lengers in the Engle­wood Area Fire Con­trol Dis­trict race. I was work­ing with fig­ures from the Sara­sota County Super­vi­sor of Elec­tions web­site and mis­tak­enly thought those were totals reflec­tive of the entire dis­tricts, includ­ing Charlotte.

My bad.

Then a story broke indi­cat­ing that Sara­sota had a bunch of bal­lots that had not been counted that might have an impact on the close races. I took that to mean all three of those afore­men­tioned races. Unfor­tu­nately, it was late and I could not con­tact elec­tion offi­cials Wednes­day evening, and I con­tin­ued to use the wrong figures.

Fact is, Jeff Kern’s fire dis­trict win was never in any doubt. Nei­ther was Paul Manke’s water win. When you added Char­lotte totals, both were well beyond the reach of those 200-plus bal­lots in Sara­sota. Even if all of those bal­lots had been from Engle­wood and had gone for their oppo­nents, the totals would not have been changed enough to even trig­ger a recount, let alone reverse the decisions.

In John Mead’s case, it was dif­fer­ent His race against Wright was, in fact, close enough so the pro­vi­sional bal­lots could have made a dif­fer­ence. But they didn’t.

So I apol­o­gize to the can­di­dates and the read­ers of Engle­wood Edge. I screwed up. We try not to do that in this busi­ness,  but it does happen.

And then there’s the other side:

Some peo­ple, pri­mar­ily cer­tain mem­bers of the Lemon Bay Play­house Board of Trustees, have been upset with the media scrutiny they have received regard­ing cov­er­age of the pro­posed new play­house project. At the last meet­ing, which we cov­ered but did not write about, mem­bers engaged in a favorite Amer­i­can pas­time — press bash­ing — and dis­cussed how to limit cov­er­age of the group’s march toward, or away from build­ing the new facil­ity that could cost as much as $14 mil­lion or so.

One board mem­ber com­plained of being mis­quoted (not by us), while another said he objected to the use of record­ing devices by reporters. Now there’s an inter­est­ing dichotomy that speaks to the board’s split: One mem­ber wants more accu­racy, the other wants less.

And some mem­bers don;t want any cov­er­age. That’s a prob­lem, though, because there are reporters who are mem­bers of the Lemon Bay Play­house and, as such, have every right to be there. And there is no legal way to keep any mem­ber from report­ing on what takes place.

And now the impor­tant part: The pub­lic has a right to know every step the board takes in this process.

Why? Because the Lemon Bay Play­house has been granted the chance to buy a block of prime com­mer­cial real estate from Sara­sota County — that means the tax­pay­ers — at a fire-sale price. And the county has agreed to put up a half a mil­lion bucks in match­ing funds if the board goes through with the pur­chase and raises money toward its new building.

And the rea­son the county is will­ing to invest tax­payer dol­lars in this project is that, as planned, the project is expected to revi­tal­ize West Dear­born Street, a dream that has gone on far longer than I have been a part of the com­mu­nity. It is expected to be a cat­a­lyst for more devel­op­ment on the street, more busi­nesses, more peo­ple com­ing to town and more tax dol­lars flow­ing into the county cof­fers. It is the gov­ern­ment giv­ing a busi­ness a big break to stim­u­late the local econ­omy and get money mov­ing through the system.

So the tax­pay­ers have a stake in this process, and that means it needs to be open and transparent.

Also, the play­house, like every good 501c3 not-for-profit cor­po­ra­tion, wants your money. It wants everyone’s money. It wants your $25 mem­ber­ship fees and it wants thou­sands, or even mil­lions, from char­i­ta­ble and phil­an­thropic foun­da­tions (to which you, read­ers, may well con­tribute) to help pay for its build­ing, whether its the as-designed per­form­ing arts, com­mer­cial and office cen­ter or a smaller, LBP-specific build­ing on some other site.

And you have a right to know what’s going on behind the cur­tain before you break out that checkbook.

But when there’s squab­bling, when there are peo­ple who are bas­ing their votes and/or opin­ions on the mat­ter on emo­tions instead of facts; when there are peo­ple dig­ging in their heels and try­ing to manip­u­late oth­ers through mis­in­for­ma­tion or with­hold­ing infor­ma­tion, then it can become embar­rass­ing to have it reported ion the media.

The solu­tion is sim­ple. Every­one should behave like adults. Those in posi­tions to make deci­sions should do so in a prag­matic, informed way. They should pro­vide the proper infor­ma­tion — not spin — to the mem­bers and to the pub­lic.  They should con­sider what is good for their orga­ni­za­tion, and for the com­mu­nity, and not for themselves.

And then if we screw up the report­ing, they should call us out on it.

Until then, we would pre­fer to take the heat only for our real screw-ups.

Through the Looking Glass

Monday, October 18th, 2010 by Mark Chapman

Ah, autumn. The air cools, the humid­ity all but van­ishes and, in North­ern cli­mates, the leaves begin to fall from the trees.

In some South­ern regions, it seems, it is san­ity that  falls. Or maybe just rea­son. And decorum.

This week­end brought a dou­ble dip of of illus­tra­tive hap­pen­ings to the Edge via e-mail. One came from trea­sured colum­nist Todd Tracy, a gen­tle­man and deep thinker with whom I agree about 50 per­cent of the time, and respect 100 per­cent of the time.

Con­tinue read­ing this story…