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rattlebag
Mayor Kelly Kirschner is becoming a Latin ambassador of sorts for Sarasota. As the only elected official at City Hall who speaks fluent Spanish, he led a sister city visit to Medina, Mexico in late 2009. Kirschner’s multi-lingual skills also proved an asset in March when officials from Peru stopped by Sarasota City Hall unexpectedly, hoping to talk to city leaders while in town on other business. Kirschner’s Spanish skills were honed in Guatemala during his time with the Peace Corps, and they also help him in his day job as a senior vice president at Media Mequiladora, a marketing firm focused on reaching Hispanic audiences.
In the midst of soundstage discussions, some have wondered why Robarts Arena was passed over as an option. After all, Hollywood producers who toured Sarasota this spring stopped by the Fruitville Road facility and said the sizable structure would be great for filming, not to mention easy to secure should big stars shoot a film there. But County Commissioner Joe Barbetta, an official close to the soundstage talks, says bad blood dating back to spring training negotiations pretty much took the deal off the table. Robarts was once considered as a site for a new Red Sox stadium. A deal with the Boston team never came together, but the seeds of resentment were planted.
Sarasota County is the only county in Southwest Florida considering tax abatement, but business leaders hope other communities will jump on board. If voters approve an abatement measure in August, local leaders such as Peter Straw, executive director of the Sarasota Manatee Manufacturers Association, will start campaigning in other places, saying they need to compete with Sarasota. The plan, he says, is to go to Manatee County Commissioners if the program is implemented and play up the success from down south. “When are you guys going to get with the program?” he rehearses. “Or match with some incentives that work as well?” Already, he has spoken with officials at the Manatee Economic Development Council and with county government administration, but nothing sells a program like success, he says.
Recent Census mailers somehow forgot that North Port, Sarasota’s largest municipality, was a city at all. When the federal government sent out forms to every home in North Port, they all bore a Venice address, upsetting both residents and city officials. “After contacting the Census Bureau, they reassured us and other cities that the address didn’t matter and that the ‘bar code’ was indeed what really mattered,” says David Garofalo, chairman of the North Port City Commission. “They said they did this as a ‘cost saving’ measure so that they could send the forms out to ‘bulk’ distribution centers.” Of course, with all the propaganda reminding citizens to fill out forms and make sure their city gets counted, the paranoia in North Port was only stroked. City officials are encouraging as many residents as possible, though, to fill out the forms and get counted. And they are handling the matter with a sense of humor. At a recent economic summit, Garofalo congratulated Venice for bringing an additional 80,000 homes online and for growing that city so rapidly.
While the Deepwater Horizon oil explosion has been devastating for the Gulf of Mexico, it proved an exceptional lobbying tool for Sarasota activists in Washington to boost the case for alternative energy. Peter Laughlin, co-owner of EcoTechnologies and president of the Florida Alliance for Renewable Energy, showed up in the Capitol in April to lobby senators and congressmen about funding for renewable energy. Empower America, an environmental group headed by former Vice President Al Gore, brought the solar tycoon to town to meet with elected officials. Laughlin focused his time on officials from Florida, including Sens. Bill Nelson and George LeMieux, and they became hyper-aware of the problems with oil consumption as tar slowly floated toward the coast. “The whole thing escalated every day we were there,” Laughlin says. Nelson has been a vocal opponent of drilling, but Laughlin says the spill seemed to empower the senator to attract more support for proposals that promote a shift to solar power and other renewable sources. The disaster forced a vote on an energy bill to be postponed, but Laughlin left confident that any changes to the legislation would favor those hoping to end a dependency on oil.
Grown men don’t typically like people to see them cry, but sometimes politics allows that to happen in the most public of venues. In early May, the system got the best of Millmac President Michael Miller, who broke down in tears during testimony to Sarasota City Commissioners. The company came under scrutiny when mooring balls installed in Sarasota Bay couldn’t hold the weight of a boat without breaking free of the bay bottom. But a recent investigation by the City Attorney’s Office seemingly cleared the contractor and shifted blame onto mooring field designers Coastal Engineering. The matter will likely go to court before a responsible party is ultimately determined, but regardless, Miller says his company can’t finish the work on the field. He told Commissioners his company is not equipped to attach moors to the rocky bottom of the Bay. This is the first time a project has “gone so bad” for his company, he says. “We know how important it is to Sarasota and its
citizens to have a proper boating field,” he said as his eyes welled up, “and you don’t know how badly we feel that we are not able to complete the project.”
By Jacob Ogles / Illustration by Tyler Hilderband
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