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SRQ DAILY Oct 25, 2014

"Too often, members of the community either praise or berate public staff, public officials and each other, based on wholly subjective measures."

- Kevin Cooper, The Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce
 

[The Detail]  Local Tally against Tally
Cathy Antunes, cathycantunes@gmail.com

Recent events clearly highlight how state government has negatively impacted our community.  Changes in Tallahassee over the past four years have been highly negative for Sarasota in two critical areas: our public hospital and planning policies. Most of the discussion around the governor’s race is focused on other topics: immigration and education among them.  For those who care about the future of Sarasota, the gubernatorial candidates couldn’t be any more different when it comes to how we steward our built environment and public hospital.

Rick Scott’s track record as a hospital executive who benefitted from Medicare fraud is well documented.  Sarasota voters should also take note of Tallahassee’s repeated efforts under Scott to privatize our award-winning public hospital. As he entered office in 2010, Scott’s transition team moved Scott’s shares in Solantic, a chain of urgent care clinics, into his wife’s trust. They also recommended an investigation of Florida’s public hospitals with an eye toward privatization.  

Scott issued an executive order in 2011 appointing a commission to scrutinize the performance of public hospitals.  An ethics complaint was filed against Scott, as eliminating the role of public hospitals in providing indigent care would increase the walk-in patient population serviced by the company he founded, Solantic. Scott claimed he was “not involved” with Solantic, though his wife now owned the shares. The Scotts sold the shares due to this and other charges of conflict of interest. Meanwhile, Scott’s commission (absent public hospital representatives) found public hospitals no better or worse than private hospitals.  

Undeterred, the state legislature passed and Scott signed a law in 2012 requiring Florida’s public hospitals to conduct an in-house analysis of their performance. SMH documented unique, high-quality, cost-effective patient care. The hospital board voted to remain a public, non-profit hospital. In unprecedented fashion, each one of these incumbent Republican hospital board members found themselves challenged by a fellow Republican in the primaries. Coincidence?

In the realm of community planning, the state’s Department of Community Affairs, the watchdog agency charged with ensuring wise land use decisions, was eliminated under Rick Scott. The Orlando Sentinel described the 2011 policy sea change, written by development lobbyists, as "the most far-reaching reorganization of state agencies in more than two decades" and noted its replacement, the Community Development division of the Department of Economic Opportunity, has “little power to intervene” in growth-management fights.  

In a letter to the DEO, 1000 Friends of Florida stated Sarasota County’s 2050 changes do not conform with Florida statutes 163.3177(1)(a)9, 163.3177(1)(b) and 163.3177(1)(f).  My conversation with DEO about 1000 Friends of Florida’s legal objections confirmed the agency’s inability to intercede, not because 1000 Friends of Florida’s objections were incorrect but because the DEO has no power to enforce standards against sprawl. While The Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce and County Commission point to the DEO’s approval of 2050 plan changes as proof of their innocuous nature, they fail to acknowledge how the DEO cannot enforce standards against economically and environmentally degrading sprawl development.  

The quality of our healthcare and built environment impacts our quality of life every day. Sarasota Memorial delivers superior care, nationally recognized for its excellence. SMH is the only provider in the county of OB/GYN, pediatric and neo-natal intensive care services, as well as the primary hospital provider of indigent and psychiatric services. While services for infants, mothers and the mentally ill may not be “profitable” to for-profit hospitals, our community believes their care is a very wise investment.  Careful land-use planning sets the table for community prosperity, but recently approved 2050 changes are inconsistent with legal standards designed to prevent sprawl and ensure our quality of life. We didn’t have these problems when Charlie Crist was governor. I’d be very happy to see him return.   

SRQ Daily columnist Cathy Antunes serves on the boards of the Sarasota County Council of Neighborhood Associations and Sarasota Citizens for Responsible Government. She blogs on local politics at www.thedetail.net

The Detail

[Chamber]  Know Thyself
Kevin Cooper, Kcooper@sarasotachamber.com

For years, Sarasota County and its municipalities have been recognized for a number of reasons by a broad array of notable sources.  CNN/Money Magazine has named the City of Sarasota as America’s Best Small City and one of America’s Best Places to Retire.  Siesta Beach was named the number-one beach in the nation by Dr. Stephen Leatherman, a/k/a Dr. Beach, America’s foremost beach expert.  Venice was named by Forbes Magazine as one of the top 25 Places to Retire.  Livability.com, a Journal Communications company, named Sarasota as a Top Spring Break Destination for Families.  USA Today named Sarasota as one of the Great Waterfronts to Visit Across North America.  And, most recently, Google named the City of Sarasota as Florida’s Top E-City.  

While the recognitions and awards should certainly serve as a point of pride for residents, public employees and elected officials, they don’t necessarily represent how the community sees or feels about itself.

Sarasota County has an annual citizen survey designed, in part, to inform the County as to how the community sees and feels about itself.  The problem is that surveys of this nature are often anchored largely in the subjectivity of opinion and fail to draw upon factual and objective measures of the area’s performance on the issues in question.

Enter into this equation the local entity SCOPE, which stands for Sarasota County Openly Plans for Excellence. SCOPE manages programs “connecting and inspiring citizens to create a better community.” Part of this work is to bring factual information and people together. Too often, members of the community either praise or berate public staff, public officials and each other, based on wholly subjective measures. 

Thankfully, there is a tool that can be used to ground our discussions with relevant and objective data. First published in 2002, the “SCOPE Community Report Card” has been updated several times—most recently in 2014. This array of information profiling our community is divided in key sections with titles including Learning, Economics, Health, Civic Participation and the Natural Environment. Each “chapter” of this extensive report includes data on 12-15 indicators, and the entire 200-plus page document can be found at www.Scopexcel.org.

To compare our area to others, we can look at the Florida Chamber of Commerce Foundation-produced framework known as the Six Pillars.  The Pillars include metrics about: (1) talent supply and education, (2) innovation and economic development, (3) infrastructure and growth leadership, (4) business climate and competitiveness, (5) civic and governance systems, and (6) quality life and quality places.  The idea is that the Pillars were identified as the critical factors in determining the success of Florida’s future.

The Pillars themselves don’t necessarily eliminate the potential for subjective frustration.  Indeed, what’s quality to one isn’t quality to another and economic development takes many shapes.  The key is to find objective measures upon which to gauge status and progress.  The idea is that, for at any point in time, a citizen should be able to point to how Florida communities are performing in terms of the Six Pillars.  The Chamber Foundation’s Florida Scorecard does just that and it can be found at www.TheFloridaScorecard.com

Using tools such as SCOPE Community Report Card and the state Chamber Foundation’s Florida Scorecard will help harness the community’s fragmented viewpoints into a common and consistent conversation.  A scorecard, of course, isn’t intended to stifle opinion, but rather to ensure that opinion and fact are clearly delineated.  The likely foundation of a healthy community conversation is one that extends beyond the human nature of subjectivity and deals in the realm of what is and what isn’t. 

It has been noted that the Greek philosopher Thales once stated that the easiest thing to do is give advice.  When asked what was most difficult, he is quoted as having said, “to know thyself.”    

SRQ Daily Columnist Kevin Cooper is the vice president for Public Policy and Sarasota Tomorrow Initiatives for The Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce

[From Frank Brenner]  A Latest Assault On Reason

Once again, Diana Hamilton has treated us to a less than penetrating analysis of the pending Barfield-Chapman lawsuit.  She has already established her role as a tireless attack dog in aid of the ongoing Barbetta-Caragiulo campaign to malign and discredit Commissioner Susan Chapman with the assistance of like-minded Michael Barfield, a serial felon. She now further cements that reputation with her Oct. 18 SRQ Daily piece of transparent nonsense. How so? 

Let’s start with her distortion of the reach of the Sunshine Law.  As she correctly states, the Sunshine Law requires that “meetings of any collegial public body . . . shall be open and noticed to the public” (emphasis added).  What doesn’t she understand about “public body?”  She must know that a gathering of merchants is not a “public body.”  Why then does she deliberately mislead us?

Ms. Hamilton predicts that the pending Barfield lawsuit will succeed in establishing a Sunshine Law violation by Commissioner Chapman. How so? First, she offers us a hypothetical meeting of silent commissioners and their constituent developers who seek relief from building regulations—a meeting, “other than topic, no different” than the merchants’ meeting attended by Commissioner Chapman. Such a meeting, she categorically asserts, would constitute a violation of the Sunshine Law.  So cocksure is she in her assumed role of legal analyst that she asks, “who would dare argue with a straight face that a couple of Commissioners going to merely ‘listen’ privately to developers would be perfectly acceptable?” (emphasis added).  I respond that I dare.  For commissioners to attend an event without speaking—whether it be of merchants or developers—does not, I submit, violate the Sunshine Law.  Attorney Richard Harrison dares as well.  Indeed, City Attorney Robert Fournier dares, for he has declared that the Chapman suit (identical, as Ms. Hamilton states, except for topic, to her cloned developers’ meeting) is “somewhat absurd” and is based on “an incorrect interpretation of the law.”  Thus, Ms. Hamilton’s hypothetical scenario—incorrectly determined by her to violate the Sunshine Law—sheds no light on the Chapman law suit or its ultimate outcome.

Ms. Hamilton’s assault on reason knows no bounds. She apparently relishes her role as an unguided missile.  For, referencing again her hypothetical developers’ meeting, she offers with utter certainty her flawed legal interpretation of the Sunshine Law, thusly: “the very act of attending any meeting not publicly noticed . . .  could be easily construed as a predisposition signaling some future legislative alliance between those Commissioners with those who called the meeting.”  Such silent attendance by commissioners, she asserts, could “easily” be construed, not as simply their efforts to ascertain the views of their constituents, but, rather, as a sinister “signal” of a position to be taken by them in the “future” (emphasis added).  From this muddle she incorrectly instructs us that “basic commonsense—even the most rudimentary understanding of how elected officials are expected to conduct themselves—ought [to] inform us that both meetings [the Chapman meeting and its imaginary, cloned developers’ meeting] violate our Sunshine Law.”

Diane Hamilton’s penchant for sowing confusion is best evidenced by her charge that Commissioner Chapman should have admitted to “an unfortunate lapse of judgment” by attending, although in silence, the meeting being used against her.  For Commissioner Chapman to say that her passive attendance did not violate the Sunshine Law, Ms. Hamilton declares with breathtaking incomprehensibility, is “sorta like blaming the speed limit when you get a ticket for driving too fast through a school zone.”  When you discern some meaning in this hash, please share it with me.

Ms. Hamilton concludes her disjointed exercise with a plug for Citizens for Sunshine, Michael Barfield’s front for his cottage industry of legal extortion.  Had her hypothetical meeting actually taken place, she declares, she would have “cheered on” a Barfield attack against the commissioners who passively attended.  Thus, she again demonstrates her support of the plunder of the city by career criminal Barfield.  Of this sociopath, she has in the past declared, “I, for one, am beginning to appreciate and like him more and more.”  I again remind her that she who lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.  The “dog” in this case is a serial felon with 68 criminal convictions (that’s right, 68), who has been labeled “a con man’s con man” by a federal judge.

Does any thinking person take seriously this self-described “pragmatic optimist with radical humorist tendencies and a new found resistance to ice cream?” I would hope not. 

Frank Brenner, responding to the column "The Argument" in the Oct. 18 edition of SRQ Daily

[CFASRQ]  Notable Buildings Recognized This Month

Center for Architecture Sarasota is recognizing landmark buildings this month as part of their Archtober celebration of design and architecture. We'll be sharing a few buildings from their series in the upcoming weeks. Below is The Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, FL.

The Fontainebleau Hotel (1954), designed by Morris Lapidus, is thought to be the most significant building of his career. Lapidus designed the iconic curvilinear 546-room luxury hotel using the same principles he had used in his many years in store and retail design. With its sweeping spaces, curved walls and dramatic lighting, guests were provided a continuously moving spatial experience that invited them to seek out “what was next.” The Fontainebleau significantly changed the design and experience of the resort hotel and its influence can still be seen in luxury resort design of today. Lapidus proudly referred to the Fontainebleau as ''the world's most pretentious hotel.'' It featured “stairs to nowhere” to allow guests to see and be seen as they descended from the coat closet, a 17,000 square foot lobby and manicured gardens to replicate Versailles. Even though his work was criticized much of his career for its lavish and theatrical interiors, he and his work are now referred to with respect by architects and designers such as Rem Koolhaas and Philippe Starck.

 Lapidus studied architecture at Columbia University and then started his career in retail architecture in the 1920's for Warren and Wetmore. He worked independently for 20 years and was approached to design hotels in Miami Beach by developer Ben Novack. Lapidus was a prolific architect and he did a significant amount of work in Miami Beach including the Miami Beach Sans Souci Hotel, the Nautilus, the Di Lido, the Biltmore Terrace, the Algiers, Eden Roc Hotel, and the Americana hotel. In 2008 the Fontainebleau underwent a $1 billion renovation that increased the number of hotel suites, restaurants, amenities and updated the six-acre landscape. That same year, the Fontainebleau was added to the US National Register of Historic Places and in 2012, the AIA’s Florida Chapter ranked the Fountainebleau first on its list of Florida Architecture: 100 Years, 100 Places. 

Learn More



[SOON]  Teddy Bear Brigade

The Tiny Hands Foundation has launched “The Teddy Bear Brigade” with a goal  to donate at least 300 Teddy Bears to the Sarasota and Bradenton Police Departments for local children.   These 'Teddy Bear Deputies' will ride with police officers and will be given out to help comfort children in distress.   Sarasota Chief of Police Bernadette A. Dipino will accept more than 200 Deputy Teddy Bears who will “report for duty” on Tuesday November 4, at 3pm at the Sarasota Police Department Teddy Bear Presentation Ceremony, Sarasota Police Station, 2099 Adams Lane in Sarasota. To help you can donate and drop off a Teddy Bear at the  Boys & Girls Club of Sarasota, on Fruitville Road through November 1 or make a financial contribution online.  The Tiny Hands Foundation, along with the assistance of hundreds of community friends, donors, sponsors, and volunteers has led charitable initiatives benefiting over 25,000 underprivileged children and families throughout Sarasota, Manatee, and DeSoto counties.

 

Tiny Hands Foundation

[KUDOS]  Goodwill CEO Receives Humanitarian of the Year Award

Bob Rosinsky, president and CEO of Goodwill Manasota, was recently presented with the C. John A. Clarke Humanitarian of the Year Award by the Lakewood Ranch Community Fund (LWRCF) Rosinsky was honored for his leadership of Goodwill Manasota which, in 2013, served 16,000 people, placed 537 in jobs and assisted hundreds of local veterans and their families in need of employment, housing and personal services.  During Rosinsky's tenure at Goodwill Manasota, he has spearheaded numerous innovations at the organization including: attended donation centers; the Job Connection, which provides free job-placement services to individuals seeking community-based jobs; Good Partner Coach Program, which provides a personal or family coach to every Goodwill employee; the Good Neighbor Program, which offers opportunities for communities in our area to come together for free learning opportunities; and the Ambassador Program, which engages hundreds of volunteers in spreading the mission of the organization. 

Goodwill Manasota

[SOON]  New College Seasonal Job Fair

Looking to earn money over the holidays? New College of Florida is hosting a seasonal job fair from 4 -7 p.m on October 27, in the Sudakoff Conference Center. The event is open to the public. Among the employers confirmed to be attending and recruiting are Macy’s, Bealls, Lowe’s Home Improvement, Chico’s and ALDI. The job fair’s sponsors are New College’s Center for Engagement & Opportunity and CareerSource Suncoast. The Sudakoff Conference Center is on New College’s Pei Campus, which is east of Tamiami Trail and next to Sarasota International Airport. 

www.ncf.edu

[KUDOS]  Anna Maria Island One of the Top 30 Islands in the World

The Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau recently announced that Anna Maria Island has been named one of the world’s top islands, by Conde Nast Traveler readers.  The travel magazine recently released the winners of its annual Readers’ Choice Awards, which ranks top cities, hotels, resorts, spas and cruise lines in the world, based on readers’ votes. One of only 11 U.S. islands on the list, and the only representative from Florida, Anna Maria Island clinched the No. 26 spot, with a readers’ rating of 81.373. Anna Maria is described by Conde Nast Traveler as a “narrow band off Florida’s west coast, this barrier island has some of the softest, whitest sand on the East Coast. And as it faces west, it’s a stunning place to watch the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico. Pro tip: At seven miles long and two miles wide, Anna Maria Island is a great place for a leisurely biking trip along the water. By-the-hour cycle rentals are available at Beach Bums.” "This ranking confirms how special Anna Maria Island is to not only to our community, but to visitors as well,” said Elliott Falcione, executive director at the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. "Anna Maria Island is so much more than seven miles of beautiful sugar white sand beaches, it's a community that is low rise, low key, with an old Florida setting that sets itself apart from other islands.” 

Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau

[KUDOS]  McGilicuddy Honored As Lightning Community Hero

The Tampa Bay Lightning recently honored Graci McGillicuddy as the second Lightning Community Hero of the year. McGillicuddy, who received a $50,000 donation from the Lightning Foundation and the Lightning Community Heroes program, will donate the money to the Children Protection Center. McGillicuddy has been a powerful force for change in the lives of abused children in Sarasota for nearly 30 years. The Child Advocacy Center was built in 2011 under her leadership. In addition to her mission of preventing child abuse, McGillicuddy co-founded and is co-chair for Embracing Our Differences, which uses the arts to educate and inspire the values of diversity and inclusion. McGillicuddy and her husband have also been instrumental in the success of Florida Studio Theatre. They have seen the theatre grow from 700 subscribers to become the third largest subscription theatre in the nation. In 2009, McGillicuddy was presented with the Florida Senate Medallion Award of Excellence for outstanding leadership and dedication in helping to keep children safe and free from abuse. The Child Advocacy Center, built under her direction, is a nationally certified state-of-the-art child abuse facility. McGillicuddy headed the capital campaign, raising more than $6-million to build the center. 

Child Protection Center

SRQ Media Group

SRQ DAILY is produced by SRQ | The Magazine. Note: The views and opinions expressed in the Saturday Perspectives Edition and in the Letters department of SRQ DAILY are those of the author(s) and do not imply endorsement by SRQ Media. Senior Editor Jacob Ogles edits the Saturday Perspective Edition, Letters and Guest Contributor columns.In the CocoTele department, SRQ DAILY is providing excerpts from news releases as a public service. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by SRQ DAILY. The views expressed by individuals are their own and their appearance in this section does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. For rates on SRQ DAILY banner advertising and sponsored content opportunities, please contact Ashley Ryan Cannon at 941-365-7702 x211 or via email

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