Lists and rankings are all the rage these days. And they can provide valuable snapshots of a slice of our community’s life. A top-beach ranking, for instance, reinforces what we love here and provides an undeniable boon to tourism boosters. Recent county health rankings confirmed that we’re doing well, but also raised some red flags about looming challenges. 

Then there are those lists built on top of business services in real estate, finance, and the like. Both Sarasota and Bradenton were among the 10 “nerdiest small cities” in the country, said one (tongue-in-cheek), conjuring images of coders, computer start-up types, and the comic-book stores they favor. But our MSA ranks 98 out of 100 job markets for STEM professionals, said another. So which is it? And where did that data come from anyway…?

Sure, such snapshots are fun. And they’re great for headline writers too. But in our Instagram age, they’re often ephemeral as well. How do we really know where our community stands, what we should focus on, and how to measure progress. 

I submit Gulf Coast Community Indicators as a good place to start. This new “state of the community” website tracks and analyzes 74 different indicators—measures that help to describe an economic, social, environmental, or cultural condition in our community over time. Together, they can tell the story of our area, helping us to more clearly see our strengths and challenges.

Gulf Coast Community Foundation developed and will maintain this website to provide a common set of data and information about our region and its communities. Areas covered include our economy and workforce, health, education, and more. The site tracks commonly defined metrics used across all communities (think unemployment, housing affordability), as well as measures that tell us about characteristics special to our Gulf Coast.

The new site covers four counties—Sarasota, Manatee, Charlotte, and DeSoto—and breaks out data for their municipalities too. Adjacent state and national figures enable users to compare conditions and progress. And it’s all presented and analyzed in context, so we can start to see how different indicators affect one another and inform our strategies to improve.   

Gulf Coast Community Indicators is rooted in a data-analysis approach that our Board of Directors has been using and refining for half a dozen years. If you’re familiar with our periodic “regional scans,” which we’ve used to identify trends, inform funding decisions, and recommend areas for regional focus, consider this their evolution. Our Board wanted to transform our investment in better understanding regional data into an interactive, up-to-date community-wide resource that anyone can use to learn, plan, and act.

We’re heartened by the reception so far, with several organizations saying they’ll use this new tool in their ongoing work. Who knows, maybe Gulf Coast Community Indicators will even bolster our region’s rep among the nerd set! 

SRQ Daily Columnist Teri A Hansen is president and CEO of Gulf Coast Community Foundation, whose Gulf Coast Community Indicators project can be found at www.GulfCoastIndicators.org.

To date (4pm Friday April 17), the least estimate, an educated guess really, I could obtain for City Commissioner Susan Chapman’s legal fees in her battle against Government in the Sunshine is right around (probably more, not less, given the billables clock tic-toc hourly) $200,000. Two hundred thousand dollars. My my my. 

Years ago, I took the first time homebuyers workshop. We were given the task of adding up all the incidental bits of money we spent each day on items like $3 coffees and then multiplying that amount out over a year. The idea being, of course, to get us focused on how not spending money on inessentials would affect our ability to achieve our goals. $200,000 buys a lot of coffee, or the down payment on 25 affordable homes for first-time homebuyers.

Or how bout this $200,000 investment in our City’s goals: a one-bedroom apartment at $800 a month. That’s 250 months or five units of housing for four years, three for two years, 20 units for one year.

And then, there’s this: entry Level 1 pay for a Sarasota police officer is $38,042. Level 4 is  $47,179.  $200,000 equals out to roughly four, maybe five, officers for one year or one officer for five years. 

You know where I’m headed with this. It’s not about $3 coffee, though that $1,000 saved per year could pay one year’s property tax on 200 Habitat-built homes for families. And with all the talk swirling around about Housing First, those 16 units of rental housing are nothing to sneeze at either. Hiring more police officers ought to be high up on the top of our list for how we might could better spend $200,000.

So, how is it then that appointed City Commissioners Eileen Normile and Stan Zimmerman can claim all smiley faced and innocent on their mail pieces to be FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE when their very first act as policymakers was to make and second each others’ motions to reinstate the payment of Susan Chapman’s legal fees on a lawsuit that could have been settled in a twinkling for $500 paid to charity with a $500 match from the opposing attorney to the same charity? You tell me.

As children scuffling with one another in the schoolyard and hauled off to the principal’s office, we learned the hard way that being choosy about our battles was much preferred to what puffing up to every slight might cost our behinds. In the case of Susan Chapman’s battle with the Sunshine Law—a battle she will not win—the behinds that will suffer will be ours—not hers, ours.

There’s one more thing. My last column spoke to our City government’s failings on the North Trail. At the NTRP forum I attended and later wrote about, the candidates were asked to support city funding of $50,000 to pay for the second phase survey/study ARTspace  (please Google them) would require prior to committing their own resources to building artist housing—quite possibly on the Trail. Appointed Commissioner Normile told the North Trail folks the City couldn’t afford to help.  Perhaps, she suggested, a philanthropic organization would be their best bet. Really Eileen! And with a straight face!  

SRQ Daily Columnist Diana Hamilton, after living 35 years in Sarasota, labels herself a pragmatic optimist with radical humorist tendencies and a new found resistance to ice cream.

Our beautiful city of Sarasota is a physical paradise on earth. Through my years of service, I’ve found another kind of paradise here–one built on the committed passion of many people and organizations to make a difference in their fellow residents’ lives. 

My hard-earned 12-year career here in Sarasota has prepared me well to be a highly effective City Commissioner who respects the service of others and understands what District 3 and our city need.

My tradition of service—which began when I joined my parents in working with homeless organizations years ago—has helped me solve problems through communication, negotiation, compromise and civility. It has given me the honor of working with our law enforcement leaders during five years as an Assistant State Attorney to fight crime, pursue justice and protect our community.

And it’s introduced me to District 3’s own Women’s Resource Center, where I support women in crisis through donated legal services regarding housing, domestic violence and other family issues.

I’ve been on the front lines of many key Sarasota issues through my service on Sarasota’s CRA Advisory and Human Relations boards. There, I’ve helped make decisions and guide policies to increase property values, meet the housing needs of our young professionals and working families, promote smart development and economic prosperity, increase access to the arts, support our low-income senior citizens, and empower our youth.

The opportunity to serve is, to me, an opportunity to transform talk into action. Serving your fellow men and women transcends boundaries of socio-economic status, age, race, sexual orientation, party affiliation, neighborhood, pedigree and “connections.”

That’s why comments like the one that appeared in last Saturday’s SRQ Daily sadden me. In comparing me to “rain lilies which pop out when it rains and then are gone,” a writer diminished the contribution of people more concerned with service than visibility.

Comments like the one floated by the letter writer, a supporter of my opponent, leave hard-working people like me feeling their voices don’t matter. The view of my opponent and his supporters seems to be: “If you don’t come to the table, don’t blame the city.”

A different approach to Sarasota City Commission District 3 is what I offer. I’m here to represent ALL of District 3’s residents and business owners, not just the ones who already at the so-called “table” of influence.

I come from a pure place of wanting to make a real difference, for ALL of District 3’s busy families, young professionals, skilled labor, senior citizens, retirees, and veterans. I will bring to the District 3 seat a unique form of compassion, and a proven strength not to be deterred by challenges.

I encourage you to vote for me based on my proven ability to rise above so-called “connections.’ I am ready, willing and able to fully understand District 3’s issues proactively, to partner with all stakeholders in pursuit of real, lasting solutions; and to provide a better Sarasota for ALL of us. 

Shelli Freeland Eddie is running for Sarasota City Commission District 3

My name is Gabriel Hament, and I manage Liz Alpert's campaign for City Commission. I was born and raised here in Sarasota. As a young boy, I attended the old McClellan Park School. I went to elementary, middle and high school at Pine View, competed on Sarasota High's tennis team and played violin for the Sarasota Orchestra's youth program. Now, as a 22-year-old with a B.A. in political science and a minor in history from the University of Florida, I’ve come home to where my heart has always lived to what I believe is the greatest city in Florida.

Managing Liz Alpert’s campaign has been an incredibly satisfying, rewarding and constructive experience. Her personal history of hard work raising her girls, sticking with her goals of becoming an attorney and all the while giving her time to public service has made the long days of working our grassroots, door-to-door, get-out-the-vote campaign all the more gratifying. 

When we came away with 44 percent of the vote in a three-way race in the March primary, a lot of old-time pols warned us our opponent might go negative; it saddens me to acknowledge they were right.

Beginning this week—first at a community forum hosted by CONA at the Garden Club, then on an attack mailer originating from a shady political action committee based out of Tampa—our opponent and her surrogates made the decision to unleash upon our city a barrage of low, mean-spirited personal attacks against Liz.

During the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression plenty of everyday people—not to mention banks, large and small businesses, and even major automakers—experienced financial hardship. Poking fun, bullying and attempting to embarrass a member of our community who may have suffered similar hardship while launching her own law practice is a campaign tactic totally out of sync with the Sarasota I grew up in.

Neither our opponent’s unkind CONA remarks nor her attack mailer had anything to do with municipal policy. Both meant to hurt Liz and sully her name. And, though that’s bad enough, it’s what these attacks say about our opponent and her out-of-town cohort that particularly disheartens me as a young person who has come home to make difference.

We’ve all had to deal with bullies. After the negative mailer came out, a friend gave me a piece of advice, "The best way to defeat bullies is to outnumber them." Today, I reach out to all of you not only as a political operative but as a Sarasota boy through and through asking you to tell Eileen Normile to stop laying waste to the spirit of our beautiful city with her spree of negativity.

Instead of tearing each other down, we should build each other up. That's what Liz's campaign has been and continues to be about—how we, together as a team, can build an even brighter future for our great city, my hometown Sarasota.

Vote by mail, vote early or vote at the polls on May12—Send the bullies packing! Get Sarasota back on track! 

Gabriel Hament is the campaign manager for Sarasota City Commission District 2 candidate Liz Alpert

As spring gets off to a mild start, Goodwill Manasota hopes people will think of the spring-cleaning season as a both time to offer a fresh start to unwanted belongings and to help give individuals in need of work get a fresh start, too. By donating clothing and households items to Goodwill, consumers can ensure their spring cleaning refuse is diverted from landfills, and helps to fund job training and placement programs for individuals with barriers to employment right here in our community. “Spring is traditionally the time of year for new beginnings,” said Goodwill Manasota president and CEO Bob Rosinsky. “When you donate this spring, you get a fresh start for your decluttered house, your donated goods find a new home, and you help give a job seeker a fresh start of his or her own.”  Goodwill is grateful to the dozen community partners that hold donation drives at their locations. Over the next couple of months, four AAA locations (Bradenton, Lakewood Ranch, Sarasota and Venice), Ringling College of Art + Design, two of Sarasota's Insignia Bank locations, CORE Construction Services of Florida, and IMG Academy will collect goods. Last year, through area donation drives, nearly 12 tons of goods were collected.  

Goodwill Manasota

Founded in 1926, Sara Bay Country Club is a private, member-owned golf club located just north of downtown Sarasota, Designed by legendary architect Donald Ross, who considered Sara Bay among his personal favorites, the course is widely recognized as one of Florida’s finest classic golf courses.This summer you can enjoy playing where the pros play with Sara Bay's Summer Special. The Summer Special features unlimited golfing privileges from May 1st through October 31st with no green fees with full use of the clubhouse facilities for dining and socializing. 

Sara Bay Country Club

The search is on once again for the Suncoast area’s favorite mothers. Beneva Flowers and Gifts, creator and sponsor of the 8th annual “Sarasota’s Favorite Mom” contest, in conjunction with SRQ Magazine and Milan Jewelry, is excited to host this annual Mother’s Day tradition. This year’s grand prize winner will receive a custom-made pendant from Milan Jewelry, and a special Mother’s Day bouquet of flowers from Beneva. She will also be featured in SRQ Magazine. Other prizes include a spa gift basket from Spa Hollywood and dinner at Mattison’s City Grille. Nominations can be made from now until May 8.  Winners will be decided by popular vote. To enter your favorite mother, visit www.SarasotasFavoriteMom.com, where you can create a member profile and write a brief summary of why she deserves to win. All entries must be received by 11:59pm EDT on May 8, and winners will be announced May 9, 2015 

Sarasota's Favorite Mom Contest

Join your friends and colleagues of the Manatee and Sarasota Chambers of Commerce on Wednesday, April 29 from 5-7:30pm at the The Powel Crosley Estate for a spectacular evening of Blues by the Bay. Enjoy light appetizers from six Chamber member restaurants with a cash bar cocktail reception and a view only the West Coast of Florida could provide. Sit back and relax to the sounds of the Blues provided by Realize Bradenton. 

Sarasota Chamber Events

An intricate world from the bountiful imagination of the artist Trenton Doyle Hancock has sprung forth for visitors to explore at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.

“EMIT: What the Bringback Brought,” an exhibition of Hancock’s work, will be on display at The Ringling now until September 13. Among other objects, the exhibition will feature character figures, sketches and, in a first for the artist, a film, which will explore how Hancock’s lifelong love of the science fiction and horror films from the 70s and 80s has affected his perspective and identity. Known for his narrative drawings, paintings and sculptures, Hancock has created a cast of colorful characters over the past two decades; and his new film will bring to life characters that Hancock has experimented with throughout his career. The exhibition at The Ringling will provide an entry point to Hancock’s imagination for audiences and will share new insights into the thought process and inspirations for his work, which include sources as varied as the outsider art and writings of Henry Darger to the surrealist paintings of Max Ernst and the works of cartoonist R. Crumb.

The Ringling