The Good Ole Boy$ plans:
A marina, a restaurant, a hotel, maybe some condos, and then (hopefully) a beachfront land-grab
VTL prez Herb Levine pulls no punches in describing what he thinks is the biggest land grab yet in the history of Venice
-- Herb Levine, posted to the web on 05/11/06
-- herbert.levine2@verizon.net

Got a comment? Make it here.

9,000 new homes? In Venice? And we're gonna put them... where?
A short time ago, during a city council meeting, the 'word' was squeezed out of Planning Department Director Tom Slaughter that Venice's future plans call for at least 9,000 more living units in northeastern part of our once quaint little town. Many people in the audience were shocked and possibly angered that the number "9000" was made public.

The obvious result of the cat being forced out of the bag was that "Damage Control" was called in to set the record straight - or at least have it slant in the right direction. Commentaries by City Manager Marty Black appeared in several newspapers that attempted to do just that. The articles were truthful, as far as they went. They just didn't tell it like it is. More like, what it should be!

The "Damage Control" articles start with the 1989 Comprehensive Plan. Black wasn't here then, but he contends that the Comprehensive Plan in question "included input from the public, county and other agencies." I'll bet the input from the public that he referred to consisted of members of the Chamber, a few other local dignitaries, and one or two sycophants who hang around city hall hoping that someone will pat them on the head. There may have also been a few other people, the ones who later started the CQG & PBA (Citizens for Quality Government and Personal Bank Accounts), included in the mix.

As an example of how our city feels about Comprehensive Plans, the latest one was preceded by a series of Envision Venice meetings - supposedly to elicit citizen input into the next Comp Plan. Even with speeches about the need for growth preceding and during the meetings, the number one and two problems brought up by the attendees were:

1.) Growth
2.) All of the symptomatic ills that are the results of growth

The city has simply ignored the Envision Venice results because they feel that John Nolen would have wanted them to follow his design.

Or, rather, their own interpretation of his design.

Annexation after annexation is needed after needed
Black writes that the need for annexation after annexation on Laurel Road was to make room for the enlargement of the East Side Wastewater Plant because we shut down and moved the "environmentally sensitive" coastal sewer plant. Maybe, but once the beach sewer plant was scheduled for demolition, the Good Ole Developers lined up to develop that "environmentally sensitive" piece of future vacant land into a money making "whatever." Fortunately, they were defeated by Maxine Barratt, a good citizen who advocated a park for that location. Anyone who felt that developers' hearts and souls were not in the sewer plant's relocation plans must have moved here from La-La-Land.

Black's argument then turns onto a familiar verse and every sign post on the growth road says the same thing: If the county had developed those areas that were annexed into our city, the density would have been greater and that developers pay special assessments to our city for the privilege of being annexed in.

Which sounds good on the surface, but...

Wait a minute -- why would developers want to make less money?
Whoa and hold on! Why would a developer want to annex into the city when he could build more units in the county and not pay a special assessment? He'll make less profit in the city, therefore he asks to be annexed into the city? Huh?

It's pure nonsense and developers can't pay their bills with nonsense.

There are reasons for wanting to be annexed into Venice and they all lead to greater profits (and please -- no nonsense about wanting to live in Venice: Everyone within five to ten miles of the Venice city limits will tell you that they live in Venice).

Studies in the past have shown that growth-oriented cities all give the same reason: More tax money coming in! Our taxes dropped, but hefty increases in monthly water/sewer usage along with corresponding increases in monthly water/sewer Enterprise Funds to all of us have more than covered the minute decreases.

Past studies have shown that the annexation and development game has one basic result: For every dollar that comes in, one and a half dollars go out in services. Who will pay for future growth? We will. Who will benefit? Builders, bureaucrats, barristers and bankers.

There are many excellent books available on limiting growth.

You can read them while waiting in traffic jams.

And then there's that marina (oh Dean, why did you leave?)
After watching the political/financial situation in Venice for several years, I learned one sure thing. Nothing happens quite by accident. $tring$ are usually being pulled and manipulated by the Good Ole Boy$' for their own PBA (Personal Bank Account) enhancement.

I wondered for all of thirty seconds as to why our illustrious mayor, Dean Calamaras, would retire midway through his term. Yes, there were some rather embarrassing boo-boos under his watch but they have been fairly well covered over by songs of loyalty and words of praise. Tom Sawyer knew how to white wash a fence and so does the CQG & PBA.

Maybe though, it was just time for to move on. Or maybe the approaching airport development needed a set of fresh (and far more subtle) hands on the symbolic steering wheel in question.

The mayor did make several pointed statements over the last several months that seemed to have very little meaning until now. Each statement repeated one theme: "Previous studies had shown that it was too expensive to move the airport."

The now-former mayor did not mention that at least one developer had offered to move the airport to the east of the city at no cost to us. Was the developer just good-hearted or did he want something in return? How about a portion or all of the airport land  to develop -- UP, UP AND AWAY!

Hey wait! The city would benefit with all of those taxes coming in from the many high rise condos that could and certainly would be built on former runways. Lots of money coming into the city coffers. Enough so that everyone in management can have three or four assistants instead of two.

Why raise a ruckus when we can get the neighborhoods to do it for us?
The beauty of the whole scheme is that the city doesn't have to push for moving the airport if they get enough citizens to do the job for them. How? It's very simple: Ignore any requests for buffering, restricted flight patterns, airplane sizes and noise levels and then let the indignant citizens do the deed for them.

Then will come the moaning about not enough money coming into the airport fund to cover airport repairs and that the only rent that seems fair is from the golf course operators. That sounds good, unless one remembers that for many years, the Venice Taxpayers League vociferously complained about the last contract's rent (passed and applauded by the then-council and mayor) until the FAA forced the city to get a somewhat decent rent from the VGA.

Here's the rub: There is still that clause in the VGA lease giving them the right of last refusal on the purchase of land currently leased by the golf course if the airport is moved. That clause was put in by VGA attorney Dan Boone, who just happened to be allowed to write the lease without interference by our city attorney.

When confronted, then-City Manager George Hunt said that he had the VGA attorney write the lease to save money that would have been paid to our attorney. Hunt must have forgotten that the city attorney would have been paid by the lessee (the VGA) to write the lease.

Wouldn't it be nice to see a list of VGA stockholders for the past ten years? Might even be some familiar names on it!

If the airport is moved and the VGA buys the golf course, they could turn it into an exclusive country club. How about three, four or five condo villas on the third set of nine holes, conveniently located across the street from the beach along Harbor Drive?

What we need is more smooth sailing and there's money in that
BUT - BUT - BUT - now comes the idea of a city owned marina to the west of the Circus Bridge. Sort of like coming in through the back door when the front door and side doors were all locked.

Why a city owned marina? So the city can rake in all of that money to be made? Or maybe whoever wants to lease it doesn't want to do all of that spending and building, building and spending, etc. One can always come up with a thirty year lease later on.

Of course, what's a marina without a restaurant? How about a motel and some condos? And then the back door to an airport deal will be wide open. No more of those huge eight engine super cargo planes landing here or scaring the fish away from our waters. No more airplane pollution causing everyone in the city to cough or the traffic jams caused by all of the pilots going to and from the airport.

Instead, we'll have all that tax money from all of those condos pouring through city hall and back into our pockets, as well as three or four thousand more cars in the city every day (not only from the marina but from the 9,000 new homes slated to be built in the newly-annexed areas). No one will really mind, they'll just go out to do some shopping.

Of course, the city may also have to hire a few dozen more policemen just to stop traffic so that the average citizen can back out of his driveway onto a city street. And, of course - there's the present drooling by members of the Good Ole Boy$ and Girl$ club as they think about all the money to be made.

That drooling could be a health hazard, but it should be alright when they start counting and can afford to buy a few boxes of Kleenex.

Herb Levine is the President of the Venice Taxpayers League. This article originally appeared in the April 2006 edition of the Venice Taxpayers League Newsletter and has been reprinted here with permission.