Commission puts community center committee on hold

The Longboat Key Town Commission agreed to hold off on forming the Community Center Advisory Committee during its Thursday, May 24 workshop. Instead, town staff will take on what was originally a task of the committee: gathering information about the programming that currently takes place on the Key.

Advertising for the five seats on the committee closed Monday, May 21 with just four applicants: Bob Gault, Larry Grossman, Beverly Shapiro and Madelyn Spoll.

The commission had voted at its May 7 meeting on a resolution to establish a committee of five but debated who would be allowed on the committee.

The commission ultimately decided that the resolution should specify and state that the committee will consist of five Longboat Key citizens after several commissioners pointed out that a community center would be funded by Longboat Key tax dollars.

But, as Mayor Jim Brown and Vice Mayor David Brenner pointed out during the May 7 meeting, limiting seats to residents would exclude interested parties such as Longboat Key Education Center Executive Director Susan Goldfarb and Longboat Key Center for the Arts, a Division of Ringling College of Art and Design, Executive Director Jane Buckman.

At the Thursday, May 24 commission workshop, Brown sought to clarify the mission of the committee. He said that the committee would be unlike the one he chaired in 2003 and 2004 that “sort of started from base zero and determined whether there was a need for a community center and, if so, what should it be” and met weekly for a year-and-a-half before the community center proposal failed in a referendum.

This committee would pull information on all of the programming that takes place during the course of a year and determine how a community center could fit in with those activities.

Brown said that the individuals he recommended for the committee, including Goldfarb, have the skill set and scheduling knowledge to gather the information but don’t live on the Key.

“These people are going to gather data and interpret it,” Brown said. “That’s all they’re going to do.”

Town Manager David Bullock suggested that town staff begin gathering data so that a committee would have a starting point for discussions when the commission is ready to make appointments.

Former Mayor George Spoll said that the committee was limited by its size and suggested a committee of seven or nine made up of a majority of Key residents with the remaining seats going to individuals with the skills Brown described.

Town staff will report back to the commission at a later date.