Conversation with Mayor Terry Gans

Leading to an evacuation, a water-service shutdown and thousands of power outages, Hurricane Irma has proven the defining event in Terry Gans' first six months as Longboat Key Mayor. As the town, largely spared from major storm damage, turns its attention back to its regular business ahead of the annual return of winter-time residents, Gans evaluated the town's response to Irma and its plans to take on Longboat's ongoing challenges.

Hurricane Irma was the first significant weather event to threaten the island in more than 10 years. How do you think the town government handled the situation?

In terms of preparation, a lot of people from the town manager on down have been preparing and coordinating for years, both in Sarasota County and Manatee County. There’s frequent meetings between the town managers, fire chiefs and public works directors, and I would say the plans pretty well worked this time. We were lucky the storm wasn’t stronger. You could never be prepared for an absolute disaster, but as best you can be prepared to determine what comes next, I think they did a good job.

What can Longboat learn from this storm to prepare for the next one?

There were some coordination issues at the level of county-to-county and county-to-localities. The water shut off may have been needed, but it wasn’t needed when it happened. The process by which it happened wasn’t the one we agreed to. You also had unilateral curfew imposition without coordinating with other counties. With Longboat, split between two counties, you had a curfew on one half announced before you had one on the other half. There are always things, either in the heat of the moment things don’t go exactly to plan, or things you didn’t think of. There was an agreement of how the clean-up would proceed initially and the city of Sarasota would clean debris going across the Ringling Bridge all the way up to Longboat Pass. Manatee County would clean Cortez Bridge and go up to route 64 to the south tip of Anna Maria. But that left Cortez Bridge to Longboat Pass without anybody assigned to clean it. Fortunately, we knew it in the week before the storm hit, but those are the things when the systems are put to stress and you learn.

Re-zoning is an ongoing concern on the island. What are some of the biggest challenges you see with the current zoning and what can be done to make it better?

One of the issues we keep getting hung up, which seems to be centered on one property, is how high buildings should be. Aligned with that tangentially is the idea of a rebuild. If something befalls an existing building, like a taller condominium, the way our current law reads is that they could rebuild to exactly what’s there. I think there is some recognition that you wouldn’t rebuild a building that was built in 1980 the same way in 2017. I think we dodged a bullet with this storm. We could have lost several buildings that would have to be rebuilt because there wouldn’t be any building at all. We’re still saying you can only have what you had before. It’s critical to me that whatever is getting in the way of that, that we come to grips with that and find a mechanism to do that that doesn’t open the doors for the kind of things we don’t want.

Longboat is known for being a retirement destination, but the government of residents’ new homes makes important decisions. What do you think of the level of public participation here, and is there any way to increase it?

I know a lot of people are here for their retirement, but we have people who were involved in things back home and we need more people involved in town government. We have a history of not being able to attract new people in quantities. Some of the people that were on the commission served their time and are term limited, but then they come back. It may be that there could be a perception out there of ‘why should I get involved when it’s just the same people?’ I’m not knocking anybody that’s there, but I would prefer a charter amendment that once you’re term-limited, you’re out. We have that in the governor’s office and the legislature. Everybody who is there still contributes and still contributes well. But let’s open the door to the other people who are capable of contributing and get more involvement. 

Longboat Key was split between two counties largely through an arbitrary line-drawing process from before the time the town was founded. This has caused the town to have to follow two different sets of codes, policies, election procedures and regulations. What is the town doing about possibly consolidating into either Sarasota or Manatee County?

We have to see if it makes sense to pursue that. The initial indication is that the people on the Manatee County side pay millions more a year than they would if they were in Sarasota County. What are the hang ups? The hang ups are money. We haven’t developed our case to say fully we want to do one thing fully or another. We have to gather our facts. If we have a case to present, we have to get the opinion of our citizens in some kind of non-binding poll. Then we have to try to work with the legislature, because the legislature has to approve it, which means both county delegations would have to approve it. That all means we would have to make something palatable and economically affordable for the county being departed from to accept. There’s been some pushback a little bit from Manatee County, but it’s never been on the basis of ‘we love all the people on Longboat Key. We’d hate to lose them.’ We’re talking about money, and money can be negotiated.

As mayor, how do you see the commission’s relationship with its community?

Most of the population understands that they have a group of people here who take their responsibilities seriously, are trying to do things for them and with them, not to them. People tend to overreact to the things the few write about the ‘secret plans’ by this group or that. It would be neat to win a little more trust. You never get 100%. But most people appreciate what the town commissioners and town people do.