ULI Committee issues circulate at Town Hall

Uncertainty about the role and makeup of the Urban Land Institute Implementation Advisory Committee continues.

Planning, Zoning and Building Director Alaina Ray told the Longboat Key Town Commission at its Monday regular meeting she spent the last week meeting with all nine members of the committee.

“There’s been discussions as to their role and their future,” Ray said. “I met with each of them individually to talk candidly, and the consensus reached was the committee is too large to function properly.”

Ray said committee members “felt they might serve more of a purpose if the group was an ad hoc committee brought in for focused tasks instead of broad ULI recommendations.”

Town Manager Dave Bullock, though, isn’t ready to disband the large subcommittee yet.

Bullock told commissioners the board would stay intact but Ray would no longer facilitate the meetings.
“Alaina has been the ULI technical expert, the meeting coordinator and meeting facilitator and I need to take her out of one of those roles,” Bullock said. “It’s not working for her or the committee.”

Bullock said he plans to find a technical expert with experience coordinating meetings and acting as a facilitator when the committee meets again May 1.

“Sometimes we need a professional skill level to keep them focused,” Bullock said.

Questions about the committee and its purpose have arisen since last year, when Mayor Jim Brown received support to make changes to the group’s members.

At the Dec. 2 regular meeting, Brown said he made a mistake in November when he voted in favor of a new committee to implement ULI recommendations. That committee consisted of himself or his appointee, the planning board chairwoman and five citizens.

Instead, he explained that he believed that the original committee that formed to prepare for the ULI’s visit — consisting of Commissioners Jack Duncan and Pat Zunz, PZB members Walter Hackett and George Symanski and citizens Tom Freiwald and Larry Grossman, both of whom are now on the committee — should continue.

But the group got even bigger.

Brown made a motion that was supported to continue that committee and add three new additional citizens — Roger Leibin, David Novak and Jered Whitehead — while removing himself and Bishop.

But the nine members have struggled with a purpose, debating what issues they should discuss. There have been several discussions about the purpose of the board at recent meetings.

Committee member Larry Grossman told committee members March 20 he has issues with the makeup of the committee and would prefer a group of all citizens and no elected officials.

Ray said the committee meetings are open to the public and anyone can attend and provide comments.

Contact Kurt Schultheis at [email protected]