Grossman resigns from ULI committee

Larry Grossman resigned from the Urban Land Institute Implementation Advisory Committee Sunday, in an email to Mayor Jim Brown.

He is the second member to step down from the committee. Tom Freiwald, who was once the committee’s chairman before the group grew larger and decided it did not need a chairman, resigned in May.

In his email to Brown, Grossman wrote that the committee has been useful as a conduit for ideas and citizen input. However, he criticized the makeup of the committee.

“I feel the Committee is too top heavy with elected/appointed officials and too bottom light with not enough citizen participation from among the larger community of LBK residents. Maybe, given the seasonal nature of residency on the island, this condition cannot be otherwise. This is not to say that the sitting members of the Committee who are also Commissioners and Planning Board members are any less citizens than anyone else. The problem is that they are also decision makers who can in effect get to have their input twice on an issue,” he wrote.

Grossman and Freiwald, along with commissioners Jack Duncan and Pat Zunz, and PZB members Walter Hackett and George Symanski were members of a committee that formed last summer to prepare for the ULI panel’s October visit to the Key.

After the panel made its recommendations the Urban Land Institute Implementation Advisory Committee formed with Grossman, Freiwald, Brown, PZB Chairwoman B.J. Bishop and citizens Roger Leibin, David Novak and Jered Whitehead.

However, Brown made a motion at the commission’s Dec. 2 regular meeting to remove himself and Bishop from the committee and add Duncan, Zunz, Hackett and Symanski back into the group.

The Urban Land Institute Implementation Advisory Committee’s next meeting is scheduled for 2 to 4 p.m. Thursday, at Longboat Key Town Hall, 501 Bay Isles Road.

Contact Robin Hartill at [email protected].