Commission seeks to seat new members

The town has three job openings.

All three positions pay $0 per hour. Those currently holding the positions say they work anywhere from 20 to 40 hours per week.

The job is a seat on the Longboat Key Town Commission.

Commissioner Phill Younger has qualified to run for a final term in his at-large seat, making him the only candidate who had qualified at press time. Mayor Jim Brown will term limit out of his District 4 seat next spring, and Vice Mayor Jack Duncan announced earlier this year he will not run for a third and final term in his District 2 seat.

The town’s general municipal election is tentatively scheduled for March 10, but the deadline to qualify to run is Nov. 21.

Already, possible candidates are emerging.

Brown hopes Planning & Zoning Board member Jack Daly will consider a run.

“I think he’d be a good commissioner, and he’s taken an interest in the town,” Brown said.

The Longboat Observer was unable to reach Daly, a retired attorney, for comment.

Commissioner Lynn Larson, who will reach the end of her final term in 2016, has candidates in mind for both District 2 and District 4, along with her successor for District 1.

“I hope George Spoll runs,” Larson said of the former Longboat Key mayor who lives in District 2. “I think George Spoll has done an excellent job.”

Spoll described it as “too premature” to comment, saying he just returned to town Monday night.

“I’ve been asked, and that’s all I have to say,” he said.

Larson added that she, too, would like to see Daly take Brown’s District 4 seat.

When it comes to her own seat in 2016, she hopes Armando Linde, who ran against Commissioner Irwin Pastor for an at-large seat earlier this year, will reconsider his decision not to seek office again.

“I was very excited that he would consider running because he’s very fiscally conservative,” Larson said.

Duncan said he doesn’t yet have a successor in mind for his District 2 seat but said he leans toward someone who has a business background. More important, however is a willingness to learn.

“It’s more about getting people engaged with the issues, and doing the homework necessary to make decisions requires a lot of time,” he said.

Brown, however, hopes he can talk Duncan into changing his mind and seeking a third term on the commission before the Nov. 21 deadline. Personally, Brown admits that he might not be done with Town Hall.

“I’m being asked to put my name back on the Planning and Zoning Board,” he said. “I’ll probably do it.”

Not surprisingly, recruiting future commissioners can be a challenge.

Many commissioners were recruited by another commissioner.

Brown, who first joined the commission in 2009, after running unopposed for his seat, said he joined after a time when the commission was fractured between two groups, often voting 4-3 on issues.

“Both sides recruited me to run for the district,” he said.

“I told my wife, everyone is driving me crazy to run,” Brown said. “She said, ‘You complain about them all the time. Why not run?’ At a weak moment, I put my name in.”

Brenner said he persuaded both Larson and Duncan to run. Larson had served on the board of her Country Club Shores homeowner association, and Duncan was president of his Marina Bay condo. Both had neighbors who recommended them to Brenner, so he met them both and explained what the job entails.

“It tends to be a one-on-one thing,” Brenner said. “The real thing is how much effort is required to run some kind of campaign where people are going to want to get to know them.”

“Very few people come forward, and most who do come forward in Districts 2 and 3,” said Brown, who pointed out that many large condos are located in those districts.

Still, the difficulty of recruiting future commissioners is compounded by the fact that the town needs a volunteer in each of five geographic districts, plus volunteers for two at-large seats.

That’s an issue Younger sought to address in 2011, when he proposed changing the structure of the commission to four at-large seats and three districted seats. The proposal hasn’t moved forward, although the commission agreed to discuss it during the next charter review.

Younger told the Longboat Observer he plans to bring his idea back to the commission within the six months. Voters would have to approve the change via a referendum, so the proposal wouldn’t affect the town’s next election.

“I think that it’s healthy to have races,” Younger said. “Looking at it from a town perspective, there are times where it seems to be that only a single candidate from a district is interested. There are other candidates sitting in other districts who want to serve.”