- April 25, 2024
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We gather this time of year on driveways, alongside condo pools, in the frozen-food aisle and scores of other places with a familiar conversation.
How are the kids? Like that new set of irons? Get through the hurricane OK?
Winter residents expect it on their return to Longboat Key. Friends and neighbors have missed you during the hot, humid months. We want to catch up and get back to our paradise-like weather, planning for the holidays and complaining about traffic.
In the interests of bringing up to speed the folks who summer in places such as Grosse Point, Tonawanda, Westport or Naperville, we bring you our annual look back at some of the big news you might have missed and a few of our favorite happy happenings that crossed our paths while you were away.
Welcome back.
You’d think someone was proposing a 1950s themed drive-in burger joint called Vroom, Vroom, aimed at car nuts who enjoy onion rings and straight-piped exhaust systems.
Nope, nothing like that.
Just the Longboat Key Club seeking to accommodate the pickleball craze by proposing four courts alongside its Harbourside Tennis Gardens. Nothing’s been approved yet, even though you might have caught wind of the idea back in April, before you headed north.
Noise has been the biggest complaint of nearby residents who say the sound of the sport being played, particularly by accomplished athletes who don’t have to chase the ball after a two-or-three shot exchange, will ruin the open-window season. Not something they signed up for, they say.
Pickleball, you see, makes a noise all its own. But it’s far more complicated than that.
The town’s Planning and Zoning Board unanimously approved the original idea in April, then learned that hardly anyone received mailed notices of the public meeting, which explained the nearly empty public-meeting room. At the time, board member Jay Plager, in the front-runner for 2022’s Most Prescient Moment, said of Bird Key Yacht Club's attempt to build pickleball courts years earlier: “The neighbors raised such a fuss that they gave it up because pickleball courts do have a very distinct sound, as you know.”
So, the matter was re-noticed and re-heard in June.
This time, there were few empty seats and plenty of filled ones containing people registering objections. Before a vote could be recorded, though it looked like the proposal was not gaining much favor on the dais, representatives of the Key Club requested a delay, one that continues to this day.
We hear alternate locations are under consideration and a new batch of nearby residents are taking note.
Speaking of noise, town officials got a creative over the summer in dealing with a perennially sticky issue: bothersome boaters on the north end of the island.
By declaring a strip of sand along the east-facing portion of Greer Island as a bathing beach, marked with signs and buoys, the town accomplished something with which it struggled for years. Powerboaters, some of them rowdy and others surely not, now are forbidden to beach on the sand nearest to Longboat's Land's End neighborhood.
Motorized vessels will still be allowed to beach and anchor in unrestricted areas of the spit just past the buoys and under the bridge. But now, unless you're paddling, sailing or swimming, you'll have to watch where you're navigating and beaching.
By now, you might notice some work happening on the Town Center Green, Longboat's new central point for a variety of outdoor activities.
While getting some early use in 2022, the site will soon be the domain of workers building a long-awaited stage. A ceremony is planned Nov. 7 to honor those who donated for the privately funded enterprise.
At their last meeting before two and a half months of summer break from meetings, Town Commissioners not only approved a five-year capital budget shift to proceed on site work at the Town Center Green property, but they also learned that private donations reached a level sufficient to pay for the construction of a stage as a centerpiece for the site.
On July 1, Town Commissioners agreed to push forward with construction of a covered stage on the northeastern boundary of the Town Center, based on the news delivered by Jim Brown, the chair of the Longboat Key Foundation, that private fundraising had gone well enough to see the finish line.
Construction contracts were signed in August.
No, we haven’t given over the Welcome Back-issue writing duties to Pete Townshend, but it does seem appropriate to paraphrase The Who when discussing Town Hall's top non-elected official.
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss ... almost.’’
Town Manager Tom Harmer is retiring this year, but he plans to stay on a few weeks until Howard Tipton can arrive in January.
Tipton, like Harmer in 2017, will come to town as a former County Administrator, though Tipton will have about 180 miles on his odometer before crossing the bridge into Longboat Key on his first day from St. Lucie County. Harmer simply commuted from Sarasota until moving to town.
There really weren’t other candidates. Sort of like when the town set about hiring Harmer, they focused on Tipton and convinced him to head over the Best Coast.
“What’s not to like?” said Tipton who is scheduled to start Jan. 30 and make about $211,000.
Please be kind and try to understand if you dog starts acting like Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott at the dog enclosure inside Bayfront Park these days.
It could be the autumn air, that new girl dog in the corner — or it might be the yards of artificial turf installed in August and September. Either way, Fido is seems happier and speedier and very unlikely to win in the playoffs. (Sorry, Cowboys fans.)
Thanks to a $123,000 donation from Longboat Key resident Irene Hess the dog park is now a much cleaner place to visit. Muddy paws after a rain, or sandy coats during a dry spell are now a thing of the past.
And in case you were wondering about the, uh, well, you know, the turf is certified for dog uses (all of them, if you get what we're sayin'), and a sprinkler system will keep things washed down and tidy.
With his Florida connections deeply rooted, Police Chief George Turner in June quickly solved a problem that could have crippled the town police force.
After sending their Chevrolet SUVs to the repair shop time and again for recurring problems, then finding out the town's extended warranty didn't apply to police vehicles even though it was sold to the police department for police vehicles, something had to be done.
Turner relied on contacts he’s made over the years to informally set aside four 2022 police-model Ford Explorers with a Polk County dealership, while Town Commissioners did the money thing.
"There are only five in the entire state of Florida," Turner said on July 1, acknowledging that police-package vehicles are often very hard to find on short notice. "We have a hold on four of them."
Commissioners OK'd moving about $185,000 from the to-come budget into the in-use budget to facilitate the purchase under a state-negotiated best price contract. The new Explorers arrived in Longboat Key colors a few weeks later and are on the streets now.
Oh, and the town got its money back for the police vehicle warranty that didn't apply to police vehicles.
For a few days in May, there was some question about more than a half-million dollars in property taxes owed on former Colony Beach & Tennis Resort properties. All 244 of them, in fact.
The then-nearly-delinquent taxes and addresses were published by the Sarasota County Tax Collector just a few days from the drop-dead deadline. The bill was paid with a day or two to spare.
A majority of the 244 levies ranged from around $1,300 to $3,300, though one parcel listed a tax responsibility of $50,215. According to the Sarasota County Property Appraiser’s Office, the 2021 taxable value, as determined on Jan. 1 2022, for the 244 parcels was $36.3 million. The total amount of taxes owed on the parcels, when added together, totaled $551,827.32.
As of 2022, though, those addresses at 1620 Gulf of Mexico Drive no longer existed, replaced by the St. Regis property's five new buildings with their own addresses.
In literary terms, the town's push for a public library is in the early chapters. We're beginning to become familiar with the setting, see where the story is going, meet some of the main characters and make some assumptions about what's to come.
But the denouement (if you think we spelled that word right on the first try, you're kidding yourself) is still a ways off.
What we know is this: Sarasota County leaders included about $1 million in the current budget to begin the process of studying what would work, what people want, what kind of building might be useful as a county library. There's a spot set aside in the Town Center Green.
The town has laid out its desired timeline for further discussions and potential county funding while also talking with Sarasota County Schools and even officials in Manatee County. The town has heard about interim steps, such as a new county-run bookmobile that could soon begin making stops here.
Longboat Key leaders headed into their budget discussions last summer understanding that the value of residential and commercial property on which taxes will be based has never been higher.
Estimates from the property appraisers’ offices in Manatee and Sarasota counties showed a combined taxable valuation for property in the town of $7.34 billion, an increase of about 13.5% from last year. The total is about $700 million higher than the previous high of $6.6 billion at the height of the 2008 housing-value run up.
Broken down by county, Sarasota values were up 13.31% to $5.04 billion and Manatee values are up 13.92% to $2.3 billion.
Legislators in special session picked up the ball where they left it at the end of their 2022 regular session, passing statewide rules on condominium inspections and the means to finance needed repairs.
Longboat Key town leaders had crafted rules of their own but held off on considering them in May when they heard the special session, billed largely as a session to deal with property insurance reform, would also include condo safety. At the time, Commissioners agreed waiting until the legislature acted made sense and could help inform them on what direction to follow if no new regulations were approved.
Among the provisions:
Here are a few more fun stories that caught our attention but didn't make the top 10.
Aside from the romantic drama of the island's beloved swans, there was tragedy. The one egg that held a chance for a baby swan to be born in 2022 failed.
Swan keeper David Novak and swan expert and breeder Bob Knox had been keeping eyes on the only nest that was made this year, which belonged to swans Chuck and Lydia. Novak had been keeping food and water bowls near Lydia, who nested in foliage across from the CVS on Bay Isles Parkway, to keep her alive as she sat on her one egg, which was infertile.
It’s unusual for a swan to lay just one egg; usually, a clutch has about six. Novak removed the egg and began destroying the nest so Lydia would realize quickly that she has nothing to go back to. She lost weight while in the nest, so he wants to keep her away from a failed nest to get her healthy again.
When 34-year-old Julie Madison started hearing cowbells as she swam a circle around Longboat Key last spring, she wasn't suffering from hallucinations from hypothermia. She was actually hearing supporters urging her on during her 11 hour ordeal.
The Anna Maria woman planned the feat for four months and looked for just the right day to do it. She had previously circum-swam her home island in December and Lido Key in 2017.
“I just kept pursuing it,” Madison said. “The Hogfish from Anna Maria Island were super excited about my Anna Maria Island swim, so they asked me what they could do and what was my next big thing, and I said I wanted to do Longboat Key, and they were like, ‘Well, we would love to help you.’ They were fantastic. They did most of my support for that swim. … The kayak really helps with navigation, because especially the day I did it, the back end of the island was very choppy. There was a good section of the swim that there were one, two, three foot waves, so I couldn’t see very well.”
It was as hot as a firecracker July Fourth morning, but that didn’t cool the fun for Longboat Key’s annual Freedom Fest, hosted by the Chamber of Commerce. Grand Marshal Lisa Walsh led the parade in a red Corvette convertible.
Flags and people lined Bay Isles Road for the “Shortest Parade in America.”
The Hot Diggity Dog costume contest drew on the patriotic theme of the day, along with a large helping of creativity.
In mid-July, the Sarasota County Commission unanimously voted to convey the site near Interstate 75 to Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium for $100. There, the nonprofit marine research organization plans to build a new 110,000-square-foot aquarium, a project years in the making. Days later, Mote closed on the property.
Construction is underway on the 11.76 acre site, once owned by Sarasota County.
Branded Mote Science Education Aquarium (Mote SEA), Mote reached a $90 million fund-raising milestone in October 2021.
Michael Moore, special advisor to the office of the president who has led the fundraising campaign for the Mote SEA, said donations have picked up pace since the land was conveyed, adding an announcement about the next milestone will come this fall.
"The community's response to the project is accelerating with prospective donors as they see the project is starting to materialize," Moore said. "Definitely when it comes out of the ground in a few months we know that's going to help us toward the goal."
From stories originally reported by Eric Garwood, Nat Kaemmerer and Lauren Tronstad
