There's something rotten in the city of Sarasota

Politics in the city of Sarasota has taken on some of the ugly aspects of much larger cities: Negative advertising, political action committees and ghost candidates.

Many people in Sarasota recently received a hit piece against Flo Entler, a candidate for City Commission. Among other claims, this flyer said that Flo Entler is against homeowners. As some know, Flo is the president of the Arlington Park Homeowners Association and, until recently, was a senior member of the board of the Coalition of City Neighborhood Associations. This is hardly anti-homeowner.

Who paid for this dirty pool? A group called People for Arts and Culture Sarasota. Although it sounds like a charitable or local arts organization, it is neither. It is a political action committee, financed largely by developers and bar owners.

A few weeks earlier, we had a ghost candidate for one of the open City Commission seats. A “ghost candidate” is an individual who enters an election strictly to siphon votes from legitimate opponents — in this case, Flo Entler and Jen Ahern-Koch — but has no expectation of winning. Such candidates are typically put forward by less-than-honorable interests.

This ghost candidate was cleared by the city auditor and clerk’s office. In a possible conflict of interest, two staff members in that office signed the ghost candidate’s petition for office. Oddly, so did two city commissioners. As it turned out, this ghost candidate was never qualified to run in the first place; she did not meet the residency requirement. After private citizens flagged the issue, the candidate withdrew after only two weeks and, fortunately, before her name appeared on the ballot.

The city of Sarasota deserves better than this. Lobbyists for developers and bar owners have long had undue influence over city staff and a few commissioners. Let’s hope this election returns city commissioners who are independent, ethical, and truly represent the interests of residents.

–Peter Blanton, Sarasota

Keeping Palma Sola Bay clean

As many of our county residents, my family has been blessed to reside adjacent to one of the most beautiful and vital County waterbodies, Palma Sola Bay, since 2000. I believe the state classification for this waterbody is “Outstanding Florida Waters”.

Since 2016, the north of the Manatee Avenue causeway has been used by private companies to provide horseback riding in the bay. Individual horse owners did bring their horses to the causeway prior to 2016 for many years, but my personal experience, since 2000, was that this individual horse owner riding in the bay was infrequent. In 2016, when I saw and read about the private companies starting to provide riding in the bay, I found out that these companies were banned from their prior riding operation in Pinellas County by the Pinellas County commissioners due to that county showing that the operation was degrading water quality and destroying seagrasses in that part of Tampa Bay.

In 2016-17 the FDEP told me they agreed that there was going to be negative water quality impacts as well as seagrass destruction. I was told that the Secretary of FDEP believed this was a “local issue”.

I realize that many people, including some local officials have supported this activity for years, and we are all tired of hearing both sides of the issue. I can see that the people paying for the rides are mostly having a great time. I know that motor boat props do seagrass damage and dogs do their thing in the Bay a lot. But as I sit here today and every day and look out my window, I know that these horses (as many as 15 or more) are not being treated properly in this operation as they are land animals, not aquatic animals, and that horse droppings float by my dock regularly, even though the operators of the business have been trying to scoop the poop both on land and in the water. I also know that less and less county residents, since 2016, frequent the north side of the bay, for sunbathing and swimming, as who would want to share the water with these horses?

I agree with Pinellas County that this type of “for profit business” is not compatible with our aquatic environment, and should be stopped in Palma Sola Bay.

–Robert Lombardo, Bradenton