Longboat's mayor reflects on big decisions, gives advice to commission

Longboat Key Mayor Ken Schneier and his wife, Cynthia Craig, moved to Longboat Key from New Jersey in 2009. Schneier was elected to the Town Commission in 2018 and started his tenure as mayor during an uncertain and worrying time: March 2020. 

With the entire nation coming to grips with a global pandemic that would change the way of life for months and years, Schneier remembers trying to navigate the pandemic locally. Months later, there was another crisis to deal with as a wastewater pipe ruptured and spilled millions of gallons of sewage near Sarasota Bay.

Also during his tenure, the Town Commission gave final approval to the St. Regis development and, more recently, the town debated whether to rename its main road. This March, Schneier reaches his term limit for service as town commissioner and plans to spend his newfound free time with family in Colorado. He will also join the board of his neighborhood’s homeowners association. On Thursday, Schneier sat down with the Observer in his living room to talk about his time on Town Commission. The following are edited excerpts of the conversation.

You were picked as mayor in March 2020 right as the pandemic gripped the nation. What was it like starting a new position during that time?

I had been on the Commission for two years up until that point, so I wasn’t completely new. But the meeting I was elected mayor by the commissioners was the last meeting we held as a public forum for about 18 months. For the meetings after that, the only people in the room were me, the town manager at the time, Tom Harmer, and Trish Shinkle, the town clerk. We were there, and anyone else that wanted to participate, be it commissioners or people who wanted to watch in, all were by Zoom. So they could speak but they had to put up the little cartoon hands, so it was awkward, but we got through it.

There were a lot of measures that were put in place. Like putting plastic shields in the office area. Once we had commissioners coming back in, we had side shields to separate each other on the dais. The town was quiet and almost everyone was wearing masks. It went on for the better part of two years.

In the middle of all that, a wastewater pipe began leaking. Tell me about how you found out about that and what the town had to do immediately in response.

I got a call from Tom Harmer in June to say something along the lines of this is the hardest call I’ve had to make in my career, and that was because there was a leak in our sewage line that runs all of our sewage from Longboat Key under the bay to Manatee County where they process it. So we had this subaqueous line. Fortunately, it didn’t spring a leak into the bay, it was on the upside at the other end in Manatee County in a mangrove grove that is part of the development going on there. It did some damage to the swamp area. We got it repaired very quickly, but it’s taken now six years to get the underwater pipe replaced. That’s going to start this year.

You know, COVID was one thing, but this was a surprise. The main thing was let's get the leak taken care of. Once it was discovered, it didn’t happen immediately. I think it was 36 hours. First they had to dig a road into the swamp forest where the leak had taken place. They had to manufacture a road, get into it, dig up the pipe, replace the section that was leaking and turn it back on. Thiry-six hours.

With term limits changing from two to three years in 2018, you’re the longest serving mayor in town history. What do you want people to remember about your tenure?

In the context of what’s going on in government over the last number of years, I would like to be remembered as a time where we operated civilly, in the public interest and that we solved problems rather than creating problems. One of my main things is trying to maintain a sense of humor in all things. It keeps the temperature level lower than it might otherwise be. And that we accomplished quite a few things with that. We were able to build a consensus within the commission and more or less within the town about the things that were important, the things we wanted to get done.

Photo by S.T. Cardinal

There were some contentious issues as there are on any Town Commission. Is there anything you look back at as something that was most difficult to reach a consensus on?

Very few. We were able to work through things. Everything wasn’t unanimous, but most things that we did were either unanimous or pretty close to it. I remember we had one contentious issue over whether multiple lightning rods would be allowed on the top of homes. That was about the most contentious issues among commissioners. The major ones not so much. The issue of the parking garage at the St. Regis a few years ago was very contentious, but not really at the commission level. It was a big town issue. Gulf of Mexico Drive was a very contentious issue, but really not at the commission level. I think we ultimately saw things in the same way.

What do you attribute that to? How did you keep the peace on the dais? Was it just that commission agreed on how to move forward and there wasn’t much to argue about, or was it something else?

One big thing that I always felt was important is listening to the public. We paid a lot of attention to what members of the public thought were problems that needed to be solved. The last mayor, George Spoll, said something to me because I was a little bit of a, I don’t know if firebrand is the right word, but I liked to bring up a lot of issues in the commission before I was mayor. So George said something to me before I took over as mayor, he said, “Talk less, and talk last.” I really took that to heart.

I’ve always felt that when we had an issue, we had to discuss it. Go down the line and get everyone’s opinion. I would be the last person, and hopefully be able to feel my way through what the consensus was that was being built and try to suggest something that would be amenable to everyone. I think that really played a role, and also keeping temperatures down and making things not personal and not very political. It was just listening to the public, listening to what the commissioners said, trying to put together a consensus view, and it generally worked.

You were given advice from the previous mayor. What advice will you give the next mayor?

Just be honest. Let everyone have their say, and the hardest part, I think, is taking everything that you’ve heard and trying to portray it in a way that can get the largest group in agreement. 

The other thing is preparation. We had some meetings where we were presented a couple days before with 300, 350 pages of material to go through, and I usually went through all of it and read all the details of it. Especially when it was budget matters, which is a big part of each year, or any time we were going to pass an ordinance or resolution where legal language is involved. 

So I would say be very careful and be very prepared for the conversation so that things don’t surprise you. Don’t wait to hear what the staff is going to say. Be prepared so you can ask intelligent questions.

What do you think is the most consequential decision made in your eight years on the dais?

Our achievements as a commission over the last six or eight years mainly involved moving ahead and finalizing projects that were either sitting or the shelf or just not moving forward quickly. Getting the St. Regis done, finally, is an example. We moved here 16 years ago, and within six months the Colony had been shut down. So that’s a long time. It took 10 years of struggling with the parties to the bankruptcy and the developers who wanted to come in and do the St. Regis. To get that actually done was a big achievement, and that was several commissions long. That was a very good day when that got finished.

The biggest one, I think, was the undergrounding project. That started before my time, but all of the building took place when I was mayor. It took a little longer than expected, but a successful project. When we first saw the lines come down on the south end of the island, it was breathtaking to see how beautiful it was.

Another thing I would call a project is to improve our relationships with both counties. Up until a number of years ago, the discussion here was can we be one county? Can we become entirely Sarasota or entirely Manatee County? And the answer to that was it’s going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to do either. 

Neither county was going to be willing to give us up, so we kind of turned around and said rather than turning this into a struggle that would upset both counties, let’s get more involved with them, spend more time with the different agencies and reassure them that there wasn’t going to be any exodus like that. That helped our relationship and we started getting these big financial contributions from Manatee County in particular that we hadn’t seen before starting with the beach renourishment six years ago. They contributed almost $3 million and helped get those groins up on Greer Island. Since then, they’ve been very responsive.

Once we put the whole leaving one county or another issue to bed, our relations with both counties improved dramatically. I don’t think we’d have the library project, and I don’t think we’d have Manatee stepping in to help with the community center if that didn’t happen.

Looking ahead, what are the biggest issues or topics the town has to face in the coming years?

We need to wrap up the subaqueous line, but beyond that, the biggest project is redoing Gulf of Mexico Drive. The Broadway roundabout is pretty much settled now that design is done and it’s going to be funded. But we have another nine plus miles, putting aside Country Club Shores, which is basically done. So we’ll have a little on the north end with Broadway and the south end with Country Club basically done. Now it’s finding the method and the financing to do the rest. It’s going to be tricky, and it’s going to take time and it’s going to take a lot of thought. 

Another project will be to deal with the building at Bayfront Park, which has been an issue for a while. We have had plans to rebuild that over the years that were shelved. But once the library issue is done and once we get done with the north-end community center, that’ll really be the next big project.