Susan Chapman is the only incumbent on the ticket. Her recent gaff might have been a slight setback, but with strong community support, and an inside track, she is definitely a contender for re-election to the Sarasota City Commission.
Candidate for Sarasota City Commission
Scroll down for a transcript of this interview.
Coming soon.
R – Three, two, one, we’re going to send it. Alright we’re in studio here with Susan Chapman.
C – How are you?
R – First run of our – how are you doing today?
C – Good!
R – First run of our studio here, and then we’ll jump back into the interview. So our guest here today has lived in Sarasota and been an active member of the community for the last twenty-three years, right? So twenty plus years longer than –
C – Oh, no. Closer to twenty-eight years.
R – Alright, her credentials include serving as the past director of the Sarasota County BAR association, as well as the director and president of the Sarasota Chapter of the Florida association for women lawyers. She served as a board member and president of the Sarasota County Civic League as President of the Hudson Bay neighborhood association and as board member and president of city coalition of neighborhood associations, and she currently serves and is running for re-election for the city commission here in Sarasota so help me welcoming Susan Chapman.
C – Thank you for having me!
R – So why did you get into all of this? Why did you get into politics? Twenty-eight years, what brought you into all of that?
C – Well I’ve always been really committed to a lot of issues and when I moved to Sarasota with my husband in 1989, I became immersed in community issues, first with not for profit boards and then when my neighbors faced an issue they contacted me and I knew a lot about organizations and how to form organizations so I worked with a team to form my neighborhood association, and then that led into being the president of the coalition of city neighborhood associations, and being appointed to the Sarasota county planning board, I had been a hearing officer special magistrate for sixteen years, so I knew quite a bit about planning and had studied planning in college and graduate school as well.
R – Interesting, interesting. So like a lot of things it kind of keeps progressing and then it evolves into what it is now and you sit currently on the city commission. What drove you to that? What made you decide I’m going to step up from just a community – maybe the president of the home owners association or getting involved with the local civic group to saying; now I want to be in the city office, and I know you have said some other experiences within this city, but what made you want to take that jump into actual city commission?
C – Well I was thinking about that this morning, that when people have asked me for help I’ve always tried to step up if I had the skills and a lot of people called me and asked me and asked me to run because I represented a certain constituency within this community, and having represented neighborhoods, having been involved in planning I knew a lot about the city and a lot about the city issues. So when the previous commissioner decided not to run not only he, but others, called me and asked me to run.
R – Interesting, interesting. What’s been the – so since you’ve been in the city commission and since you’ve been involved for such a long time, what’s been the biggest change in your mind in Sarasota over the last couple decades, three decades, whatever it may be?
C – Well there have been so many changes.
R – Just as a whole. If you could generalize like – I mean just from the top of your head, what’s the first thing that kind of strikes you as being so different?
C – Well, we went from not having a homeless issue to having a major homeless issue, we went from a tourist transportation issue to almost around the clock tourism, around the season tourism and a lot of transportation issues associated with development. All of those have been in existence but they’ve gotten ever more so.
R – Interesting. So, I guess with being said, lets say you had a magic wand and you had to pick that one issue that you wanted to just change, or fix, what’s that one thing that you would love to change dynamically overnight about Sarasota?
C – If I could change it overnight, we wouldn’t have traffic gridlock. If I could change overnight, we would be able to have what we would call a collective impact model on homelessness so that we would all – all members of the community and all organizations and all government entities in the community would be working in the same direction toward helping individuals who are experiencing homelessness reach permanent solutions.
R – How do we do that? How would that work? How would something like that work?
C – Well you know it’s interesting because it’s worked in other jurisdictions. It’s worked in Canada for example and there’s this concept of what’s called functional zero and homelessness and twenty seven communities in the United States have reached that, and there is a model that they were working in Orlando, Orlando used to be one of the worst cities with homelessness.
R – So what are those specifics? Like, what would the action items be for something like that?
C – Okay, first thing that you have to do with the collective impact model, is make sure that everybody agrees on the methodology. What is the direction that we’re headed? Are we headed towards shelter, which is a temporary solution which has not been very successful? Or are we going to use evidence based solutions, because we know evidence based solutions and in fact the state of Florida and the United States have already decided that we’re not going to support shelters anymore. We’re only going to support what’s called rapid-re housing or permanent supportive housing. In other words we’re going to aim toward permanent housing first, and then we’re going to do wrap around services, and those jurisdictions that have actually made huge progress, everybody is working together. That is first you understand that you use evidence based methodology and you agree. Now most of the sectors in the community agree on that, but not everybody, and so that’s one of the things I think we need to do. Number two is that you agree on how you evaluate the program, how do you evaluate is it working or not? Is it just because you see a homeless person on the street, or is because more people are housed? Already this year, through the cities working through two different agencies, we’ve housed almost five hundred people this year, but it’s not good enough because there are still merchants who are suffering due to feeding programs on the street and people are using their doorways as bathrooms and it’s very frustrating.
R – So what’s holding back any progress in that regard, right? Because you’re on the commission now so from your perspective what is holding back that conversation, or any progress in that space?
C – Well there has been progress, and I will say there has been a lot of progress and one of the progressive things is that I think that the staffs of the city and the county are now on the same page, maybe not the two commissions but the staffs certainly are, because those staff members at the county who used to be pushing the come as you are shelter program are no longer pushing that. There looking at the same thing, in fact the sheriff has implemented a program like that, a housing program and it’s called SHIFTs, and it’s been very successful.
R – You mentioned something in there about the staffs, the city and county staffs, but not necessarily the commissions. One of the questions that we got from social media leading into this is how do we get a little more collaboration between the city and the county at a deeper level – on the commission level. How do we get that collaboration happening and from your perspective, what does that look like?
C – Well I think there has been some change at the county and leadership, and honestly when we deal each other one on one, we get along. Most of us get along. I can’t say that we’re all great buddies, but when we deal with each other one on one, we are collegial, we are friendly, we try to look at problems. Now one of the things we can’t do is we can’t say we’re going to point ina certain policy direction without having an official meeting, but what we do know is that different staff members from the county, they go to the same conferences we do, and they hear what works and what doesn’t work. In fact I was at a homeless conference this fall, or this summer during the hurricane, and one of the county staff asked the question; Well given that we don’t have enough affordable housing, and we don’t have enough money shouldn’t we build an emergency shelter? And the speaker who did not know this person was from Sarasota said; ‘Well Sarasota county is prepared to spend eleven million dollars on a shelter, wouldn’t we do so much better if we took that eleven million dollars and created housing for people, and worked toward creating those solutions.’ And that led too a very in depth conversation, not with me and that person from the county, but with that expert and the person from the county, and they were very open to hearing this information and that has helped quite a bit; also the discussion about the carny center. We have been able to find some common ground on that. One of the things though about the carny center is that they started with a shelter that was paid for by a man who had three hundred million dollars, and so he’s still looking for a sustainable model and he’s turning toward housing for the sustainable model. So you can create a model any day you want to but you can’t make it sustainable, and that’s one of the issues that you have to work on. So I’m very hopeful, I, not to long ago, attended a conference with a national expert on – from the national level of the housing, the national alliance against homelessness I believe it was called, and that person was talking about how do we reach this concept called functional zero? Now functional zero is used for veterans homelessness a lot of the times, and we are close to functional zero on veterans homelessness and what that means is when we discover a veteran on the street, we house him as soon as possible, but we have two things that we need to do to reach the veterans administration official functional zero and that is that we have to have coordinated entry and we have to have coordinated assignment. That means that the people who are meeting the people experiencing homelessness on the street are able to sit down with the local agencies and say this person may need mental health care, this person may need addiction care, and you are the addiction agency so you should be working on wrap around services for this person, you should be working on mental health services from this person. So we’re going to assign the person with mental illness to an agency that handles mental illness, and we’re going to assign this person who has addiction issues to this agency for help.
R – Does that become difficult if you can’t pin point who those people are, or where those – because that’s a lot of this right? They’re homeless and they don’t have addresses and they’re not filling out forms, and how do you get a hold of them, so how do some of that take place?
C – Well actually we know who they are. We know every single homeless individual in this city. They may not know it in the county because they do not have what they call a homeless outreach team, but we do and I think they’ve made fifteen hundred contacts this year with homeless individuals, or individuals experience homelessness and of those contacts, we know what their needs are, we know what their issues are. What you learn with chronic homelessness, there’s all kinds of homelessness, we’ve learned a lot about it over the years, and what you learn with chronic homelessness is once people get acclimated to the street and develop those survival skills, there is a lot of lack of trust and the need to work with individuals over time to make them first, have trust, and then help them to get into the services they need, but you cannot force people, you cannot force people, and I hear a lot of times people say; most of them want to be homeless. That’s not true. Most of them don’t see the way out of homelessness.
R – And they probably lost hope if they’ve lost the belief that there’s a real path probably. There’s this term called learned helplessness, and it becomes a psychological symptom that you start to apply to yourself when you start facing these hurtles and so I can imagine over time that that becomes an issue.
C – And that’s – and also some people – people with serious mental illness, they’re going to need what we call permanent supportive housing. That means you have to have an aggressive community treatment program and that’s what they call ACT, and you just have to aggressively help them with their issues, but what we have learned since the salvation army created this queue live program is there are evidence based ways to help get out of that, to help people decide what their desires are, what their wishes are, and to work through that into an action plan.
R – For the sake of this just not taking a deep dive into the homeless situation in Sarasota, which I’m sure we can go on talking for a very long time and we may go back around into that, but I kind of wanted push forward just for the sake of time here. What – why run for reelection? Because there was a point where you were waffling for a little bit, you weren’t’ certain whether or not you were – and so what pushed you over the edge to come back and get back into the fray, because you’re taking a lot of arrows right now so what makes you want to be back in the spotlight?
C – I actually have a coffee cup that says; you know who the pioneers are, they’re the ones with the arrows in their back, and I’ve had it since 1981
R – Well it can’t be easy being in the public spotlight having every decision being criticized publically –
C – It isn’t easy.
R – So why do you get back – what makes you want to get back into that? What makes you want to stay in that?
C – One of my core values I had to sit down and think what my core values are. My core values are community, you know, I a lot of times think to myself, I’m going to leave a committed life behind, and so I try to think what is the motivating factor? It’s that people were really asking me and I had to do an assessment. Are there two candidates that represent the constituency that I represent? And the answer was no, and do I want to give up on the progress we’ve made on some of these core issues, and that I will work on them whether I’m elected or not but you know, I have a lot of knowledge that I bring and when Suzanne Atwell decided not to run, I said who is going to bring that historical perspective because I have historically been very engaged in this community for many years way before I was elected or even considered running for office.
R – Sure, so with that being said, tell me a little bit more about – because you mentioned in your response there, about the people you represent, tell me a little bit about that demographic and where is the support from the election coming from, tell me a little bit about your continuance to help the audience understand where you’re coming from when you’re making these decisions. Help us feel that out.
C – I represent residential interest, but I listen to everybody. I really do, all you have to do is call me up and make an appointment and you can talk to me because I try to listen to everybody. In terms of decision making, I try to make my decisions based on evidence based decisions, evidence based what works and what doesn’t work, I represent people who want to preserve quality of life, I represent people who are very interested in the arts a lot of the times, I represent people a lot of people in the minority community, one of the things I’m very concerned about is environmental racism. You know, putting the worst things in the city and the poorest neighborhoods.
R – So you think some of that is happening here locally?
C – Well I think one of the things that got me across purposes with the come as you are shelter is the whole idea that you’re going to try to put it in the black neighborhood that has had every social program, every public housing, every – the sewage treatment plant is there. All of those things –
R – When you say the black neighborhoods what are you referring to?
C – Newtown, district one, and then the next place they were going to put it is right across the street from the Robert L Taylor complex which when you think about it is almost cruel and I hear there was people saying those people don’t vote, we’re not going to lose any votes if we jam it down those roads, and I’m not for that kind of thing. I’m for – I believe in community, I really believe in community and I really believe we should pull together as a community to make things good for everybody.
R – So in that light, how do we do that? How do we get – because if we look at the voter turnout numbers, they’re pathetic amongst the younger demographic, and by younger I don’t just mean under thirty I mean into sub fifty and –
C – Have you voted?
R – I do. I vote in the city elections. Since I’ve been a city –
C – Are you a registered voter, really?
R – I am a registered voter in the city of Sarasota.
C – Good and why aren’t your friends voting?
R – That’s what we’re trying to figure out right? That’s what all this is about, that’s what – I think there was a statistic, and it said as a percentage of the voter demographic, more people over the age of ninety than under the age of thirty showed up for the last city election.
C – Right, and you know, I’ve worked on that and worked on it, and I know the last – when I ran last time they said well if we have more noise downtown, more people will vote. That wasn’t true. How do we get more young people to vote? I don’t know. I mean I know that we – when we had younger candidates it hasn’t made a difference, when we have you know, targeted mailers, targeted get out to vote efforts.
R – Let me ask you this; I just want your thoughts if you would. People have talked about moving the elections. Now I’m not sure – I get both sides of the argument, right? I understand there’s a desire to for a bigger turnout, they’re getting excited about the presidential election, but then I also understand you get a bunch of people that don’t know what’s going on, and then you end up pushing the issues down the ballet, and then maybe you get a ballet line vote, and if you do this election in March, you get people who are more informed right; more tied in, and willing to I guess, make that effort to be involved in city politics. Give me your perspective on that, do you think that would make an issue? Moving the election?
C – Well more people turn out but they turn out not for the local election, and here is a real problem. So, if you have right now I think there are eight people running, so if you have eight people running and you – when is the election going to be? Is it going to be in November at the general election? Or is it going to be August, when all the people are out of town? So one of the things I asked when it was proposed a few months ago, or about a year ago, Is I said, which is the first election, because the first election is always the most important election, because that’s when you winnow down all the candidates and you have somebody who has support a lot of support, they may not make the top three, and only the top three go to the second election. So is winnowing down to three but the first election has really low turnout because it’s the primary election. Then one of the things that you have to consider is that it will be a partisan election, because there will be more people in the republican primary then the democratic primary, so because there are very few people running in the democratic primary, so it’s mostly republicans. Sometimes you have to change your registration on the primary just so you have somebody to vote for. So it doesn’t really –
R – Couldn’t it be said just having more people to show up in general would be a good thing even if – it would almost double –
C – It could be a good thing, so when are we going to get more people to show up –
R – Well that’s what I’m saying, in November that would be it, you would just – by default would get more people. Is that something –
C – So you’re going to have one November election that all eight candidates – that all eight candidates go into November?
R – I don’t know, I’m asking –
C – Well here’s the issue. Not many people show up in August, not many people show up in August, a lot of people are on vacation, you can vote by mail, but the demographic you’re after is the younger demographic, they don’t vote – look at their voter turnout in August. It’s even worse than in city elections, so the real issue is; let’s say you have one election.
R – Well let’s say the primary would be in August but the election itself wouldn’t necessarily be –
C – No, the real election that winnows down the eight candidates that may be –
R – Is it eight now? Did someone else announce that – Mikael Sandstrom was the last I heard.
C – Michael? Mike, who?
R – Sandstrom, I think was his name?
C – Mikael Sandstrom? He was the next to last.
R – So there was another one?
C – Yeah, Matt Sperling. Maybe that’s nine. Is it nine? I don’t know! Yeah, well because I was at the coalition of city neighborhood associations meetings on Saturday, and Mat Sperling came up to me and said he was running also. And so – let’s say we have eight candidates running, and we have a primary election where you winnow down all those eight people and very few people turn out, so that maybe fewer people turning out in August, and those people will not be the fullest political spectrum. They will be republican super voters. So, then you can have a choice if you have one election, and if you have two elections to winnow down, when is the first election going to be? Is it going to be in November? If so you’ll have eight or nine or ten, or however many decide to run, and then you winnow it down to the top three, whens the second election going to be? So, what happens now is we have a first election in march, it’s March 14th and then a second election in May, but let’s say you support Mikael Sandstrom because he’s a young guy and the chances of Mikael Sandstrom being in the top three given that he’s never been involved in city issues and not many people know him are not good, but he’s the candidate for the youth, okay? He’s going to be eliminated. So, how do make it so it’s more representative of the entire community and have this many candidates and one election? So here’s the other issue, they used to do one election and it was a plurality and people would get, you know, fourteen percent of the vote and they won, so I’m open to hearing how we resolve those logistical issues. There is one way to resolve it though, instant run off voting. Do you know what instant run off voting is?
R – Tell me.
C – You say, I like Suzanne the best, she’s number one. You get to vote for two, I like Jennifer the second best, she’s number two. I like Mikael third best. So, they look –
R – Down the chain. If vote for one doesn’t stick, then your vote transfers to number two right?
C – Right, right. And so that’s how you can do it.
R – That’s been proposed and I’ve heard about that, and I like that idea a lot actually, I like the idea of being able to say this is my first, second, and third choice and if it doesn’t go to one it goes to the next, and it goes to the next, and you’re right you got the run off right there –
C – Right, now let me tell you, it’s not proposed. It is the law! It is the law! And here is what they’ve said in the past, we don’t have the voting machines that can do it. So, we haven’t implemented it –
R – Yet we can send our money, and send our faces and do whatever in real time all over the universe
C – Well here’s the issue, now it’s the supervisor of elections, they say we don’t have the voting machines to do it, and so if we have the voting machines to do it that’s how you do it; instant run off voting. You have one election, you do instant run off voting. So that’s the way you could do it and maybe have better turn out. Now, I’ll tell you one secret I think we now have the voting machines to do it. So it is our law, it’s in our charter; it’s in our city charter, so the question is how do we implement it?
R – Good pause point; can I have you put this either on your lap or in your pocket? When we did the phone it got put back up there.
R – Alright so, a few more things here we talked a little bit about taking some of the arrows, and there’s been a little flack recently with the email that was sent about the ambulances driving down orange –
C – Empty ambulances!
R – Okay, so clarify and tell me, what’s the situation there, and what’s going on?
C – Okay there is this major, major sewage project and Osprey Avenue is closed, that’s what – Osprey avenue is what’s called a connecter road, and so it is the alternative to 41. Orange Avenue is considered to be residential street, with no trucks and so about six to nine months ago the city and the police and the engineers working on it had it a meeting with the neighborhood people with all of the different elements that are going to be dealt with in this traffic plan about how do we handle traffic, during this very challenging situation, no question is really challenging, and so there was a transportation plan proposed, and the last time Osprey Avenue was closed, it was lots of diverted traffic to Orange Avenue, now, anybody who knows Orange Avenue knows that it is the most direct route from the city to Siesta key, so we get a lot of, what we call, cut through traffic anyways, but truck traffic is especially problematic because it adds a lot of volume, and a lot of commercial volume, and so what was happening is we were trying to keep – the people in my neighborhood were at that meeting were discussing how do we keep non-residential traffic directed toward 41, so that’s the setup for the issue. So, what happened is that once this really started Orange Avenue has been gridlocked, not the entire time, but it’s gridlocked a lot of the time, and so commercial trucks and ambulances get gridlocked in there. Well, normally ambulances never go down Orange Avenue. Two calls they don’t go down because to get to the hospital from Orange Avenue is – you have to go on these little side streets and you can’t speed to the hospital on these little side streets, so what they’re doing is they’re using it as some trucks – I mean there are other trucks that use it to, so I started getting compliance, we’re having to much traffic – now all along I’ve gotten complaints from people living on these side streets, to many trucks are going through and they shouldn’t be going through these little side streets, because they are little and they don’t have sidewalks and they don’t have parking, and it’s very narrow, so what happened was, people started to complain about the traffic and people were signing petitions to get an extra speed table, they’re called speed tables, not speed humps, so they got an extra speed table on Alta Vista, there’s an extra speed table on Orange. What I do is I walk every morning and so, you know, I see the trucks, I write down the name of the truck, and I call or I email this guy Anthony Sentroni, and I started seeing the ambulances that are not on call, you know, when they’re on call they have their lights and sirens on, when they’re just going someplace, you know back to the station they dumped, and so there were a couple of ambulances when I’m walking I see them a lot, because that’s the only way I could get the numbers. So I sent the numbers in and Anthony sends me an email back and says we can’t get compliance, and so I made – I will say It was a snarky little comment, I knew they weren’t going to get a ticket but I said I think they should, but it was because I was getting lots of – I was getting complaints, I won’t say – what is lots? That’s sort of a normative term, but I was getting complaints about trucks.
R – Does it – because tongue and cheek, I get it, let’s not dive into the specifics of that, but let’s talk about the general theme of, I think, the disconnect that most people and the reason the reaction came, right? The backlash, because what it points to is this disconnect between the people who live in that area, this affluent very white population, as opposed to everybody else who lives in Sarasota and runs the city to be hearing; ‘Oh my poor neighborhood, there was an ambulance on it, we should ticket them’. Even if it’s backhanded, it just seems a little detached from reality, that you would ever even say let’s give a ticket to an ambulance, I think that’s the backlash, so how would you answer that?
C – What I would say that is every neighborhood complains about it, every neighborhood complains. In fact the interesting thing is that I was getting calls saying how do we get the same signs on our streets, on our neighborhood streets, because the issue is really cut through traffic, I got a call from somebody who was –
R – So there are a lot of complaints coming in about ambulances driving through neighborhoods?
C – No they were calling about cut through traffic; it’s about cut through traffic. Now the difference between an ambulance and a regular old truck is that it’s another government, maybe we could as governments work together and that’s what I was really trying – you know shouldn’t we as a community pull together, especially shouldn’t government pull together in this challenging situation.
R – Yeah, that seems like that would present the opposite of working together if you asked a police force to take a –
C – Well I wasn’t really seriously asking that, I mean I guess that – and that’s what I apologized for because I understand that it was a snarky comment that wasn’t intended to be serious. But now they’re saying it’s because it’s my own selfish, self-interested, interests, but the irony of it is that I’m never cutting traffic, you know why; because, either I’m on foot, which is when I observe those, or I live a block away from the intersection. So, it’s the people up the street that are hurt. It’s the ambulances that are cutting traffic, it’s not me, and so that’s the whole irony of it. So – and somebody has asked to see my iPad, my city iPad. Okay, I’ll take it in. You all go look at it, now are you going to find every complaint I get? No, I get complaint – I’m standing in the line at the grocery store I get a complaint, I’m walking in the park I get a complaint. Any old time people feel free to tell to fix it, fix it for them, and fix it for them now, and then they follow up and say well why haven’t you fixed it?
R – Would you like to take a second and back down, I guess some people – there was a radio interview and I guess some people felt that it wasn’t a genuine apology so we have the cameras here if you’d like to just take a second for a formal –
C – Well the one thing they wanted me to say is that an ambulance is not a truck, and that’s a different thing than backing down. I went in, I apologized, I looked at every one of those firefighters in the eye and I said I apologize, it was not intended as a serious comment, it was just trying to work together and pull together as a community. Now I’m meeting with the director of the firefighters union and then the captain tomorrow afternoon, so – but interestingly everyone sends me an email and calls me a dumb bitch, or a piss ant, or any other cuss word they want to call me which – a despicable person, they always mention the old action, what an interesting coincidence.
R – Yeah, coincidence. Well it is coming up, that’s the focus comes out, all the magnifying lenses come out, and people aren’t typically active, get active.
C – And there’s going to be a lot of nastiness, because a lot of nastiness was following me the last election, because there are people who really don’t like me.
R – Well there are a lot of people who feel very disconnected from the people who are in power in this city and I think that’s what we’re saying at a grander scale, is that there’s a complete disconnect between whose running the city and who live in the city, and not at every level and part of that’s our responsibly because a lot of those people aren’t active in the voting and they’re not active in the decision making process, so it’s your own fault right –
C – Call me up, make an appointment with Diane, I see anybody who wants to talk to me, I respond to my emails. Susan dot Chapman at Sarasota gov dot com. You shouldn’t be disconnected from me.
R – Boom, there it is. We love that. Just got a couple other things and then we’ll wrap this thing up. Was it July or June, the sunshine lawsuit the judge ruled in your favor?
C – August.
R – August, okay.
C – And when he waited for the longest time it was sixteen days.
R – Yeah, and well the whole ordeal kind of drew out for a while. What did that – Tell me how does that feel when the judge rules in your favor and makes that decision?
C – Well first of all, I am an attorney. I’ve been an attorney since 1977, when were you born?
R – About five years after that.
C – So anyway, the point is I’ve been an attorney since 1977, I went to every class that I – well not every class, but I went to classes on the Sunshine Law, I tried very hard to follow the sunshine law, I was following the government in the Sunshine manual, I was following the training I had, I was following attorney generals opinion, and I was following legal advice, and by the way I am an attorney, so I thought can I agree to accept this, that is going to broaden the law beyond what is ever been interpreted so that anybody who goes and listens to their constituents can be sued, and this is state-wide and I thought you know, one of the things about lawsuits is if you don’t stand up, that becomes kind of the law and I couldn’t agree to that because I have been president of community organizations and we always wanted more than one conditioner or more than one government official to be there. That’s how you’re not disconnected from the community. So I knew I was listening to people there, I knew I wasn’t conspiring with anyone and I also knew, and here’s the most important thing, I also knew that there were minutes of government meetings that were publically noticed that was argued out over a period of years and it – so nothing at that meeting had any appreciable effect on the ultimate homeless policy that was adopted by this city. In fact, the ultimate homeless policy adopted by this city, was adopted after an election and two commissioners were replaced, so it was kind of an odd thing.
R – It seems like there’s so much good intended in that sunshine law, but in practice it makes it really difficult a lot of times for some of those things, I’m just not getting involved in the bay front twenty-twenty plan over the last few months as the stakeholder for the YPG, right? And we need younger voices in that process but as part of that we have to operate under the sunshine laws, so I’m even scared to take about bay front because maybe we can’t even hear – are we allowed to talk bay front? I’m just kidding. But that’s the thing, there’s always this thought on the back of your head, saying am I breaking the law in this conversation?
C – You don’t want to, and more than that you don’t want to be sued individually!
R – SO is this thing going to end up in the Supreme Court? I hear that they’re appealing, and I’ve heard talks about; we’re taking it all away. That’s a lot. How do we account for that money to the city, do we –
C – Well, okay. Who wants to run for office if they’re going to be sued individually and be responsible –
R – I know, but how do we – I mean cause now they’re talking about how they have insurance, I think they bought insurance
C – Well they didn’t have insurance, they had ten thousand dollars of insurance when I got sued, and that wasn’t sufficient. Now we have a million dollars of insurance, but I’m the one who fell through the gaps, but does that mean that you should knuckle under to a frivolous lawsuit that is going to change the behavior of all elected officials state wide? That’s going to change the law in a way that people who bring frivolous lawsuits can bring it any second?
R – It seems like a tough precedent to set to be honest the situation for that meeting, because then what are you then supposed to not come to community meetings, or –
C – Well that’s exactly the problem, is that if you go to a community meeting, now I’m afraid even if I see another commissioner on the street, I’m afraid to say hello! I mean I’m afraid to say hello, and here’s the more insidious part about it, is continuance will come up and they’ll say, can I talk to you about this issue. I say are you another commissioner, then you can! You can tell me about your issue and I will try to help you on it, but that’s a very insidious thing, and you have to think, do we want representative government or don’t we. I mean I would guess that some of your people who are watching this now would say well I didn’t know I could call her and ask her about my issue. Because I thought I would be violating the sunshine law, and that’s terrible and it’s terrible when you volunteer for something like the YPG and to be the representative that you have to act in fear because you might be sued at any minute individually and so why you still do it?
R – Well because I think it’s important.
C – Well that’s exactly why I did it; because it was important. It was important.
R – Yeah. Is there anything that you would like me to ask the other candidates? Is there anything as we prepare for this town hall, as we get more of the stuff that we’re doing for the elections?
C – How are you prepared to run the city? I think that’s a very important – what have you done over the years to know about these entire city issues? Have you attended commission meetings before? Have you been on the advisory board? Have you been on a queasy governmental function? Have you been in a role that you had to answer to continuance?
R – So let me ask as a follow up to that what your plan for another term look like what are your kind of initiatives or what would be the back bone of your –
C – Well I think the first thing that we have to do since we rejected the comprehensive plan on the transportation is we have to make sure that the staff implements a city wide network analysis so we know how the traffic actually works in order to solve our traffic issues. I’m in favor of what is called a transportation demand management system which is a way that looks at transportation different and transporation demand, and so you know where people want to go and how they want to get there and that’s the way you build a successful transportation system in fact I read in the Washington post over the week that Uber is now giving to certain cities, there data so that people can say this is where people wanted to go at this time of the day so you can work on a transportation system that actually connects people from where they are to where they want to go at the times they want to go there.
R – I think more information is almost always better in that context.
C – Yeah, so that’s one thing. I think we’re on the verge of really, really working on something important and having some important successes on homelessness. Then there is the form based code which could be terrible or could be wonderful and so we need to make sure that we shape it in a way that serves us as a community.
R – Explain form based code for those that are watching and may not be familiar with that term.
C – It means that you don’t look at things in the traditional way that all uses are separated and then at a different place but some uses work in together to form a system that – for example – that you have a grocery story that you can get to other than by driving, that you have a dry cleaner near where you live that in other words that you use mixed use and the way you resolve some of these conflicts between residential and commercial are – it’s in design. There are really certain universal design characteristics that appeal to people, and so they look at that and a form based code.
R – What would you say, another thing that we’ve been getting a lot from our audience in general is about events downtown, right? We’d like to see, as a demographic, and this isn’t news to you right, more nightlife and more events. People’s idea right now is that the city is pushing all that stuff. Thunder by the Bay is gone, that happened this weekend, the chalk festival, theres talk about the boat races moving down to Venice. What would you say to people as that stance to those who are seeking to make downtown a little more vibrant?
C – Downtown is pretty vibrant and we have events every weekend almost; every weekend. Thunder by the Bay it just outgrew the downtown and it –
R – So they wanted because they wanted to leave?
C – They left because there are – we hired a retail consultant. And the retail consultant says – you know events don’t usually bring in business, so what we did as a city is we looked – we did a survey of businesses downtown. We said does this event help your business because its in the middle of season. Does this help your business during season? If you know anything about a seasonal area like Sarasota, you have to make all of your money during season and you kind of struggle through the out season and so we were getting complaints from businesses that are very viable and that it shutting down there business so we did a survey of businesses and eighty percent of them said thunder by the bay hurt their businesses, and then we’re having all this downtown construction at the same time where streets are very limited right now downtown and so we said would you like to – you know you can move to Payne park, and they said no. Then the next thing we know they moved to Lakewood Ranch and they said we hated them because they were motorcycles and all that kind of stuff. They just – they took over the downtown, it was more and more streets they wanted, and they wanted more. So that was what happened on that. With regard to the chalk festival, the person who is the promoter of it Denise Coal said we want to close Orange Avenue for six days I believe, and they said you can close it for 3 days and she said we’ll leave. So you know, one guy says well the homeless drove me out of Rosemary, but it turned out he was going out of business anyway. So it’s easy to make an excuse. With regard to bars, that’s the other issue is you know, and, again we have to have a balance of retail and bars, and so what was happening is we have a little bit of an imbalance and if you have to much competition then you have jello wrestling and a lot of things to draw people in –
R – Is that the type of bars that people are putting in the petition downtown is Jello wrestling?
C – Well there is jello wrestling, there were two bars that were doing jello wrestling for a while. They both went out of business because, you know, I don’t know, is jello wrestling the big new thing for young people? I don’t know!
R – I’ve never seen live jello wrestling, nor on TV.
C – I don’t know I mean I just saw it was a little odd but, but the reality is the reality is that you know you have to have a business atmosphere and last time there was school early a campaign form at 2:30 in the morning at and you can leave the noise of me was on believable because people were all drunk falling into the street fighting in the street and that’s because it kind of had gotten a little too crazy now –
R – So what do we do to find real solutions to that, because if you see what they’re doing in Manatee County, right now Manatee County is considering the noise ordinance and the Manatee young professionals have been fairly instrumental in pushing that – Ben Backer and Stewart Smith over at the M3 and the Manatee Young Professionals in working with the county and the city to figure out what’s a real solution that brings winners to both sides of the table, because right now I think a nightlife, a music scene, live music scene in Sarasota feel like there’s no real channel for a lot of that and then they feel like that conversation is closed.
C – Well let’s look for places where it will work. Let’s look for places it’ll work! Rosemary –
R – Are you willing, because there’s been talk about Rosemary becoming an entertainment district and then they shut it down.
C – Oh I can – who shut it down?
R – Well it’s not that now.
C – Well there are some. In fact, one guy met with me and said; I’m thinking of opening a place in Rosemary. I said go for it.
R – I’d love it, I live right there, I live on tenth and cocoanut and would love to see that place evolve.
C – And you know one of the things they told us is – the developers told us is; you give us seventy five units an acre, we’ll provide – we’ll make sure there’s some af –
R – Are you for that?
C – We did! We did! We’ll make sure –
R – Why haven’t they instructed that? There’s nothing affordable going in at Rosemary, there’s nothing affordable about Rosemary.
C – Well would you hear me out?
R – This isn’t against you, I just want a nice place to live over here!
C – Well I agree with you! Completely. This is what they told me. If you give us seventy five units an acre we’ll make sure that the market will solve the problem, and so we gave them seventy five units an acre and you just answered the question. It didn’t solve the problem.
R – But they haven’t built seventy five units an acre. That haven’t built that.
C – Yes they have!
R – Which building is being built at that density?
C – There’s City Side, that’s seventy five units an acre. We’ve authorized seventy five units in Rosemary.
R – But I think that’s – no I understand that the authorization of some of those units – I think some of the critique is that some of those units are built, the builders aren’t being held to those density standards, but they got incentives and bonuses at those levels but they’re not filling those –
C – No what they’re not filling is what they promised us, and what the promised us was that there would be affordable units in there. They – so
R – You guys thought you were solving this affordable housing problem –
C – No, we knew weren’t going to solve –
R – Well you –
C – Okay you’re interrupting me, so we knew we weren’t going to solve the low-low income housing, but we thought we would – you know they told us that the young professionals, the young peoples housing, that we were going to make some progress on it. Look at the project on second street, that was a project that was under the affordable housing overlay district, and that affordable housing overlay district had expired seven years ago but Jesses Bider said I am going to provide affordable units for young professionals, the last meeting, the very last meeting, they voted to get rid of the affordable housing component. So they got two hundred units an acre and built a totally different project and not one unit in that project is affordable. So, what do you – So what we know from this is free market is not providing affordable housing –
R – How do we solve that? How do they renege on something like that without there being some type of repercussion, is there anything that’s enforceable on that?
C – Okay, way back I think it was 2006, I was part of a thing called the stake holder group when they went for the two hundred units an acre downtown and we met with a young professional it wasn’t even called YPG then, it was called YPI, and we met with the downtown association it was called something else and we said, we will – you say the market – if we give this density the market will create affordable housing, so let’s pick some experimental areas and see let’s add density and see if you’re right and if you’re right if density creates affordable units for young professionals, we’re bound, and if it doesn’t you’re bound, and they said okay, and two days later the reneged. Now, when they came to me, low those ten years later and said lets do seventy five units an acre, I said way back in 2006 you said if we add density we’ll create – the market will create affordable units and I said if it does, we’re bound, and if it doesn’t, you’re bound, and so that’s why I agreed to seventy five units an acre, to see if the market would actually create affordable units for young people. I can say they’re not built yet, so it’s to be determined, but what has been the result is we’ve lost almost a half a million acres of tree coverage, and that’s a terrible thing.
R – Well and I think we’re going to end up with a slew of unaffordable apartments that we’re going to have a hard time filling.
C – And then the market may suffer – if they’re not filled, what’s going to happen? Are – is it going to be a market driven – for affordable professionals? Maybe, but they promised me, and so we’ll see what that promise happens, because I’m not a lover of huge, huge density but I said Rosemary is the place we’re going to do this experiment and I’m willing to try, and I was willing to try and the experiment is not done, it’s creating a thousand new rentals, theoretically, and we’ll see what happens to be determined, and so when people – I’m always willing to experiment, so when somebody came forward and said let’s make Rosemary the vibrant young professional area, I said go for it, and let’s see how it turns out, I mean – I think what the real issue becomes is when we do these experiments and they don’t work, let’s sit back and re-evaluate and say what do we have to do to make it work, to make something work in the future and you know I was going over a lot of the papers and they’re – and I realized 2006 are a lot of discussions on all of this and one of the things they said is we need to create a citizen affordable housing committee and come up with a real affordable housing plan, we haven’t done it yet.
R – Alright, well on that I think we’re going to wrap – I don’t know what the plan is to fix all that but I know we’re not going to solve it right here in this interview.
C – Well we’re, you know what, we’re going to experiment on it.
R – Well there’s one thing I just wanted to ask you, if you had anything to ask of us, of our constituency, of our people –
C – Who are you constituency?
R – Well most of our demographic is under the age of thirty six, we’re pretty evenly split –
C – Why don’t you vote?
R – That’s it, right? Why don’t you vote? I mean that’s the question we’re asking, that’s what we’re putting to task. Anyone that ever complains to us, we just ask did you vote?
C – The other thing is that, go on some of these advisory boards, if you’re not happy about not having affordable housing, lobby for it. Lobby for an affordable housing committee then serve time on it. You know I served my time on a lot of different boards before I ever ran for office, or even served on the planning board.
R – That’s all it comes down to I think, is get involved, that’s the focus of everything we’re doing here at the Sarasota Underground, that’s what this interview is about, that’s why we’re bringing these candidates in to help you guys understand what’s going on in the city as well as in the county and in the surrounding areas and that’s what it all breaks down to, it’s about you guys getting involved it’s about putting all the information in a way is digestible to you guys and in a way you can understand so we can move forward and hopefully move forward, so thank you so much for coming, we appreciate your time, thanks for learning with us.
Matt Sperling 
