Dan Lobeck: In a major victory for the public interest, the Sarasota City Commission last night refused to adopt the “Transportation Master Plan” to embrace traffic gridlock

In a major victory for the public interest, the Sarasota City Commission last night refused to adopt the “Transportation Master Plan” to embrace traffic gridlock as requested by the City Manager and staff.

 

Commissioner Liz Alpert made the motion to adopt the Plan. It was then met with prolonged silence, and Alpert was visibly shaken. Then finally Mayor Jen Ahearn-Koch said, “I’ll second the motion for discussion.”

 

The Plan would have spent all of the City’s transportation dollars for 25 years on projects for walking, bikes and buses but nothing to assist drivers. It would have also advanced a scheme rejected by the Commission in 2016 to amend the City’s Comprehensive Plan to eliminate road improvements, traffic studies by developers and monitoring of traffic congestion (counting instead only how many people walk, bike or ride buses).

 

In letters and emails, the Plan was opposed by The Town of Longboat Key, the Sierra Club, Valerie Buchand of Newtown Nation, bicycle and pedestrian advocate Mike Lasche and others, with Control Growth Now taking the lead in urging that the Plan not be adopted, in favor of an “all of the above” approach to facilitate driving as well as other modes of moving.

 

In debate, all four Commissioners but Alpert found fault with the Plan, with Vice Mayor Shellie Freeland Eddie objecting to the lack of a City-wide approach and any accommodation for drivers, Commissioner Willie Shaw saying that he did not want to be hedged in by adopting a flawed proposal, Commissioner Hagen Brody saying that although the projects would be nice for recreation they did nothing for transportation and Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch opposing road diets in the Plan, to shrink four lane roads to two (in order, as staff has said, to make drivers “uncomfortable”, so as to force people out of their cars to walk, bike and take buses).

 

Nevertheless, Mayor Ahearn Koch – after realizing that it would not affect the outcome – ended up voting for the motion to adopt after she extracted an ambiguous promise from staff the consider increased development setbacks to help to somehow “implement” the Plan. The Commission 13 months ago voted to direct staff to draft and present a measure to increase setbacks but staff, who oppose that change as part of their obeisance to developers, has refused to comply.

 

The motion to adopt the Plan failed 3 to 2. The Commission then, as we had suggested, instead voted unanimously to merely “accept” the Plan, as a courtesy to the staff who had worked on it for 18 months, at a cost to City taxpayers of half a million dollars.

 

This struggle is not over. History has shown that the City Manager and staff are like a dog with a favorite bone who will not let their master take it away despite all efforts to do so. This is just the latest in decades of action by the City Commission to defeat their schemes for road diets, Comprehensive Plan rewrites and other embraces of traffic congestion.

 

What the voters need to do now is defeat Liz Alpert’s bid for reelection (we recommend challenger Terry Turner), reelect Willie Shaw and elect Rob Grant to replace retiring Shellie Freeland Eddie.

 

We then need to urge the City Commission to finally stop letting the tail wag the dog and either bring the City Manager and staff to heel or finally clean house in favor of those who will let our elected representatives lead, in the public interest.

.