The Tra Ponti War (video campaign debate matchups further down on this page)
The island of Venice is about to become a lot more crowded as council approves Mike Miller's massive Tra Ponti condo-hotel complex to be built at the island's entrance, while the war surrounding the project becomes the focal video debate of the 2007 city elections
-- John Patten, 09/13/07
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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This means war!
The city council meeting of September 11, 2007 was a war fought over the future of the island of Venice. It may have appeared to be  a quiet, soft-spoken war, but it was war nevertheless.

The event became THE BIG CAMPAIGN STOP of this election season. At issue: Tra Ponti, a massive proposed six-story development of condo-hotel rooms, a parking garage, restaurants, shops, and more, to be planted over several blocks of downtown island property in between Miller's giant condo towers and the Venice Avenue bridge. For good or ill, it is a project that will forever change the look and feel of Venice, the very face of the island.

Forget the debates and candidate forums that are still to come, this was THE DEBATE of this year's election season, and the lines of distinction between the two camps couldn't have been clearer.

Biggie size it!
Miller and his attorney, Jeff Boone, want Tra Ponti big and they want it bad. From Miller's perspective, he's been wrestling with this project for some eight plus expensive years and enough is enough.

Council wants it big but not quite so big that it seems like it's as big as it really is.

A number of citizens and residents want the project a lot less big, while CQGers want it as big as possible.

And so, and so, it's off to war we go. It's a big war over big ideas, big egos, and big money.

In all wars, placement of the troops is essential, and so the big names in the CQG were all present, peppered through the audience like Homeland Security agents at a Republican fundraiser. Smack in the center of the audience, restaurant arms dealer and CQG prez C.J. Fishman was bigging himself up by taking up three seats -- you couldn't avoid noticing that he had set up camp and planted his flag right in the geographical center of the chamber. Fishman sat in one seat, while extending his arms out into two other seats, sending out body language that stated boldly -- "This is my war and I goddam love the smell of napalm in the afternoon." Fellow CQG bigwig Steve Harner sat with him for a bit, then moved to another seat.

John Ryan of the Chamber of Commerce was prominent, as were a collection of half a dozen of the chamber's combo PR youth squad / modeling agency, Venice4PositiveFuture. They're young, they're beautiful, and they're absolutely brainless, and so their handlers, a well-spoken and paternal Don Hay and a somewhat ditzy Cindy Gnegy, were on hand to keep the kids from doing anything profoundly stupid.

Planning Commissioner Janis Fawn sat near the back, a row or two away from Amalthea / Marriott consultant Ed Taylor. And on and on and on.

The big name attendees, along with their well-organized sycophants, were a show of allied brute force faced up against a ragtag collection of residents trying to stave off the canyoning and Sarasota-ing of downtown Venice and the island's entrance.

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- Hunter S. Thompson
No show of political brute force would be complete without the use of actual brute force, and so during Ed Martin's appeal to council, the obligatory moment of political insanity happened when one of the CQG's biggest financial supporters succumbed to election tensions, leapt over the mental edge, and tried twice to physically drag me out of council chambers, ostensibly to show me a can of whoopass that he was going to try to open up outside of the building. City staff hustled him out of the meeting both times, but curiously, the police were never called (the cops finally showed up on my doorstop the next evening to find out what the heck had happened -- if I'm ever abducted from this town, please, nobody should hurry or get excited or anything).

The extremes of both sides were evident in a defining confrontation between Venice resident Rita Sakowicz and Councilman John Simmonds. Sakowicz, referencing Fishman's speech of a year or so back when the CQG prez reminded council that he was responsible for putting them all into office, stated that what was happening was payback time from council to campaign supporters.

Simmonds went apeshit at the allegation: "I would never accept any support from anybody who felt like I owed them anything."

So that would explain all that CQG money that was used to support your re-election campaign last year, eh John?

But wait, the best was yet to come: "...and I would remind that lady, and I use the word lady by being kind..."

Prithee tell, Sir John, what word wouldst thou have shown preference to utter to describe yon receiver of thine contempt?

Here's the video of that nasty exchange:

Note to John: After that display of verbal finesse, if Rita Sakowicz comes into council chambers and tries to drag you out to show you a can of whoopass, I'm not calling the cops, either.

More weirdness: all the while that this was going on, the cameraman for Studio 26, the company that video-records the council meetings, sat in the back reading a dog-eared paperback copy of George Orwell's 1984, a detail so real life and weird that I wish I had made it up.

Down front, the war raged as Miller and Boone fought for their project and six politicians fought for their political lives.

This is better than the presidential debates
Set 1: Mayoral candidate Ed Martin went point by point in an eloquent set of questions and observations, while his opponent, Fred Hammett, appeared to fumble in an attempt to say something, anything, relevant, until he could get back on-script and introduce Plan B: Six stories in two buildings and five stories in the other two. Councilman Bill Willson mercifully bails Hammett out by interrupting him before Hammett has a chance to butcher the script.

Set 2: Ernest Zavodnyik pleaded for much lower height and density while Bill Willson fully unveiled Plan B in a successful and highly detailed motion for just a bit less height and density -- one floor less in two of the four buildings.

Set 3: Sue Lang supported the overall concept of Tra Ponti but argued against the grand scale, while her opponent's only comment was a meek attempt at get-me-outta-here escapist humor: "Can I abstain?"

So here it is: the 2007 debates in a nutshell. Click away and enjoy.

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.