Venice on the web
A semi-regular column

"Something wonderful"
Something odd is happening in Venice. "Something wonderful," as Arthur C. Clarke's character David Bowman prophesied in the 2001 trilogy.

Two opposed political camps are actually communicating. Communicating meaningfully. The result is that it's upsetting everything. Apple carts aren't merely being overturned, they're being cheerfully catapulted from the streets onto the parapets.

On one side, there is the development attorney dynamic duo of E.G. 'Dan' Boone and his son Jeff. Opposite of the Boones is Venice Taxpayers League (VTL) prez Herb Levine.

The Boones, who head up the Citizens for Quality Government (CQG), are interested in one thing and one thing only -- development and growth, often at the expense of other businesses that are supposedly represented within the CQG.

"The Boones aren't liked, admired or even respected within most of the CQG anymore. They are powerful though, and they are feared," one long term CQG member recently told me.*

The other side of that coin has Herb Levine's head on it. Wily, cantankerous and noisy, the VTL prez has wanted two things all along from city hall: an open and accountable government and a cessation of growth for growth's sake.

Then there's all the rest of us, folks who have been in the political process at varying levels of involvement. We are finding ourselves on a battlefield where the dotted line of warfare has become so blurred that nobody can seem to find it anymore.

In spite of AND because of the two groups' grapple for the future of Venice, a sort-of hybrid government has blossomed out of the cracks in the sidewalk. It's a government that isn't wild about growth but isn't opposed to it either. It's a government that is suddenly quicker to give out honest answers to tough questions, even if it is a bit embarrassing. It's also a government that is starting to listen to taxpayers -- all of them.

This in turn has caused something else that was formerly unthinkable. Members of both the CQG and the VTL are talking amicably to each other, realizing that for most of them there is quite a bit of common ground in between the extremist stances that their leadership has taken.

Growth and Venice MainStreet
Growth is inevitable, it is neither a good thing or a bad thing, it is just a thing. But even the normally pro-growth CQG members are looking at the way we've been doing it in Venice and they are not liking what they are seeing: heavy, almost unendurable traffic combined with that lovely bombed-out-Beirut feel of endless road construction and underground piping that has necessitated much it. One cursory drive around town tells you that Levine isn't all wrong when he says growth is madness -- this town is seriously torn up and thanks to a degraded city-wide sewer system that is in serious need of repair, it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Local business interests are really feeling the resultant pinch. For downtown merchants, this past Christmas season was a major downer. While road traffic was up, sales were down, way down.

I shopped downtown on Christmas Eve, and I was stunned at how empty the shops were. The streets outside were packed with vehicular traffic, but inside the shops, the various sales staffs vastly outnumbered the customers. Cathy Linder, head of Venice MainStreet Association, told me on that day that pedestrian traffic was actually pretty good on Christmas Eve when compared to what it had been like the two weeks prior, but she admitted that overall, seasonal sales were pretty dismal throughout the merchant association membership.

Neither the Boones or Levine cares -- neither of their interests are represented by the business interests of Venice MainStreet. For the Boones, folks buying knick-knacks aren't the same core customer base as those who buy expensive homes and condos. For Levine, the downtown merchants aren't representative of the town -- while they pay taxes to the city, many of them don't reside here and he, myopically sometimes, only sees the needs of the residents.

Which has left the rest of us who are trying to eke out a living here somewhere in the middle. For economic survival, we have to align ourselves with one camp or another and neither is really representative of the average business owner or worker.

Change your partners, Do Sa Do
Even the names of the two 'parties' have become oxymorons, outdated titles that have little meaning except for the emotional response they elicit when uttered. The VTL doesnt represent all taxpayers as such -- if it did, it would be representative of business owners who pay taxes to the city as well as homeowners. The Citizens for Quality Government was never about "quality," it was about control: controlling the selection of candidates in order to ensure that an anti-business, anti-development and, most important, an anti-Boone council never happened.

Then comes the big surprise: city council members whose elections had been opposed in the last two council races by the VTL are now being praised and embraced by both the CQG and the VTL for their initiative in cleaning up city hall.

This, in turn, has caused a sort of mish-moshing of unofficial membership of both groups, a centrist movement as membership within both camps move away from the perceived extremism of their leadership to more common and basic interests, like economic survival.

Out of all of this centrism is growing a new, third group, a sort of Venice Citizens for Quality Taxpaying.

Make no mistake, membership numbers are still heavily skewed towards the CQG camp, but within the CQG, the dialog for the past year or so sounds almost exactly the same as a Taxpayers League meeting of two or three years ago: City government waste has gotten out of control; we have to get smarter, more ethical people on council; we need to start treating the municipal employees fairly; we need an open and accountable government; we need to end the corruption that is eating this town alive.

These are all things that have been VTL mantras for several years. To hear these words coming from the CQG camp is, to me anyway, nothing short of astonishing. The evidence of this change in CQG direction is clear -- four new politicos (a majority) now on council that are anything but Boone rubber-stampers. Sure, all four new council members are CQG picks, but they arent the same types of picks that the CQG has gotten away with in the past.

While the VTL hasnt been able to garner the votes to get its own candidates elected, it has forced the CQG into fielding better and brighter candidates in order to keep the status quo of power, which the CQG has admirably done. That has caused an unanticipated side effect: the status quo has shifted and has become representative of both CQG and VTL interests.

To put it another way, in order to keep the VTL at bay and to keep its own membership from bolting, the CQG had to start supporting a fair and honest government, something that the VTL was threatening to do.

VTL and local businesses; CQG and residents
Theres some dissension within the VTL ranks as well: voices like mine that are fed up with the good ol boy business model that has squelched competition, innovation and growth that is outside of development interests, something that has been anathema to Levine as the VTL in recent years has traditionally represented homeowners and retirees only.

Levine may not want to take up the cause of downtown merchants, city business owners and workers but he may have to to keep the VTL alive.

For both factions, there are some serious survival issues, and both need to look outside their inner circle of favored issues to survive.

The CQG needs to continue look past the needs of the developers and more to the needs of its general membership and to the residents of this town. It also needs to realize that not all growth is good growth, something that is plainly evident by driving down our now torn-up paid-for and re-torn-up re-paid for roadways.

Finally, somebody needs to step into the light and be a strong voice for tourism: the residents have Levine, the developers have the Boones, but the tourism sector has yet to find a voice.

The Boones will, I predict, try to push onto the membership passive, non-questioning candidates for this Novembers elections, candidates that will follow in the tradition of Burt Brown, Jim Myers and the late Virginia Warren. It would be a mistake, one that many of the CQG members want to avoid.

A hopeful sign is Venice Area Beautification, Inc.'s Bill Willsons rumored candidacy -- if he chooses to run, he is assured of CQG backing, yet his history in both VABI and in the Venice Area Chamber of Commerce shows that he is a conscientious leader, not a follower. Willson hasnt formally announced his candidacy yet, but inside word has it that he is strongly considering a run [note: you can see a photo of Willson on the Suncoast Reefrovers web site, he's on the far left; Willson maintains the VABI and the Reefrovers web sites, BTW -- yay, he's a geek].

Meanwhile, the VTL needs to look past the needs of just retiree homeowners and openly embrace the concept that a healthy business environment is actually a good thing for all, the business community and retirees combined.

*This paragraph was edited out of the printed version as it appeared in the Venice Gondolier Sun, the reason given was balance -- it appeared that I was hitting the Boones too roughly without hitting Levine and the VTL equally. After a bit of haggling, I consented to the edit as the Gondo was keeping the rest of the column largely untouched. This is not a case of the evil newspaper sucking up to the evil land barons, this is just the way all newspapers work with all submissions from staff and from outside columnists.