Tra Ponti, fire department add-on fees, Marriott, Wal-Mart:
CQG candidates can't seem to catch a break or their breath
Three weeks until the election: Fiasco after fiasco are threatening to totally derail the city's status quo power structure; In other news, VTL prez Herb Levine is scheduled for emergency ass-reattachment surgery, claims it fell off while laughing
-- John Patten, 10/15/07
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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Wal-Mart gets a wall of opposition
In an earlier piece about the upcoming city elections, I wrote that things would only get weirder as election day neared. I had no idea how weird, but now with three weeks and two city council meetings to go until the election results are revealed, things are already so warped that I'm beginning to seriously wonder if it wasn't all pre-planned, if there wasn't some organized effort within the CQG to immolate itself in the most glorious local political bonfire ever.

Late in the first week of October, residents of Mike Miller's Waterford and the WCI developed Venetian Golf and River Club started a massive email protest campaign. City hall's email servers were bombarded with messages protesting the discovery that Mike Miller's Renaissance Project included plans for a Wal-Mart Super Center as an anchor store. While some of the emails reeked of pure upper middle class elitist snobbery, most of the complaints stemmed from the perception that our current infrastructure is so ill-planned that a high-trafficked Wal-Mart would be a total traffic disaster.

The other continually mentioned source of contention in the emails is the belief that Wal-Mart is being snuck through the zoning approval process with no prior public statement. Residents of North Venice feel like they discovered the news almost by accident and that city hall was in no rush to tell them about it while a big rush was on to get the approval process finished before anyone would notice.

Email after email hit the city council inboxes -- some 50 or more of them by October 11. That may not sound like much, but it is a virtual barrage  when compared to other recent email protest campaigns. Ed Martin published one of the first emails on his blog. Shortly thereafter, I made note of the massive influx and commented about it on Venice Florida! dot com's message board, promising to reprint some of the better ones.

City hall responds on Wal-Mart: Move along folks, there's nothing here to see
Meanwhile, the city was quick to react -- on October 11, they swapped email servers and dumped all emails that had been sent to and from council from the media access account, effectively eliminating all protesting emails from the view of news writers. I suddenly found myself working on a story with no reference materials available to back it up.

The new Novell email server account that has been set up for media access now only has emails going back to October 11, assuming of course that the server actually decides to offer up the email headers -- every time I go in and try to go two or three days back, the damned thing crashes my browser. Trying to collect Wal-Mart protest emails that have been sent since October 11 (of which there have been plenty) has turned out to be an exercise in patience and futility.

Gotta hand it to city hall -- it's turned out to be damned effective strategy as far as limiting media coverage of the protests: This site, the Gondo, and the Herald-Trib have been woefully short of coverage of the uprising. There was an editorial in the Herald-Trib, the Gondo published a handful of letters to the editor, but that's been about it.

On the campaign trail, mention of the Wal-Mart fiasco has been somewhat limited. None of the CQG candidates seeking to retain their council seats have dared to mention the topic so far. Opposition candidate for Mayor, Ed Martin, has so far limited his comments to his blog. It was council candidate Ernie Zavodnyik who first broached the subject publicly, this at last Wednesday's candidate forum that was sponsored by Venice MainStreet.

Zavodnyik dares to utter blasphemy, Hammett's eyes bulge in terror
Zavodnyik tried to play the issue as one aimed at MainStreet merchants -- unwanted cutthroat competition, etc., etc.,  but he also briefly touched on the infrastructure failings of the plan. That did get picked up on by Greg Giles of the Gondo, so Zavodnyik was somewhat successful in getting his message out.

What was interesting was current Mayor Fred Hammett's reaction to Zavodnyik's comments. Sitting behind Zavodnyik and off to the side, Hammett's face went sheet white in terror at the first mention of Wal-Mart -- so far, city hall had been wildly successful at keeping this brewing storm away from public awareness. He flashed a terrified look to the far corner of the room, where his wife, Debra, was sitting next to Marriott rep Tom Creech. Neither Creech or Debra Hammett acknowledged the look, so Hizzoner was left to squirm on his own, wishing Zavodnyik would just shut up, just shut up, just shut the hell up now!

Did somebody say Marriott?
Speaking of Marriott, if you think that issue is dead, think again. Marriott/Mardirossian reps Ed Taylor (married to Councilwoman Vicki Taylor) and Tom Creech have been dogging the campaign trail, with Creech, as mentioned before, sitting next to the mayor's wife in the  back corner at last Wednesday's forum in an apparent attempt at being unobtrusive. Taylor and Creech were both seen at the realtor's forum a week ago, with Taylor sporting a Hammett for mayor sticker on his shirt in lieu of a campaign button. The pair showed up again at the Venice Area Chamber of Commerce's campaign forum.

This all comes on the heels of an unconfirmed report that Mardirossian reps met with Venice Golf Association execs just a few weeks ago to discuss the status of a pending lease transfer deal that would allow the proposed Marriott to take over the land currently leased by the VGA. Of reported concern to the VGA was the question of the VGA's existence into the next fiscal year. Several questions were reportedly of issue in the reported ongoing negotiations -- should the VGA continue to sell and renew memberships, should they raise their rates, or should they announce that memberships will not be renewed?

I've received no leaks yet as to the results of the reported meeting, but one thing is very clear --the move is afoot and still very strong to bring a South Venice Beach Marriott into existence on airport land, and the folks that are pushing for the Marriott are pushing hard to get their CQG candidates to retain their council seats. For the Marriott/Mardirossian bunch, this election is the mission critical game ending play.

The final financial campaign report for the candidates and for the PACs won't be made public until after the election, but it's a sure bet that Creech, Taylor, and other Marriott/Mardirossian interests will have donated heavily to the CQG and their supported candidates Hammett, Bill Willson, and Jim Woods. The dogged support of Hammett by the Marriott supporters should be sending alarm bells out to the electorate, but so far airport development has taken a back seat in public debate.

Aris Mardirossian: Not a nice guy? (I'm so gonna get sued)
Aris Mardirossian is the ultra-wealthy private investor who appeared before council earlier this year as the backer of the proposed Marriot to be built where the VGA golf course currently sits. Mardirossian has previously been convicted of campaign finance violations in his home state of Maryland, this stemming from campaign activities in local elections in 1986.

More recently, Mardirossian filed a defamation lawsuit against a local Maryland activist after receiving a letter asking if he was planning to cut down trees that line the Potomac River. According to reports in the Washington Post, Mardirossian was seeking $700,000 in damages from Wayne Goldstein after Goldstein inquired in writing as to whether or not Mardirossian was planning to cut the trees down. That lawsuit was dismissed in January of this year, however Mardirossian has promised to file the same lawsuit again. Critics and activists in the area have attacked Mardirossian over the lawsuit, claiming that the suit is frivolous and a thinly disguised attempt at intimidating conservation activists.

Hmmmm.... that's not a story that is likely to endear Mardirossian, Creech, and Taylor to this writer. Seems like I've heard a local variation of this story before....

So, Aris, you gonna cut any trees down at the VGA? I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

Utility bills to get fired up
Another quiet item floating in the background is the idea of tacking extra fees on your utility bills for the fire department. There have been some low-key public discussion of this in the past, but the issue was buried and has now become a low-key unspoken campaign issue.

According to council candidate Sue Lang, the fireman's union reps had meetings with candidates to dangle a union endorsement in front of the candidates' faces. The price for the endorsement and a donation to campaign accounts: Support the inclusion of fire department fees on utility bills. Lang stated that she was told that if the fees were to be implemented, the process would have to start in November due to some state statutory requirements. Lang immediately lost interest and took a pass on supporting the fees, stating the public needed to be informed and give input first.

Councilman Bill Willson apparently took the bait, though. At the forum sponsored by the Venice Area Chamber of Commerce, Willson brought up the issue of fire department fees, stating that it was something that council was going to have to look at in the near future as a possible way to fund the fire department.

Excuse me, but isn't that what property taxes are generally designated for?

Mayor Hammett has been bragging on the campaign trail about how taxes have been lowered in Venice (huh?). If true, now we know how -- just transfer the money needed over to the utility bills. Voila -- no new taxes, no lip-reading required.

Woods: Miller's towers are inappropriate
Hammett: Uhhh, I voted to approve them
Jim Woods, running to retain the council seat that he was appointed to, has twice addressed the issue of Mike Miller's Waterfront / Tra Ponti island development projects during campaign appearances, stating that he disapproves of the three tall towers that have already been built at the north end of the island in Venice. Woods stated that the towers were unappealing and perhaps inappropriate for the area. What Woods didn't say: Mayor Hammett voted for the approval of those very same towers back when Hammett was on the city's planning commission.

Meanwhile, Hammett is backtracking madly away from Tra Ponti. Both Hamett and Willson are stating that their joint proposal to reduce two of Tra Ponti's four buildings from six stories to five were an attempt at compromise designed to see what the public wanted. That proposal was given a thumbs up by council at its first legal reading and was scheduled to sail through at the second reading late last month until public outcry made it clear that the electorate was ready to stage a military coup if the project was approved.

The new spin, as stated above, is that the six stories/five stories vote of approval by council was just a public relations test run, with Hammett now totally rewriting recent history by stating that he only wanted the project to be as tall as the Venice Avenue Bridge (which is only some 20 or so feet high, as opposed to the 60+ feet that Tra Ponti was approved at during the first vote by council). It was Hammett who first proposed the "compromise" of six stories and five stories for the Tra Ponti project.

Levine: We've done it, finally -- well, maybe
All of this has led Venice Taxpayers League prez Herb Levine to issue a dangerous early pronouncement: "We've already won." Levine is confidant at this time that the Concerned Taxpayers PAC-sponsored candidates of Martin, Lang and Zavodnyik are unbeatable. For Levine, the final nail in the CQG coffin was the Wal-Mart. When that uprising started, it was the end of the end.

I'm not seeing it quite the same way. Hammett has made a lot of political enemies, and that alone would seem to guarantee the swearing in ceremony of Ed Martin in November, but Hammett was hit with the double-whammy of his own incompetence matched up against Ed Martin's professionalism. Martin is outclassing Hammett even in normally safe CQG venues like the realtor and Chamber of Commerce forums.

So I think it's safe to say that Martin is a lock for mayor.

Lang/Woods
As to Lang versus Woods and Zavodnyik versus Willson, who knows?

Jim Woods is trying to distance himself historically and philosophically from developer attorney E.G. 'Dan' Boone's CQG PAC as much as possible, this in spite of the fact that it was Dan Boone who reportedly originally approached Woods with the offer of an appointed council seat after the resignation of Dean Calamaras as mayor. How successful can Woods be at increasing that distance? We have three weeks to answer that question, but Woods has already started by giving a thumbs down to Mike Miller's previously built projects, approved and voted for by Woods' good friend, Hizzoner Mayor Hammett.

Woods is playing this race soft and quiet, so it's hard to fix on the guy to actually give a solid political attack. Sue Lang is, in the meantime, attacking the general policies that the city, and by default Woods, has pursued over the past two or three years. That's a virtual gold mine of political weaponry, but so far Woods has yet to get hit by any of it.

Woods will, no doubt, try to maintain his distance from past and ongoing scandals and he'll play heavily on the 'I'm a nice guy' theme, while Lang will no doubt stand on her history as an activist with a public interest in the town's actual residents. That scale could still tip either way on election day.

Willson/Zavodnyik
As to Willson versus Zavodnyik, here's where things get interesting. Willson has been known to get aggressive, even angry, in his rhetoric when supporting his views. Zavodnyik has had a tendency to underplay his own political anger at the status quo, but that's starting to change. At the MainStreet forum, it was Willson who played the part of the peacemaker and bridge builder, while Zavodnyik spoke in loud, angry tones over Wal-Mart, Tra Ponti, and (his real passion) the city's almost total lack of any kind of environmental stewardship plan.

Willson has a long history in this town and a lot of old friends, while Zavodnyik is still a relative unknown in many circles. Zavodnyik still has an uphill fight to gain recognition in the minds of the voters, plus the fact that his last name is near unpronounceable at first glance. Strangely enough in the end, those are likely to be the final factors that determine the outcome of the Willson/Zavodnyik race.

What else could possibly go worrrnnnng?
The good news: there's only three weeks left. For the CQG candidates, that's cause for a sigh of relief.

After all, what else could possibly go wrong?

By the way, anyone know if the funding for the second runway repaving is coming through from the FAA as promised?

No?

Oh.

Ooooops.

You weren't supposed to know about that yet, either. Shhhhhhhhhhhhh.......

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.