THE IMPACT FEE SCAM
How builders get you to pay for their profits
through skyrocketing property taxes:
Hey buddy, can you spare a dime?
Due to inadequate impact fees, how much does growth really cost
the average lone taxpayer? For every new single family home that is
built, an existing taxpayer can expect to have to pay 10,
which really isn't that much... until you figure in multipliers like
40,000 new homes
-- Venice Florida! dot com,
originally posted on 10/17/06
City unveils airport development plans
Our first look at architect drawings of what city hall wants the
Venice shoreline to look like in five years
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 11/30/06
Marriott looking to build on airport
Listed in memo -- Marriott is looking to build at the circus
arena; not mentioned in memo -- they're also looking at building on Harbor Drive
across from the beach; plus: McGoogan retires from VPD, city finally (maybe,
sort of) figures out what the hell is going on with backflow prevention devices,
and Althea's Restaurant is raided by fire inspectors
-- City of Venice memo, posted 11/02/06
Tom Slaughter's Proportionate Fair Share memo to Planning Commission
For a year and a half, the city has known that
it is required by state law to enact a Proportionate Fair Share
ordinance by December 16 of this year; we're finally getting around to
it now at the very last minute -- the city's version and timing allows
for minimum study and debate, maximum benefit for developers, almost no
input from the public
-- City of Venice public document,
posted to the web on 10/18/06
Simmonds runs from growth
issue, accuses writers Ed Martin of the Gondo and Joe McKee of libel for
documenting developer campaign contributions
Zavodnyik comes out swinging at VACC debate
VIDEO: Simmonds denies accepting support from developers despite
online reports from the elections supervisors office, accuses Ed Martin and Joe McKee of libel
for writing about financial contributions to his support PAC by developer interests
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 10/26/06
Our 2006 election endorsements
Zavodnyik, DeVilbiss, Shapiro,
Worthington, paper ballots, and
Katherine Harris' boob job all get our thumbs up; plus our views
on proposed city charter amendments and the state's Amendment 3
-- last updated 10/30/06
Why do politicians hate America?
A short film(?) in two parts
VIDEO:
Republicans want arranged gay marriages and mandatory gay exile
to Massachusetts, David Shapiro compares elections to a poking America with a sharp stick,
Ed Taylor and Bob Anderson want you to eat less chicken, Jeff Snyder loves
America and his wife, Zavodnyik tries to clone himself, and Simmonds thinks the
whole thing is stupid -- all in all, a mixed political bag
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 10/23/06
FROM THE BLOG:
Truth in advertising:
Simmonds now hates growth? Say What?
Here, John, we fixed your ad for you:
A true Venice WTF moment: Simmonds,
who has never met an annexation or a rezoning that he didn't like, is
now claiming to be anti-growth; In other news, the White House will
issue a statement later today that President Bush is now pro-choice and supports
gay marriage
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 10/21/06
We never annexed Henry Ranch? Say
what?
The BS Factor -- Simmonds and
Zavodnyik face off #1
VIDEO: Zavodnyik stutters and stumbles, overloads on political styrofoam;
Simmonds says all of the city's problems are caused by the folks living
in Henry Ranch (Venetian Golf and River Club) -- Simmonds forgets that
they are actually city residents and that he supported the annexation;
Advantage --> Zavodnyik
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 10/19/06
The famed C.J. Fishman
'I Own Your Ass' speech
VIDEO: The CQG's titular head is in the papers touting
that his pro-growth organization is a voice of the people -- funny, cuz
that ain't quite what he said a year ago
-- Venice Florida! dot com,
REVISED 10/09/06
Meet
Ernest Zavodnyik
VIDEO: Ernest Zavodnyik, a retired attorney who formerly worked for the
American Bar Association in Chicago, is still an unknown quantity in his
race for a seat on the Venice City Council; here's the public's first look at Zavodnyik,
from the Sarasota County Commission meeting on
the proposed control growth amendment
-- Venice Florida! dot com, posted 10/06/06
Red tide and Rigby -- Hate to say we
told you so, but...
February, 2005: Venice Florida! dot com objects to having high schoolers
working with a mystery compound: "It could be bleach, it could be
nitroglycerine;" turns out, it's bleach
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 02/25/05
Bureaucrats behaving badly
County vs. city over growth --
Wanna play a shell game?
INCLUDES VIDEO - No matter the outcome, in the war between
the county and the cities over annexations, there is one guaranteed
loser: you, the taxpayer
-- Venice Florida! dot com.
10/01/06
Now you
can dive bomb City Hall
Google Earth updates their satellite pics for Venice -- the pics are
over a year old but they are extremely crisp; program allows you to fly
all over Venice at low altitudes and... is that my neighbor sunbathing
topless?
-- Venice Florida! dot com
This means WAR!
City Manager Marty Black and County Commish Jon Thaxton lock
foreheads in a sweat-streaked battle of willpower; popcorn sales go
through the roof
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 09/05/06
Our first Podcast
County and the city
at war
MP3 podcast, 7.8MBs
Scott Holcomb of
WENG-AM, Englewood, interviews
John Patten on the annexation war between the city and Sarasota County
-- hilarity ensues
-- WENG audio, aired and posted 09/01/06
Hammett snoozes through rezoning
presentation, votes for it anyway
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, huh?
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 08/23/06
The Barefoot Bay Audit (excerpted)
Venice's former city manager (and plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit
against Venice Florida! dot com) gets his latest report card; among the
highlights:
===> current leases are missing and cannot be located
===> emergency reserve funds are down by half-a-million dollars
===> in the year since the prior year's audit, no previously known and
noted deficiencies have been corrected -- NONE! -- and there's a whole
batch of new deficiencies on top of the old ones
===> general ledger, checkbooks have not been balanced once during the
entire fiscal year
===> more (oy vey)
-- 7 pages (from original 42 pages), public record, recreational
district of Barefoot Bay
Hunt in Hell
WITH VIDEO
Bad karma is catching up fast with our former
city manager in the form of financial revelations -- both here in Venice
and in Barefoot Bay, where he can't balance the books because there are
no books to balance
-- Venice Florida! dot com,
REVISED 08/05/06
Come to Venice -- well,
as long as you are in a Traditional Family
Interim mayor says he's all for property rentals as long as they
are to "Traditional Families" -- attorneys are drooling over the legal
fees they'll earn from that remark
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 07/27/06
Charter Review is
done, now it's up to council and the voters
You better read this document VERY VERY closely -- it's only our city's
'constitution' that is up for rewording
-- official record, Venice City Hall, released 07/26/06
Drug raid compromised by
advance notice from within police department
We knew you were coming so we baked
a cake
A raid of known drug dealers in the Sea Jay Apartments in April
yielded one gun and no drugs as the suspects had advance knowledge that the cops were
coming
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 07/21/06
George Hunt's "Parade 'O Lawsuits" continues
Court of Appeals rules that Levine can sue Hunt after all for the false
arrest of Levine that took place back in 2002
-- Court ruling, 2nd District Court of Appeals, 07/19/06
BACK STORY:
Men in Plaid -- The arrest of Herb
Levine
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 12/30/02
Surprise, surprise -- we
owe $10 million to... ourselves?
Covered over by the short term rental circus is a wee little problem --
over the past years, the city has been making unapproved, undocumented
(or improperly documented) loans to
itself from various funds; so far, the loans are all attributable as
coming from the city's General Fund, but...; the total tab
is presently up to $10 million, but city hall would love for you to keep
arguing about those short term rentals
-- internal city hall memo, 07/05/06
Meet Steve Milo
-- includes video
The former head of Marvel Comics' New Media department brings his
techno-savvy expertise to Venice to market his vacation rental homes, discovers
something this site has known all along: Venice hates geeks
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 07/12/06
City to enter three-year
'probation' under the EPA
includes video of Attorney Ron Noble's presentation before
council
Terms include appointment of City Manager Marty Black as
Compliance Officer and an additional three-year contract with utils
management company OMI; status of criminal prosecution of "The Executive
Group" still unknown at this time
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 06/29/06
Simmonds addresses
airport rumors
includes video of Simmonds' comments
Councilman John Simmonds goes where no man has gone before and answers
questions that have been circling the Venice Airport for quite some
time;
Also: Venice Florida! dot com to be allowed to attend future city press
briefings
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 06/29/06
Move afoot to move the airport?
City manager gets the jibblies and slams door on questions
Venice Florida! dot com tries to get the city's take on recent
revelations, is instead given the boot from a city press conference by
City Manager Marty Black for... well, actually we're still not sure, the
story keeps changing
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 06/20/06
Barefoot Bay --
hilarity ensues
An attorney for Barefoot Bay, who admits that he
doesn't know the law very well, was totally unaware that forgery was a
crime (and no, that's not a joke headline, that's for real) -- you think
that's bad, you ought to see how this guy handles a simple public
records request
-- Venice Florida! dot com, REVISED 05/28/06
Hunt's suit based on imaginary
e-mails:
Venice Florida! dot com responds
in court to Hunt's defamation lawsuit
Former Venice city manager George Hunt claims
that vast numbers of e-mails were sent by Venice Florida! dot com's John
Patten to public officials around the state in an apparently successful
smear job; One problem: despite the fact that these e-mails would all be
public record, nobody can seem to locate any of them
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 05/19/06
The Good Ole Boy$ plans:
A marina, a restaurant, a hotel,
maybe some condos, and then (hopefully) a beachfront land-grab
VTL prez Herb Levine pulls no punches in describing what he
thinks is the biggest land grab yet in the history of Venice
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 05/11/06
Sue Lang
goes to war against the marina
In an e-mail to Venice Neighborhood Coalition members, Lang spells out
why she is staunchly opposed to building a marina on airport land
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 04/27/06
Welcome to the
WeirdFest -- Hunt sues while financial foul-ups and forged e-mails float
in the background
You may not want to read The Weglein Report -- Barefoot Bay
resident Sylvia Parish and Venice Florida! dot com's Patten both did and now
they're getting sued
-- VeniceFlorida! dot com, 04/05/06
Venice
Florida! dot com's incredibly lame initial response to Hunt's lawsuit
Our attorney has a roll of duct tape
and he says he's not afraid to use it -- we believe him
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 03/31/06
Calamaras calls it quits
Mayor submits letter of resignation effective "sometime in late
May"
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 03/27/06
Barefoot Bay's newspaper
calls for Hunt to go
Financial foul-ups have the community up in arms -- an editorial from the Barefoot Bay Tattler, reprinted with
permission
-- posted to the web on 03/27/06
Venice Florida! dot com responds to the mayor's "Worst thing
ever" quote
Quite an honor, actually; will we be receiving a plaque?
-- Venice Florida! dot com, revised 03/15/06
Calamaras explodes:
"Your web site is
the worst thing that ever happened to the City of Venice"
-- MP3 audio file, 2.8 MBs
In a truly bizarre WTF?/comedy gold moment at the tail end of
the Valentine's Day
council meeting, Venice Florida! dot com's Patten asks Mayor Calamaras if he stands by
his words as quoted by
Colin Baenziger -- hilarity ensues
-- audio from 02/14/06 City Council meeting
Venice Florida! dot com exclusive
Finally, the missing transcript surfaces:
The second EPA Shade
Meeting -- full text
Attorneys explain to council why the city is cornered into pleading guilty
to Federal charges of unlawful dumping and falsifying documents, mayor still
can't figure out what the city did that was so wrong in the first place
-- posted to the web on 02/15/06
Town Hall Meeting a one-sided
sideshow
Coma-inducing is a phrase that comes to mind
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 02/12/06
Hunt was a great city manager, Venice is just a bad town
with "psychotic" citizens
That's how George Hunt is selling himself on the job market; amazingly,
two mayors and other city officials are backing this story in Hunt's
present marketing materials as distributed by governmental headhunter Colin
Baenziger (and yes, we are really
described in print as "psychotic")
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 01/29/06
EXCLUSIVE!
-- Putting the EPA Shade Meetings into context
Former city manager
Hunt investigated, secretly taped by the FBI
Utils
supervisor Skip Petitt and his attorney Tommy Meyer were wired for Federal
sound at a meeting with George Hunt -- yes, it really happened, and here's
the full story
--
Venice Florida! dot com, reprinted from 07/09/04
After five weeks of public records requests by Venice
Florida! dot com:
The first EPA Shade
Meeting -- full text
The complete text of dialogue from city council's shade meeting
of October 26, 2004
-- posted to the web on 01/20/06
Venice
Florida! dot com press release: For weeks, the city has stalled on releasing
the EPA Shade Transcripts
Under Florida Public Records laws, the only mechanism available to force the
city to release the transcripts or to give a reason for withholding release
is a criminal complaint
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 01/19/06
Transcript
of final EPA shade meeting is missing
Two shade meetings were held in the criminal case of U.S. vs. City of
Venice; transcript of second meeting is missing, city stalling on providing
copy of first transcript
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 01/13/06
The Bait and Switch Chronicles
Bert and Ernie and Pam Johnson
An unlikely threesome makes its way into the annals of
official municipal discussions -- will the city hit the delete button?
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 01/11/06
The Bait and Switch Chronicles
Sold us down the river
Calamaras, Myers and Hunt sold our safety, our friends'
safety, our families' safety -- quite possibly our very lives -- all for
a fabulous cash flow; Calamaras and Myers now plead ignorance
-- Venice Florida! dot com,
REVISED 01/09/06
Our City Hall Wish List for
2006
Things we wish we could write:
Newspapers grow a pair, yet another utils director is given the shove
and the mayor has left the building
-- Venice Florida! dot com, REVISED 01/05/06
