Stealthed pro-growth politicos hidden in U.S. News and World Report retirement article
A deceptive message goes out as pro-developer PAC fundraiser Jack Meyerhoff and Planning Commissioner Janis Fawn are stealthed in Top Ten article as simple anonymous retirees; Fawn says residents don't want a lot of 15-story buildings on the Intracoastal -- how many is "not a lot?"
-- John Patten, 07/12/07
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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REFERENCED ARTICLE:
10 Best places to retire - Venice, Florida
-- U.S. News and World Report, 09/20/07

PICS:
ABOVE - The cover of the 10/01/07 edition of U.S. News & World Report; BELOW - Mayor Hammett (at left) after a lunch at CQG's unofficial headquarters with CQG bigwig Jack Meyerhoff (public record photo, from city's electronic archive)

Eh? What's this, then?
Overall, the puff-piece article on Venice in the current issue of U.S. News and World Report is a nice article and is bound to cause some interest in local real estate. And that's a good thing. God knows, we could use the boost -- house prices are dropping, there's For Sale and For Rent signs all over town in astounding abundance and foreclosures are on their way up.

Then along comes U.S. News and World Report with a glowing article about our town, our environment, and our economy. It's gotta help, right? Well, I hope so.

Despite the brouhaha that such an article would normally arouse, city hall apparently thought little enough of it -- the mayor gave the article a very brief mention at the end of last Tuesday's city council meeting and compounded the downplay by misidentifying the publication as Newsweek. Perhaps that is just as well -- the article is filled with hidden deceptions, little ones here and there, that add up to a big deception -- that Venice is a growing and vibrant town with a healthy economy.

Truth is we're stalled and out of gas. We're also very hungry. We have already resorted to cannibalism. Things will get uglier before they get better.

How we got here
Over the past decade, our city leaders and local economic/political power brokers put all of our eggs in one basket: land development marketed at a retiree customer base. It has caused a skewed population demographic bending way over towards retirement age and a skewed economic plan that was doomed to fail at some point.

As property values ballooned and soared in Florida a year or two back, Sarasota County became the percentage leader in housing inflation in the state, with North Port and Venice leading the county in inflationary jumps in housing prices. We thought we were in heaven, an economic Mecca that would last forever. Some of us did, anyway.

Jump to the present and the entire nation is in a housing slump. Note that the biggest bubble in the nation was, for a time, right here in our little burg. Note also that our bubble was the first to pop.

Thus, a very tenuous case can be made that our local development machine did far more than just cause a housing recession here in Venice and in the county. Our town was at the head of the national parade. We led the entire country right into the current national housing slump.

Wait, just hear me out, because it's true and the truth of it will become self-evident at the end of this short paragraph: We were one of the the first balloons to swell; we were the biggest balloon in the state (in a state that was the biggest balloon in the country); our local balloon was the first to pop; and our area was the first to head straight for the economic bottom, which we still haven't fully hit yet, a dive that the whole country is following us down on.

As a community, we did what the 9/11 terrorists who lived and trained here in Venice were unable to do: we were the leading barrage of an economic bombing that brought our country to its knees.

We weren't wholly responsible -- I'm not trying to say that we caused the entire nation to go bust, but a clear look at recent history shows that we -- south Sarasota County -- were the lead land-developer lemmings who cheered everyone else on to follow us over the cliff.

Halfbacks?
At a recent political meet and greet for opposition city council candidates at the Venetian Golf and River Club, a new word popped up on my radar: halfbacks. In this context, the word has nothing to do with football, it refers to retirees from the north who buy a house in the area and move in, then get sticker shock over taxes and insurance costs (primarily hurricane related insurance). These folks then sell their homes for whatever they can get and move halfway back up north, say to Georgia or North Carolina, where taxes and insurance aren't killing them. According to the anecdotal information at the meeting, halfbacks are becoming more and more common and several of the attendees stated that they were in the process of halfbacking.

We tried to warn you, but...
Herb Levine, president of The Venice Taxpayers League, had been smelling a rat all along during the economic ride up and was very vocal about his olfactory perceptions. When the real estate bubble finally popped, Herb had the sad and heartbreaking satisfaction of being able to say, "Told ya so." Knowing Levine as well as I do, I can tell you that there is no glee in the statement, just an overwhelming feeling of helplessness over a tragedy that was easily avoidable.

So now, here in the present, we know of only one way to dig ourselves out of this hole: keep going down the same economic road that got us here. Land development will still be our economic savior. More retirees -- get 'em in here by the busloads. Skew that population demographic -- the aging rich and not-so rich will bail us out. More buildings, more old people -- that's the ticket.

Whether or not Venice is a great place to retire to is, in a sense, irrelevant. Getting retirees to actually believe it is essential -- we're all waiting here like vultures, ready to rip the meat off their bones when they come (oh God, please come, you have no idea how badly we need you).

And so, out comes this puff piece in U.S. News and World Report -- Venice is a great place to retire. That may be, but the hidden message within the article, fueled by U.S. News' lack of attribution in quotes given by local politicos, is cause enough raise an alarm about the article.

U.S. News on Venice: Just your average random man-on-the-street types
Let's start with the most egregious quote, this from the final paragraph in the article:

Development pressures are building on the core area known as "The Island," which was carved away from the mainland by the man-made Intercoastal Waterway. Residents worry about builders pushing for taller buildings, a few of which have already been built along the waterway. "We don't want a lot of 15-story buildings," says retiree Janis Fawn. But, she says, residents understand that the city has to grow. "If we didn't, Main Street would just die. And Venice wouldn't be the same."

Janis Fawn is no normal retiree. She's a city planning commissioner and by her own past statement, a probable pick by the CQG to run in next year's election for city council when Rick Tacy has to drop out due to term limits. As a planning commissioner, she voted in favor of Mike Miller's Tra Ponti proposal at six stories, which then sent the proposal to city hall, which then caused a bloody civil war. A cease-fire has been temporarily called, pending workshops, upcoming elections, and burial of the politically dead victims of this first brutal battle.

U.S. News didn't tell the nation that -- Fawn is instead presented as an everyman, a randomly plucked voice from the community. That's simply not true and it's bad journalism.

We don't want a lot of 15-story buildings
The message has been pretty clear to city council: no more tall buildings along the Intracoastal Waterway We don't even want five stories. Thus, Fawn's quote that we don't want a lot of 15-story buildings there is, at the very least, perplexing. How many is not a lot? How many does she think that the citizens of Venice will let the planning commission, city council, and the CQG get away with?

As to Fawn's statement that we're all on the same page, that if we don't allow for a few more tall buildings, not a lot, say, maybe 15-story ones, that Main Street will just die, -- say what? Has she been on vacation? Not read the papers lately? Coma victim?

If we don't grow, we die -- it seems to be a self-serving truth, yet it is a false premise, one that people take to heart as such a core basic truth that few ever stop to ask if it really is true.

Debunking that particular myth is the basis for Eben Fodor's revolutionary book, Better Not Bigger, a book that became Herb Levine's gospel a few years back. Quoting from Fodor over the years, Levine correctly predicted where this town was headed economically and demographically. The message flew in the face of the pro-development boom at the time as there was no way that the economic good times could ever possibly end, and yet there was Levine pointedly arguing that despite a bulging economy, we were headed for serious trouble.

And here, in the pages of U.S. News, standing in the rubble of the economic collapse, simple anonymous retiree Janis Fawn is cheerily telling the nation that a few 15-story buildings along the Intracoastal, not a lot, just a few, are necessary to keep Main Street alive and that everyone in Venice knows this to be true.

She successfully sold the message to a national publication. Good luck with selling it to the locals, though. I think the natives are a bit restless on the issue.

You don't know Jack
U.S. News trots out another randomly picked oldster:

Venice has since turned into the charming core of a Gulf Coast community that has boomed since the 1980s, with most of the recent growth spreading into the surrounding county in the form of typically modern developments: often gated subdivisions that hug a dozen or so championship golf courses. "But everyone in the area considers themselves a Venetian," says Jack Meyerhoff, 81, who has lived for 25 years in the county.

Jack Meyerhoff has his own plaque-labeled booth at Bogey's, the unofficial headquarters of the pro-development PAC Citizens for Quality Government (aka Citizens for Quantity Growth aka the CQG). He's been a fundraiser and contributor to the PAC and an all-around CQG spook/shady character for years. He's good friends with our current mayor and is a friend and presumed supporter of Fawn. More on Meyerhoff can be found here. As a fully fledged dues-paying member of the CQG, one their most prominent members at that, he is part of the pro-developer movement.

Again, U.S. News tossing him off as just another cheery retiree picked seemingly at random is a deception, a huge one.

As for the statement that most of the area growth has happened just outside of Venice rather than in it -- well, that might be true if in the past years we hadn't actually annexed everything possible that looked like it might support a brick or two. The plain fact is that Venice and North Port were getting so wacky about annexation and development (North Port even more so than Venice) that Sarasota County had to put the slam-down on us in the form of a Joint Planning Agreement that the city leaders reluctantly agreed to after having a legal gun held to  their collective heads.

The Senior Friendship Center enters the fray

"We can walk or bike to just about anything—activities, shopping, doctors, whatever," says Paul Cline, who retired to Venice with his wife, Diane, nine years ago. The couple was drawn to Venice's cozy design, which emphasizes a mix of housing that is close to shops and services, undeveloped beaches, neighborhood parks and—unusual for Florida—sidewalks.

I don't know where Paul Cline lives, but based on that description, I strongly suspect that it's not in Venice. Either that, or, and more likely, U.S. News reporter David LeGesse's audio recorder screwed up and condensed an hour-long recorded interview into one sentence. Where in this town can you be in walking distance to undeveloped beaches and shops and services? Venice Beach, near downtown, is anything but undeveloped. The one stretch of undeveloped beach we have (and we still have it, thank God, and the bastards want to develop that with a Marriott) is Caspersen, named after Finn Caspersen, the founder of the Venice Taxpayers League. The only things near it are a single restaurant, a dog park, and a combo golf course/airport.

Paul Cline is listed on the web as being a retired political science teacher and a committee chair for the Senior Friendship Center, a successful non-profit that gets free rent from the airport land on the east side of the Intracoastal. The Senior Friendship Center is heavily dependent on an ever -increasing retiree population for its economic survival. That the Friendship Center does a lot of good goes without saying and I'm not trying to derail either them or Cline. But, and here's the key -- Cline's organization needs more retirees to move into the area on a constant basis in order to stay economically viable, so it can be argued that Cline has a vested interest in luring retirees here.

U.S. News never gave a hint of that, only that he is a merry, random retiree. It was yet another deception on U.S. News' part to include his quote without properly attributing his connection to a retiree-dependent organization.

Ya know, I think I've had enough
All of which leads to a letter that I fired off to the mag:

As a non-retired resident of Venice, Florida, I was pleased to read our inclusion in your Top Ten list. Still, I was somewhat mystified by the lack of attribution in the quotes that were used, ostensibly from random retirees.

Venice is currently embroiled in a high-strung class war between residents and land developers, a war that has already overturned the county government and is on the verge of ousting the current city council.

Thus, it was interesting to see that the persons quoted in your articles were not exactly who you reported they were. You cited Janis Fawn as a simple resident, a retiree. She is, in fact, an appointed government official, to wit: a city planning commissioner. Jack Meyerhoff is friend and political ally of Fawn's and is a principal fundraiser for the local pro-developer PAC, the Citizens for Quality Government. Paul Cline is a committee chair for The Senior Friendship Center, a non-profit that financially benefits from increased retiree population.

While that may seem innocuous at your level, locally the piece is seen as another pro-development piece of propaganda with stealthed politicos pushing a growth agenda that has caused the collapse of the real estate market in this area.

Again, I was pleased to see nice things written about our town. I was appalled at your magazine's willingness to enter the local political dialog with stealthed and improperly attributed quotes from pro-development politicos that can only add fuel to an already red-hot local political bonfire.

.
-- John Patten
-- Venice Florida! dot com
 

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.