Incumbents and challengers disagree on the effectiveness of the city’s approach.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: July 17, 2024
Host: Thursday night was a home game for Ron Kashden, who wants to capture the Sarasota City Commission seat held by Liz Alpert. The questions during the CityPAC panel were mostly geared towards resident concerns, and the overflow crowd a retirement center in downtown Sarasota was audibly on his side. But Alpert, who is the current mayor, not only stood her ground – she actually went on the attack. She did so both against Kashden and the organizers, calling them a “special interest group”. Here’s our report.
Johannes Werner: CityPAC is a neighborhood and condo association-centered group that defines its main role as upholding “resident satisfaction”.
Let’s begin with the candidates absent from the CityPAC event on Thursday. Most notably, they were incumbents Kyle Battie – who holds the seat of the minority-majority District 1 — and Erik Arroyo for District 3. Melissa Furman, who is running against Battie, told the organizers she was traveling abroad.
The panel did feature Alpert and Kashden, vying for the seat representing the wealthy District 2, as well as two challengers in Districts 1 and 3, Sequoia Felton and Kathy Kelley Ohlrich.
Moderator Cathy Antunes, who hosts The Detail show on WSLR, pitched 10 questions to the candidates.
Responding to the question about how the affordable housing crisis could be overcome, Kashden centered his response on a city project to fund construction of a workforce housing project across from city hall in the downtown core. He called the measure inefficient and pointed at another solution.
Ron Kashden: I think that the direction that the commission is focused on right now is very inefficient. What we’re doing is we’re increasing density and getting very little back. And there’s a lot of much more effective means that we can do.
For example, there is the Alliance for Historic Preservation that is currently doing low cost loans, that with $100,000 they were able to save three homes to let affordable housing occur for three families, for $100,000 — and to put that in perspective, the building that the city is currently contemplating in downtown, what the developers think it will cost is $500,000 per unit. So just take this one small little program that the Alliance has where $100,000 could help house three families, versus $500,000 for only one.
JW: Sequoia Felton is a resident of Newtown, which flipped from a homeowner to a tenant neighborhood in a matter of a few years. She described renovation grants from a non-profit, removing obstacles and fees from tiny-house construction, and blocking short-term rentals as solutions.
Sequoia Felton: Just like what he said, as far as the alliance program, I know about the $25,000 they used to actually save four homes in Newtown. And also, I think we should be removing accessory building fees for promoting small, tiny houses on small lots. And also we should be, there’s 700 existing units, we should be taking some of those 700 existing units and vacation rental units, and putting them back into the workforce so people can stay and live in the district.
JW: Alpert’s response centered on the city’s approach of offering higher density to developers, in return for one out of 10 of the new apartments being within reach of working people. She described the measure as a key solution.
Liz Alpert: Actually the city’s approach is working. And I think it’s a good approach. And in fact, We’ve won two awards for our affordable housing initiative — one from the Florida League of Cities and one from a planning association. So I know we’re on the right track. And yes, what you have to do is give a density bonus in order to encourage and incentivize affordable housing. Certainly, historic preservation loans are great, but not every home is a home that’s eligible for historic preservation, and that is not going to create enough affordable housing to give us what we need. Right now we have 478 affordable housing projects or units in the works. 53 of those are due to our housing initiatives.
JW: Kathy Kelley Ohlrich, the District 3 candidate running against Erik Arroyo, pointed at vacation rentals as a central problem, and more regulations as the solution. She does not believe the higher-density measure is working.
Kathy Kelley Ohlrich: The increase in short term vacation rentals has a direct impact on the decrease of the income of availability of affordable housing. So the sooner we get our regulations in place for short term vacation rentals on the mainland, the better off we’re gonna be.
The second thing is density. Everybody says increase density. Well, sure, that makes sense, right? There’s only so much land. You can’t keep building single family dwellings everywhere, so you go up. But we tried increased density bonuses for the Rosemary District — RROD, we tried it for RROD too — and we ended up with no affordable housing units. So I say, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got. And that is no affordable housing.
JW: Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the League of Women Voters of Sarasota held a forum featuring three school board candidates. One pair was incumbent Tom Edwards and challenger Thomas Babicz. Another challenger, Gregory Woods, declined to participate. The third candidate on the panel was Liz Barker, who is challenging Karen Rose. Rose declined to participate as well.
Edwards framed his top priority as financial. He talked about a deterioration of school district finances and pointed at a recent Florida law funneling public school funding to private schools as the main problem.
Tom Edwards: I don’t think the legislature has left us with a level playing field, and with that I would say that when you’re running a business and you’re matching headcount to dollars and cents, expansion and contraction, kids leaving and going, hiring and firing teachers, it’s going to be a challenge.
JW: Barker positioned herself as a mother for students in public schools and having their interest in mind, as well as a former school psychologist. Asked about her top priority, she talked about unity.
Liz Barker: Our budget is certainly much tighter than it has been in the past, and I would say we’re also facing a crisis of trust in the community. Our community has seen board members — not Mr. Edwards, but the majority of our board members make decisions that were not in the best interest of children, that were politically motivated, that mirrored decisions that were made by other extreme boards across the state and across the country. And we saw what that did, and we saw how it divided our community. It distracted us from our shared goals.
JW: Babicz reflects the anti woke agenda set forth by Moms for Liberty. He also positions himself as a successful business executive who can fix financial problems. When he was asked what he would do about Florida teacher salaries ranking at the national bottom, he said he was adamant:
Thomas Bibicz: This one is really very easy, especially for me because this is one of my key points, to increase the teacher’s salary. Teachers in my notebook are the most important, this is the most important profession next to the nurses. You don’t want to ask me who is on the bottom, but politicians for sure. So, because I have a special gift for contract negotiations, so whatever I will be able to save money, I will work with superintendent, maybe we can move some kind of funds. But we will see how much we will be able to do, but I will always vote to increase the salary. I’m not saying that Florida teachers supposed to be the highest paid in the nation, at least average. The bottom of the bottom, this is unacceptable.
JW: To watch the full length videos, go to CityPAC Sarasota and the League of Women Voters Sarasota websites. In other news, the League of Women Voters Sarasota canceled a panel for Sarasota County Commission candidates planned for Monday because only one candidate, Alex Ko, agreed to appear. Tom Knight declined and neither Teresa Mast nor Neil Rainford responded to the invitation.
Johannes Werner, WSLR News.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6pm.