Meanwhile, George Kruse’s unsuccessful challenger sues the creators of a political cartoon and a local newspaper.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: Jan. 8, 2024
Host: Kevin Van Ostenbridge’s time on the Manatee County Commission is over. Not only is he not the chair of the commission anymore, but he lost in the Republican primaries against another incumbent, George Kruse. Kruse now holds the gavel, and he presented his priorities at a special meeting on Tuesday. But before we get to Kruse’s priorities, here’s another piece of news.
Soundbite: Intro of ‘The Real KVO’
Johannes Werner: Kevin Van Ostenbridge, who was backed by big developer donations and paid a prominent campaign consultant when he lost against Kruse, is not going out on a whimper. What you heard is the soundtrack of the first episode of an animated cartoon called The Real KVO. And that has become Exhibit One in a lawsuit.
Screenshot from the first episode of the cartoon.
As first reported by the Herald Tribune, the former commissioner and his political consultant are now suing the creators of the cartoon character that lampooned Van Ostenbridge and other Manatee County politicians throughout the campaign. “Lambasted” is probably a more appropriate term for what the fluffy blue animated figure – going under the names The Real KVO or Kevin-Kyle Kaczynski Von Oswald XVII – had to say about Van Ostenbridge. A likeness of Van Ostenbridge himself was a
character in the cartoon cast, under the name Angry Little Kevin.
The political consultant, Anthony Pedicini, and the former commissioner are not only suing the creators of the cartoon, but also The Bradenton Times for promoting the content. The plaintiffs allege the creators used their names and animated caricatures in
videos illegally to promote merchandise sales. They also claim that The Bradenton Times — whose publisher is former Manatee County Commissioner Joe McClash — promoted the Von Oswald videos as part of a scheme against them.
Van Ostenbridge
We will keep you posted on the lawsuit.
In the meantime, Manatee County politics is moving on. At a special commission meeting on Tuesday, the new county commission chair, George Kruse, gave a sense of the tone he wants to set while holding the gavel, and what his policy priorities are.
Among others, Kruse promised he will nip any infighting between commissioners in the bud. As to transparency, he pledged that meeting agendas will have to be published as early as possible and that he will not accept any new agenda items after three days before meetings. Any agenda item will have to be backed up with information. He pledged to enforce Robert’s Rules of Order, such as requiting a supermajority to call a question. He said he will offer 30 minutes for public comment at the beginning and at the end of each meeting. And that public commenters will get five instead of three minutes for quasi-judicial hearings. He also pledged to expand and strengthen citizen advisory boards, and create task forces. Finally, he promised to make sure
commissioners to be more accessible to constituents, by hiring commissioner aides, and making public spaces such as libraries available for meetings.
He also described his top five policy priorities. His Number One priority is setting the county’s development boundary. He did not elaborate. He also said he wants to strip red tape to get affordable housing built by individual homeowners.
Kruse, presenting his priorities at a special meeting Tuesday.
George Kruse: Minimum lot sizes and parking ratios — everyone knows I hate both of these things. I only have so much pull. I advocate of affordable housing, everybody knows that. But I think the way we go about it is detrimental to this community in the long run. To get 50 units of affordable housing, what we do is we find some huge parcel of land that someone can build 100 apartments on, and we let them build 200 apartments on it, to get 50 affordable housing units. In doing so, we take a massive chunk of land off, we pave a huge chunk of land first, put 400 cars on the road directly in front of it. Fifty affordable housing units, and we spend a bunch of our tax money in doing so, by way of waiving a lot of fees, and waiving impact fees. There’s better ways of doing this. This county owns hundreds, if not thousands, of non-conforming lots of smaller size you can’t build on, because we have antiquated, over-regulated lot size restrictions. If we remove lot size restrictions, we still have setbacks, we still have FAR, we have all the other rules in there. But if Glen wants to put a 500 square foot tiny home on a 1,500 square-foot lot. That’s one affordable housing unit. I get 49 more Glens, I have created the same 50 affordable housing units. I just did by approving a 200-unit apartment complex, with kind-of infrastructure someplace. It’s a bad way of doing it. I guarantee we’ll get more affordable lowercase – I’m not talking about subsidized lowercase – affordable due to size and location, by getting rid of all of our ridiculous restrictions than we ever will by continuing the path we’re on with the current affordable housing bonuses.
JW: Reporting for WSLR News, Johannes Werner.
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