Bonds & The Bay

Kicking the can down the road is catching up with the City Commission

Since 2013, the City of Sarasota has been planning a new bayfront project to transform the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall parking lot into a park. Everyone wants to see a park where 40 acres of waterfront asphalt is now. Ten year later our City Commission is still failing to confront the project’s challenges. Yesterday, one City Commissioner claimed the asphalt has already been turned into a park! Maybe he believes his approval of a project is the same as the project being finished. Wishful thinking doesn’t get the job done.

The City of Sarasota has never addressed the elephant in the room: how to provide parking for a performing arts hall when the current parking lot becomes a park. This was the very first problem to be solved. Read about it here.

Consequently, there is an ongoing waste of time and money due to the majority of City Commissioners engaging in fantasy instead of problem solving.

On Monday, October 21st, the City Commission was scheduled to vote on yet another aspect of moving forward with the current half-baked plan. But, perhaps in response to rising community concern about glaring problems with the City’s plan, the CEO of the Sarasota Performing Arts Foundation pulled the item from the City Commission agenda. The Sarasota Performing Arts Foundation is the new foundation taking over for the Van Wezel Foundation to create a new performing arts hall.

A Look Back

For a City of savvy residents who value arts and culture, Sarasota can have a short memory. A prior effort to transform the Van Wezel parking lot into a park and arts district was initiated in the early 2000s. The Sarasota Cultural Park Master Plan failed to come to fruition and died in 2007. Lack of support and problems with funding were cited reasons for its demise. Maybe parking was a factor as well.

Missing pieces - Climate Change, Parking, Money

We have never seen a substantive discussion about climate change and the economic feasibility of placing a new performing arts hall on the bayfront.

We have never seen a robust discussion about how to manage parking when the the old parking lot is turned into a park.

It has been over ten years since Bayfront 2020, now The Bay, began. It has been ten years since a new Sarasota Performing Arts Center (SPAC) was proposed. TEN YEARS. The private foundation partner isn’t anywhere close to raising the original $150 million they said they would raise. Since the design has now changed (more buildings on the bayfront), and costs are unknown, it’s reasonable to assume the original $300 million price tag is higher. But let’s stick with $300 million.

Show us the money

You know, $300 million is A LOT of money for a city of 55,000 people. That $300 million for a new arts hall is a lot of money even if the current private foundation comes up with their half (which appears unlikely).

There’s an obvious question that comes to mind - has Sarasota County or ANY of its cities ever put so much revenue into an arts project? or a park project? or any non-essential infrastructure project?

As far as I can tell, the answer is no. And the thing is, if such a project were put together by Sarasota County, we would know. Why? Because we would have had to approve it via referendum.

Bonds and Voters

Beginning in 1984, Sarasota voters amended our County Charter to require referenda for projects which have a bond issue great than $17 million dollars. The County Charter was later amended to have that bonding limit adjusted yearly to keep pace with the Consumer Price Index (CPI), beginning in October 2003 and every October thereafter. According to the CPI, $100 in 2003 is equivalent to $171 in 2024. So the County bonding limit is about $29 million today. A County project which requires more than $29 million requires voter approval. Remember the 2018 referendum to approve a $65 million bond to fund extending the Legacy Trail? That project required voter approval because it exceeded the County bond limit imposed by section 5.2D of the Sarasota County Charter.

The City of Sarasota doesn’t have the same kind of bonding limit in it’s charter, but it does have a voter approval provision for some bonds.

General Obligation Bonds & The City

The City Charter requires voter approval to issue general obligation bonds. These are bonds which are paid with City tax revenues. The City Commission will not conduct a referendum to approve plans to bond $150 million or more for a new performing arts hall. For the past ten years, all the Commissioners who have supported this particular new performing arts hall also know that voters would likely vote down a bond of $150 million or more for a new hall. So what kind of bond, since 2013, has the City Commission been planning to issue to issue for their $300 million plus arts hall plan?

Revenue Bonds & The City

The answer is a revenue bond. The City Charter does not place the same contraints on revenue bonds. The City Charter does not require voter approval for revenue bonds. Who pays for revenue bonds? What are they?

City revenue bonds are “payable solely from revenues to be derived by the city from the operation of any revenue-producing utility or facility owned and operated by the city or to be acquired or constructed by the city, or the combination of any such utilities and facilities, for the same purposes for which the city may issue general obligation bonds as authorized by this Charter, for the purpose of constructing or acquiring any of the utilities or facilities or performing any of the works or other matters set forth in this Charter or provided to be a municipal purpose under the laws of the State of Florida; and in the absence of any pledge of the ad valorem taxing power of the city, no election shall be required to authorize the city to issue any such revenue bonds.” (article VIII Bonding, Section 2, Revenue Bonds, City of Sarasota Charter)

Revenue bonds are paid by fees the City collects for services the City provides. Higher ticket prices for performance tickets is the primary means that I am aware of as a means to pay for a new Sarasota Performing Arts Center (SPAC) revenue bond. But that doesn’t necessarily mean higher ticket prices will cover the bond. Will we see increased parking fees? Increased fees at places like Arlington Park Pool or Robert Taylor Center? Where exactly will the revenue for this bond come from, and who will be impacted by the fees to fund the bond?

Answer: we don’t know. Why? Because our City Commissioners have not engaged in any in depth or ongoing discussion about SPAC revenue bond funding.

Should the City Be Asking Voters to Approve the Project?

When I served on the City’s Charter Review Committee, I suggested that we create an amendment just like the County Charter, one which would require voter approval for expensive projects just like the County. I simply printed out the very same amendment, Section 5.2D of the County Charter. It works for the County, so it would work for the City.

Before suggesting it to other members of the Charter Review Committee (CRC), I checked in with the City Manager and a few other City officials. Any objections? Any issues? There were none. More than one official shared that they thought it was a good idea. So I went ahead and presented it to my colleagues at the CRC.

When I presented the amendment to the CRC, I was surprised that the City Manager’s attitude had changed entirely. At the CRC meeting he found all kinds of problems with requiring voter approval for projects over (at that time) about $26 million. I was stunned. Clearly something had changed. His objections made no sense, as this amendment had been working for decades for Sarasota County. I was not at all prepared for his pushback, as he had assured me of his support. So I had to decide whether to make an issue of it, or drop it. Given all the other work we had to do, I decided to drop it. I walked away with a valuable lesson, so the effort wasn’t lost.

Wasting Time, Misleading City residents

Discussion about the Sarasota Performing Arts Foundation’s plan for a new hall was pulled from yesterday’s City Commission meeting agenda (October 21, 2024). City residents have been waiting a long time for real answers to obvious questions. A lot of time and money has been spent on a plan which has, for a decade, consistently avoided obvious problems which must be solved.

This mindset continues. Commissioner Arroyo claimed at yesterday’s meeting that “53 acres of parking lot [have been] turned into activated public park space at The Bay” (time point 2:40:45). His statement was misleading at best. The Bay project has created 13 acres of green space with Phase One (south of the Van Wezel) - which is great. But Arroyo spoke as if the Van Wezel’s parking lot (the remaining 40 acres he referenced) has already been converted to green space. Of course those 40 acres of asphalt are still there. The parking has not magically disappeared. It has not yet been replaced with green space.

The fantasy mindset about this project from incumbent Commissioners ranges from Arroyo’s recent claim that the parking lot is already a park, to avoidance of replacement parking, realistic financial planning and climate change challenges. This fantasy mindset has to go. It is irresponsible. It is a waste of City residents’ time, money, patience and good will. It’s been going on for far too long.

We need Commissioners with focus, who recognize, understand and tackle problems. We Commissioners who will not shine these questions on. We need Commissioners who will do their own homework. We need Commissioners who know that realizing The Bay vision requires a complete financial plan: one which takes environmental factors like climate change into account, one which takes parking into account, one which shows which new and existing fees future Commissions will have to impose to fund revenue bonds. Our incumbent Commissioners have not provided this clarity. Even so, they seem to believe they’ve done a fine job with this project.

I want The Bay project to happen. I think most City residents do. It will take time, patience and realistic planning.

City of Sarasota voters - we have choices to make. A popular definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. We need a new approach. Let’s choose sanity.