Administrative Review has become a hot topic in today’s news. The history of how and why it came to the City of Sarasota has been rewritten in an attempt to fit a narrative of convenience for those who want to see Sarasota frozen in time.

In 2001, I was working in downtown Sarasota and it was a ghost town. Yes, we had homeless even back then and many of those who I see today, I saw back then. There was little to no complaint about them because they took refuge in the vestibules of the empty storefronts on Main Street. Other than the homeless, Main Street was mostly a ghost town at 5pm.

Downtown needed redevelopment and reinvestment very badly. Business men and women were reluctant to invest because of the bad business climate created by government. Investment was very uncertain.