It happened so fast, Bradenton Beach resident Frank Harrison didn’t see it coming.
Bradenton Beach Commissioner Jan Vosburgh said it was unnecessary.
One minute on Sept. 17 James Lynch was making a presentation to the city commission, explaining that a group of citizens met Sept. 9 in city hall to discuss whether a moratorium on residential construction was warranted — just as was enacted in Anna Maria and Holmes Beach — and how to make it happen.
The group reached consensus to put a moratorium proposal on the commission’s Sept. 17 agenda. Lynch completed a rewrite of the Holmes Beach moratorium ordinance to Bradenton Beach specifications to meet the 24-hour deadline for the next commission agenda.
There was an “overwhelming feeling” from the panel that it take this step, Lynch told commissioners. “We first need to stop the building.”
But a few minutes after Lynch spoke, Mayor Jack Clarke and city attorney Ricinda Perry convinced three city commissioners to forego a moratorium and instead begin work on an ordinance to regulate vacation rental properties, possibly similar to the one passed in Anna Maria.
Harrison, a leader of residents who oppose the infiltration of large rental homes on Anna Maria Island and their impact on quality of life, originally opposed the formation of a citizens’ panel, calling it a diversion. But he attended the Sept. 9 citizens’ panel meeting.
After the Sept. 17 meeting, he said Clarke’s proposal was contrary to the mayor’s creation of the panel, his invitation to those who served on the panel and his encouragement that Lynch meet the city clerk’s deadline.
Instead of a moratorium, commissioners voted 4-1 to have staff prepare a “quality-of-life ordinance” that would regulate short-term rentals for commission and/or planning and zoning board approval by Nov. 17.
While Harrison and many others want a vacation rental regulation ordinance, they believe issuing a moratorium first would give the city time to write a thoughtful list of defensible rental guidelines without a rush by developers to submit plans and build more large vacation homes.
“In today’s meeting I feel like I was sold down the river. I was manipulated. I was deceived,” Harrison said of Clarke’s actions. “I was asked, myself and the other people on the citizens’ committee were asked by the mayor to produce this moratorium.”
“I know there are not two sides to this issue,” Clarke said at the meeting. “There are four or five sides to this issue.”
Harrison said he and his supporters thought a moratorium would be approved at the Sept. 17 meeting, “until we had a seven-minute recess, and then all of the sudden the mayor comes back in and he says, ‘I’ve been thinking,’” Harrison said.
Harrison added that Clarke and Perry then steered commissioners away from the moratorium proposal, citing costs, although, he claimed, the city attorney could likely review the moratorium proposal in two billable hours.
“This would have been a stop-work order,” Harrison said. “Breathing room.”
Lynn Zemmer, broker/owner of Edgewater Real Estate in Bradenton Beach, who chaired the citizens’ panel’s meeting, said she liked Clarke’s suggestion.
“Our problem is rentals,” she said. “I don’t know that it’s building.”
There currently are about 20 permits at some stage of review in Bradenton Beach. Harrison said in the two months it would take to create and pass an ordinance regulating behavior at vacation rentals, building permits will continue to be issued.
“It was pure deception, sabotage. It was a carefully orchestrated dance between our city attorney and the mayor and some people on the commission,” Harrison said. “They vote with him, no matter what he does.”
Harrison said the only commissioner who has “consistently stood up” against what many call “party houses” is Vosburgh. She cast the lone dissenting vote Sept. 17 against having staff prepare a “quality-of-life ordinance” and the lone vote in favor of an eight-month moratorium on construction of homes with four or more bedrooms.
The moratorium vote failed 1-4. Clarke and Commissioners Janie Robertson, John Shaughnessy and Ed Straight voted against the moratorium, and for pursuit of the “quality-of-life” ordinance.
“I did not think we served the community of Bradenton Beach,” Vosburgh said after the meeting. “It’s a very simple thing, in my opinion, to just say, ‘We’re going to have a moratorium. We’re not making any decisions about anything. We’re just going to call a timeout.’
“We have to look at the situation, because it’s bad,” Vosburgh said of the growing number of vacation homes in Bradenton Beach.