Two incumbent Anna Maria city commissioners will remain in their seats for another two years.
No one qualified to challenge Commissioners Deanie Sebring and Mark Short in the Nov. 8 general election, allowing the pair to be sworn into new two-year terms as their current terms expire.
So, who are they?
Doris “Deanie” Sebring was raised in Lafayette, Louisiana, and has a broad work history.
Sebring helped run her father’s interior design store in Louisiana, worked as the general manager of an auto dealership in California, then created and sold a company that helped reunite people with their lost keys in Florida.
She moved to Anna Maria in 2014.
By 2017, Sebring wrote a children’s book, “Skip and Deanie’s Flying Bike Trip,” which is based on the imaginary adventures of herself and her real-life diabetic alert dog, Skip.
Sebring was appointed by commission vote in November 2020 to serve a two-year term and now will serve a second full term.
Sebring told The Islander Sept. 22 that her main goal as commissioner is to improve pedestrian and biker safety. She said she was disappointed in the commission’s decision in March not to eliminate parallel parking on Pine Avenue in favor of wider sidewalks and bicycle lanes.
She said she has been hit by motorists twice, including once on Pine Avenue, while riding her bike on the road.
“I’ve actually never been to a beach community you don’t really have sidewalks that continue, you have no bike lanes and you have all this parallel parking down on a main, busy drag where every single child and family ride a bike,” Sebring said.
Overall, Sebring called her first term as commissioner a “huge” learning experience.
“I do like the fact that I understand and am still learning, about how our little city works,” she said.
Mark Short became a full-time resident of Anna Maria in 2014 after vacationing on the island since 1984. He said his wife of 38 years, a Bradenton native, had frequented the island for even longer.
“So when it got time to start thinking about retirement, we pretty much knew where we wanted to end up,” Short told The Islander Sept. 21.
Before retirement, Short worked out of Detroit for the international accounting consultancy firm Ernst & Young on mergers and acquisitions, often in the automotive industry.
On the island, Short became a member of the Center of Anna Maria Island’s finance committee in 2018, a member of the Key Royale Club — though he said he doesn’t play enough golf — and regularly plays bocce with a group of friends.
Short was appointed to the commission in September 2019 on the heels of Brian Seymour’s resignation to fill Seymour’s remaining term. He was elected without contest to his first full term on the dais in 2020 and in November will embark on his second full two-year term.
Short said his first years on the commission have been a learning experience.
“I never really appreciated what really has to happen to make a city function,” he said. “Even a city as relatively small as the city of Anna Maria. … It’s not easy.”
Short said he was looking forward to the city completing long-discussed improvements on Pine Avenue and opening a proposed Mote Marine Laboratory educational outreach center at the T-end of the city pier.
However, he said he wanted to continue exploring options to expand parking in the city, especially near the pier and on Pine Avenue.
In addition to early voting and vote-by-mail, Anna Maria residents can vote at the poll 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 8, at precinct 301, Roser Church, 512 Pine Ave.
There were 940 registered voters in Anna Maria as of Oct. 6, according to the SEO.