bserver O SARASOTA
You. Your neighbors. Your neighborhood.
DIVERSIONS
NEWS
Young Eagles take flight with local pilots. PAGE 12A
OUR TOWN
FREE • Thursday, AUGUST 23, 2012
Pianist Dick Hyman has enjoyed a colorful career. INSIDE
government watch
SCHOOLS
Southside Panthers head back to school. PAGE 18A
by Mark Gordon | Gulf Coast Business Review
SiGNS of STRENGTH The city of Pensacola altered its governing structure in 2009 after a tumultuous, and somewhat leaderless, decade. Now the city thrives under a strong mayor.
Loren Mayo
+ The world upside down This ceiling-to-floor representation of a tree is part of “Everything is Touching by Underground Wires,” a new art installation by Rick Herzog, assistant professor of sculpture at New College of Florida. Using Gallery 3 at Art Center Sarasota as his canvas, Herzog created a new environment using nontraditional materials. He says it his goal to make viewers look at things a bit differently and consider more closely the world that surrounds them. His recent work explores the “artifcialization” of nature. The display runs Aug. 2 through Sept. 28.
Losses piled up in the last decade for this coastal Panhandle city of 52,000 just east of the Florida-Alabama border. A crippling hurricane preceded the recession. The recession was then exacerbated by a Gulf oil spill that received global attention. The city’s population fell nearly 8% in the 2000s. But, by several measures, Pensacola, home to the U.S. Navy’s celebrated Blue Angels flight team, is in the early stages of a revival. Local officials call the city’s emerging recovery “the upside of Florida.” Pensacola, moreover, is nearly three years into a substantial shift in governmental philosophy: In 2009 residents approved a new charter that, for the first time, meant city government would be overseen by a strong, or elected, mayor. That official would be the city’s chief administrator and decision-maker. The previous charter was a strong city council, which is normally marked by a ceremonial mayor and an unelected manager who supervises city services. Pensacola is unique in its transformation because a strong-mayor switch is rare, according to the Florida League of Cities. Sarasota has flirted with a strong mayor charter several times. Although city officials voted against a strong-mayor charter amendment in a 3-2 vote
INSIDE • Sarasota vs. Pensacola / PAGE 6A
• Mayor Hayward bio / PAGE 7A
• Strong mayor push / PAGE 7A
Aug. 20 (see page 7A), the issue could resurface as a ballot initiative next year. Fort Myers, meanwhile, switched from a strong mayor to a so-called weak mayor in 2005. Bradenton has had a strong-mayor charter since the early 1970s. But Pensacola did more than flirt. “Pensacola was certainly floundering a little bit,” says longtime local business leader and developer Collier Merrill. “We really needed to rally around one central leader.” That rally was soaked back in 2004, when Hurricane Ivan barreled through town. The category 3 storm destroyed dozens of buildings and left a large chunk of the city’s downtown underwater. A portion of a major bridge even collapsed into nearby Escambia Bay. Two more unbending forces soon thumped any potential recovery: The recession that began
SEE MAYOR / 6A
Photo courtesy of Pensacola News Journal
Pensacola native Ashton Hayward was elected mayor of the city in 2010. He was the first mayor elected under the city’s strong mayor charter.
People were very vulnerable. We had to tell our story. We needed to brand our city as the place that’s friendly to business. — Pensacola Mayor Ashton Hayward + Martial artists chop competition Six local athletes, including Jazmyn Friedman, Henry Rhodes, Ryan O’Hern, Donna Judge, Noah Hosford and Sonie Lasker (not pictured) recently returned from Bregenz, Austria, where they represented the U.S. Martial Arts Team in the World Martial Arts Games. They competed in sparring, openhand kata, weapons kata and jujitsu. The total medal tally for the Sarasota athletes was 10 golds, six silvers and three bronzes.
transient trouble
by Kurt Schultheis | City Editor
Aggressive vagrants anger commissioners The Sarasota Police Department has been told to curtail a growing, aggressive population of homeless people downtown. You’ve know there’s a problem when the mayor of your city tells her police department and fellow commissioners she “doesn’t feel comfortable walking downtown anymore” because of a
growing homeless population. That’s exactly what Mayor Suzanne Atwell did Monday night at the Sarasota City Commission’s regular meeting. Atwell and the rest of the com-
mission made it known they are fed up with a homeless population that hovers around Selby Five Points Park and the Selby Public Library. Atwell, an avid walker, said she
doesn’t walk that area anymore because she’s worried of running into aggressive panhandlers. “This has reached a whole new level,” Atwell said. “When you have this type of behavior in your city, you’re not sure what’s
SEE HOMELESS / 2A
INDEX Briefs.................... 4A Classifieds..........27A
Cops Corner........10A Crossword...........26A
Neighborhood.....18A Opinion................. 8A
Real Estate.........24A Weather..............26A
Vol. 8, No. 43 | Two sections YourObserver.com