bserver O
LONGBOAT Thursday, APRIL 7, 2011
You. Your neighbors. Your neighborhood.
DIVERSIONS
IN MEMORIAM
KEY LIFE
Actress Melliss Kenworthy knocks us out in 10 minutes. INSIDE.
Lou Gorman gave everyone the VIP treatment.
The Public Interest Committee celebrates 25 years of action.
OUR TOWN
Dora Walters
+ Buck bakes the cake at Christ Church When members of Christ Church of Longboat Key, Presbyterian gather for their monthly dinners, the menu changes and so does the chef. But there is one constant — church member Patty Buck always prepares the dessert. At a recent dinner, the dessert was carrot cake, and Buck baked all 10 of them — and frosted them, too. Buck says it is a labor of love and that she really enjoys baking. And the members enjoy her desserts — there are never any leftovers.
Photo courtesy of Jim Herrington
+ Mourning doves right at home on Key For the second year, a pair of mourning doves has nested in a hanging planter just a few feet from the front door of Jim Herrington and Carol Camiener’s Emerald Harbor home. The birds are not disturbed by the couple’s coming and going. Two eggs recently hatched, and if you look closely at Herrington’s photograph, you will see them peeking out from underneath their mother’s wing.
SEE OUR TOWN / PAGE 8A
PAGE 5A.
fresh faces
PAGE 1B.
FLOOD OF PROBLEMS
By Kurt Schultheis | City Editor
Commission chooses Leaky pipes Zunz for District 5 seat create GMD By Kurt Schultheis | City Editor
The Longboat Key Town Commission welcomed former Planning and Zoning Board member Pat Zunz to the dais Monday night.
congestion
The Longboat Key Town Commission’s transformation continued Monday, April 4 when Land’s End resident Pat Zunz was elected to the District 5 seat, recently vacated by Robert Siekmann. Vice Mayor David Brenner nominated Zunz, while Commissioner Hal Lenobel nominated former Mayor Jeremy Whatmough and Commissioner Lynn Larson nominated former Mayor Ron Johnson. Brenner, Mayor Jim Brown and Commissioners Phillip Younger and Jack Duncan voted for Zunz. Lenobel voted for Whatmough, and Larson voted for Johnson. For only the third time since 1955, two of the seven seated commissioners are women. Zunz, who will serve out the year left on former Commissioner Robert Siekmann’s two-year term, becomes the sixth new face on the commission in the last three years. (Other recently elected commissioners with no prior commission experience are Brown, Larson, Brenner, Younger and former Commissioner Gene Jaleski.) Although Zunz has no prior commission experience, she has made her mark at Town Hall in the last eight years. Zunz was a Zoning Board of Adjustment member from 2004 to 2009 and spent the last three years on the board as its chairwoman. When Zunz resigned in May 2009, she was appointed to the Planning and Zoning Board, for which she gave input when the board reviewed the Longboat Key Club and Resort’s Islandside renovation-and-expansion project. Four of the seven current commissioners were former Longboat Key Planning and Zoning Board members.
Leaking wastewater pipes under Gulf of Mexico Drive are creating construction zones along the island’s most traveled road. An old, corroding, iron wastewater pipe that funnels all of the sewer water on the south end of the Key is wasting away and creating flooding. Now the possibility exists that Gulf of Mexico Drive may need to be torn up to replace it. A small portion of the 30-year-old pipe was scheduled to be replaced this summer, along with a wastewater lift station in the area, but Mother Nature has severely corroded a 50foot section of the pipe and created a major construction zone, complete with concrete construction barriers, just north of Bay Isles Road in the northbound lane. Work to repair the pipe, which is 24 inches in diameter and sits 15 feet underground, began Friday, April 1, and it could take at least a week to completely stop the leak, which has flooded Bicentennial Park. “We located the pipe, found it extremely deteriorated, and it was obvious we were in deep trouble,” said Public Works Director Juan Florensa said.
SEE PIPES / PAGE 2A
Dora Walters
The Longboat Key Town Commission elected Pat Zunz to the District 5 Commission seat Monday night.
Zunz, originally from New York, has also chaired the town’s Tree Subcommittee and the Vision Plan Subcommittee that worked last summer to update the Vision Plan. Brenner told the Town Commission he was impressed with Zunz’s work last summer on that plan. “We met every Wednesday for 10 weeks last year, and I was impressed with the way she handled that committee,”
Brenner said. “She would make a great addition to the commission.” Zunz, a retired publishinghouse editor and landscape designer, was also on the Zoning Board of Adjustment for eight years in South Orange, N.J., where she was also involved in creating a master plan for the town. Zunz and her husband
SEE ZUNZ / PAGE 2A
Dora Walters
The northbound lane in the 2800 block of Gulf of Mexico Drive is being rerouted while a wastewater pipe is repaired.
INDEX Classifieds ........ 12B Cops Corner....... 10A
Crossword.......... 11B Deal Us In......... 10B
Letters..................7A Opinion.................6A
Real Estate.......... 2B Weather............. 11B
Vol. 33, No. 36 | Three sections
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