“It’s too difficult to bring people together in this community, to develop a common vision for the community. There’s no social cohesion, no shared principals. Actually, in most successful cities, there are collaborative efforts between the public and private sectors.” Words from the recently departed Downtown Partnership head John Tylee as reported in Sarasota/Manatee Business. Words dismissed by some as “everyone who doesn’t get their way screams the system isn’t working.” Words that I would prefer to categorize as constructive criticism. Words that we need to listen to carefully.

Stop to think for a moment about the anxiety that is being created between government and the private sector in our community over major issues that in the main are agreed on by everyone as deserving of maximum community attention, but in the details have us split like a piece of cord wood. Examples: Downtown Sarasota rezoning and the county’s affordable housing initiative. In the collective vision we all want a walkable downtown, and affordable housing for everyone. Yet when it comes to developing the plans for accomplishing these visions our paths seem to be so divergent that rather than collectively working together on a solution, each party tries to find the road least traveled by the other. In the case of Downtown, City Staff feels that a successful pedestrian friendly downtown will be accomplished by reducing parking in all newly constructed buildings, i.e. “make parking painful”, and we will make the city pedestrian friendly by shuttling downtown visitors into the core from outlying parking areas. The Argus Foundation believes that we have all ready made parking painful. Rather than increase density while reducing parking requirements, would we not be better served by increasing the parking requirement and have dedicated two-hour public parking garages easily accessible to shopping? Suffice it to say that there are many other points of disagreement. On the issue of the Downtown Master Plan alone, of which the massive rezoning of 1,800 parcels of land downtown is probably the most draconian element, we wonder why we cannot all sit down together and resolve these differences? Let me quickly point out that we are not at an impasse on this issue or any of the community issues where we have not achieved collaborative solutions to our problems. Instead, we are following a path of anxiety and torture based upon a mutual distrust. As a result of spending too much time focusing on our differences, the over all result benefiting the vast majority of people is not being achieved. None of us are immune from guilt or blame. We have allowed intellectual disagreement to be lowered to the status of the label “lack of civility”, which causes many to turn off and tune out from what otherwise should be considered and recognized as constructive, and positive disagreement. All of which leads us to the overriding question - how do we bring ourselves back to a time when business person and neighbor, elected official and public servant, trust one another to work together, not against one another, in resolving community problems?

Let us begin with the premise of what we are short on in this community—intellectual humility. None of us reject the need for analysis of an issue. Where we fall short is in recognizing that the goal is not to prove ourselves to be smarter than the disagreeing faction, but instead to bring together the things of the mind in order to satisfy a community unity. I entitled this essay a “Noetic Beginning to a United Community,” because noesis means “thinking”. Today much of our energy is spent in defense of our singular positions and emotions, and not in “thinking” as to how we reach unity. We must enter into a mental framework that recognizes the fragmentary positions of everyone in the light of bringing us together. The acceptance of working for a multiple approach solution does not mean that everyone should feel obliged to embrace each and every idea. What counts is the observation of the plural points of view and the contribution to the solution when juxtaposed against differing ideas.

Some in self righteous indignation will protest that in fact they listen to all points of view with an open mind. Let me respectfully disagree. The process currently being used to resolve many issues encourages contentious behavior instead of collaboration. Example, affordable housing issues at the County. Staff comes forward in a unilateral fashion with “their” tool kit of what needs to be done without first coming to agreement with private sector interests to explore what they feel might work. To date there have been no open meetings where staff lets the community know what they are going to recommend to the elected officials. No formal meetings with staff and divergent interest groups work together to collaborate and formulate the reports being presented to the elected officials. Based upon the current course of action in another couple of months the County Commission will be presented with a proposed ordinance at which time the public will be invited to comment. When we arrive at this point we will be two public hearings away from enacted law. Staff and commission will have concurred on what they want, and now it is time for the public to go “negative.” We are labeled “negative,“ because we have not been included in the drafting of the ordinance. Staff will say that they met on numerous occasions with private sector participants, yet those “outsiders” had no participating input into what was to be the final drafted recommendation embodied in the ordinance. Disagreement now is labeled “Negative,” and the presumptive belief of the elected officials is that staff carefully and fairly weighed all contributions to the dialogue, resulting in the administration stating that “everyone who doesn’t get their way screams the system isn’t working.”

A modest proposal. Before ordinances, Master Plans, almost any plan is finalized, or to be taken before the elected officials, have staff hold a public hearing with the public to allow for comment, discussion, editing, etc. Why not allow for public comment between staff and the community before the elected officials are placed before antagonistic confrontations between staff and dissenters? At the same time as the proposal for adoption reaches the elected officials, allow for minority proposals, rejected by staff, to accompany staff recommendations for consideration for change during the first public hearing. Let the elected officials know that there were presented differing points of view that have been rejected by staff, the reasons for proposing the differences, and the reasons staff chose to reject those proposals. If we expect a noetic approach to governance let us be intellectually honest that neither staff, nor public has the intellectual high ground in resolving community solutions. If in fact any of us were so omnipotent we would not need elected commissioners to sit as arbiters in making public decisions.

In summary, let us work in intellectual openness to arrive at the best solutions for all the members of our community. Let us all be humble enough to recognize that bringing the fragments of the Community together to create WORKABLE solutions is the only true purpose in adopting change. We all have been behaving as if our efforts are academic exercises not intended to be implemented. The more strident we become, the more we waste hours, money and achievement of results. The more prescriptive we are in cementing our singular belief in the solution without community buy-in, the more we are able to guarantee our failure to address the problem. The same freedom that allows us to participate in the public debate, also allows us to choose not to be part of the final solution. Evidence - Downtown Sarasota’s own demise less than fifty years ago, and now its rebirth. We face complex problems not easily solved. Let us become more fixed on the positive result involving everyone, as we deliberate on the solutions. Maybe, just maybe, we can get it right!