Opinion: 3 words link Vero Beach referendum failure to national vote?

With a week’s worth of hindsight, it’s easy to see the similarity between elections in Vero Beach and for the presidency.
It can be summed up in three words: out of touch.
Nationally, polls said the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was close. The results showed otherwise. Some post-election hand-wringing suggested Harris and her supporters were out of touch with the majority of Americans.
Locally, I wasn’t sure how Vero Beach’s referendum questions about adding housing in and around downtown would fare.
I figured the move to add up to 1,700 units downtown was an uphill battle, but I didn’t realize supporters would have to scale the equivalent of Mount Everest. Supporters were organized, even if their leadership did not follow Florida elections law to a tee.
Opponents seemed relatively quiet.
For example, over the summer, I sought in-the-know people not seeking election to write pro and con columns on the downtown issue. Finding folks who wanted to increase the density was easy. But knowledgeable folks who had good arguments against didn’t seem to want to rock the boat publicly.
I found it odd.
Even Ken Daige, who questioned the referendums before they were put on the ballot, was hesitant to speak out. He ran for the city council and, when our editorial board asked him about the referendums (which failed by nearly 2-1 ratios), Daige declined to state his position.
Maybe that silence cost him the election. He got 16.7% of the vote, finishing fourth in a race for three seats. The third-place finisher was John Carroll with 22.7%.
Daige’s cop-out was a negative when it came to our editorial board recommendations for the council. We recommended Linda Moore and Carroll. Both want the best for the city and work hard for it.
But Moore, a restaurateur and top vote-getter, could have been the most vulnerable in the race had better opposition surfaced. She made several high-profile missteps in her first two years on council. Among them: an unusual vote on the Three Corners bid and a Facebook request for used dildos to be delivered to her restaurant for an art project. The latter sparked Dr. Gene Posca, a school board member, to question it at a meeting. It wasn’t a good look for either public servant.
Even more, she and Carroll, the most vocal advocates for “improving” downtown, seem out of touch with the 63% to 65% of voters who rejected the referendums.
They seemed the most gung-ho about increasing density and making other changes. In 2022, for example, Carroll wanted to narrow, from seven to four lanes, the one-way Twin Pairs that help traffic flow through downtown on State Road 60.
Moore, who said she opposed the narrowing when she ran for office that year, flip-flopped, joining Carroll and Rey Neville to spend more than $100,000 to do a study with a predetermined outcome: Yes, it was feasible to cut the lanes.
But residents ― and many of us told them so before they spent the money and wasted our time — had no interest in eliminating lanes. The issue had been studied and debated many times — with the same result — by the council since the 1970s.
With downtown density this year, Councilwoman Tracey Zudans, I and others warned of potential failure because the plans had not been fully vetted. This makes me wonder whether Moore and Carroll would have been reelected had there been a stronger field other than perennial candidates Daige and Brian Heady, and newcomer Aaron Vos (who finished second and seems to be working hard to listen to the entire community).
Downtown has improved significantly over the past 35 years despite several aborted city master plans. Aborted, in many ways, because folks continue to flock to Vero Beach and don’t want it changed. Many like it as is.
The fact is, the average age of Vero Beach residents is 54.3 years old, with an estimated 42% 60 or older. A more crowded downtown with more bars is not what many of them want. The reality is many of my peers, especially older ones, are averse to change.
Nor do many of them like out-of-town planners swooping in to tell us how awful our city is (even if people pay top dollar to move here), but how much potential it has, as a few have done.
There is no question downtown can be improved. Several relatively simple measures, such as storefronts adding awnings, improving lighting and renovating Pocahontas Park, were outlined in the master plan; others, such as returning benches and planters and keeping the sidewalks and streets clean, were brought up in the Twin Pairs discussion.
It would be great if such improvements help attract more people and ultimately persuade developers to request more housing. I don’t think the public would object to a limited number of new units downtown, increasing the density if necessary.
Mayor John Cotugno, Councilman Taylor Dingle and Vos seem pragmatic when it comes to discussing downtown.
“The city did was it was supposed to,” Cotugno said, noting it studied downtown issues and developed a plan to put on the ballot. “We got it to the point where people could vote on it.”
He said he still thinks the city can help make downtown more inviting, but understands that must be based on resident demand.
To me, that means finding a better way of engaging all residents — not just the same group of 125 who meet monthly over “complimentary gourmet sandwiches” and a cash bar at Riverside Theatre. That’s what supporters of downtown have done. That’s fine, but the city must reach out and listen more.
The question in the coming months will be whether our entire, diverse community will be engaged or just those who want to change downtown. If it’s just those who want to change downtown, and want to persuade council to act, my guess is upcoming elections will be more competitive.
If the group in power insists on doing the same thing over and over again without regard to the majority — as the Twin Pairs and referendums have shown — change is likely, but not in downtown.
Change, after all, was the message many Americans sent recently to the folks in power in our nation’s capitol.
This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at [email protected], phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman.
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