Sarasota Livin'

I had sort a surprise today. I returned a phone call from the Florida Division of Elections.

Someone called them with a complaint that the Sarasota Coalition of City Neighborhoods CCNA somehow violated state election laws. From what I could tell this person felt that CCNA was a city sponsored organization and a city commission candidate was trying to influence them to vote for them at our January meeting.

To set the record straight CCNA is a private organization that advocates for neighborhood issues. We are not affiliated with the City of Sarasota. People that come to our meetings are representatives appointed by their neighborhood and have no relationship to City government through our organization. Our meetings are not closed to the public although it is the rare person that wants to spend Saturday morning discussing neighborhood issues.

Several current Sarasota City Commissioners have had long time affiliations with CCNA having been neighborhood representatives. There are two recent CCNA neighborhood reps currently running for City Commission seats. I think it is fair to say that our membership is not awed by having a City Commissioner in the room. They are people like us.

At our January meeting those present were asked to sign a petition by a candidate. There was no endorsement by CCNA and CCNA has no control over what a person speaking during our meeting will say. In this case signing the petition really is not even a show of support only getting the candidate on the ballot.

I personally did not sign the petition. As the president of CCNA I will not be endorsing a candidate. CCNA has never formally endorsed a candidate.

Any candidate has the ability to ask for signatures to get on a ballot. They could do that in any public place such as in front of Publix, at the beach or on Main street downtown.