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Dear Pinecrest Residents:
While pleased with the outcome, I am sure many Pinecrest residents share my disappointment after witnessing the acrimony, distrust and false information that was so evident in the Pinecrest zoning referendum.
I speak as a Pinecrest resident since 1982 and a Village Founder who served on the Village Charter Committee that was the basis for the successful 1996 referendum that created our Village. Sadly, we have never experienced a community crisis like the recent referendum. I say crisis because it was predicated on what I felt was unfounded and unsubstantiated mistrust and disinformation and, if passed, it would have had a chaotic impact on our village government.
Now that the referendum is over, I encourage every voting resident no matter if you voted or how you voted to take a few minutes and review www.pinecrestfriends.com. I have spent over 50 years in city and county management that began in 1959, as a Wharton graduate intern in the City of Miami and later included two tours as Miami-Dade County manager, Pinellas County administrator, Miami-Dade school superintendent, city manager of Clearwater and city manager or management advisor in several Florida cities.
Pinecrest’s Council/Manager Village Charter is reflective of the most popular form of local government in America. It is modeled after the corporate structure; where city voters (stockholders) elect a mayor and city council (Board of Directors) who recruit and appoint a professional city manager (corporate president) to manage the local government (corporation) and carry out the policy directives of the Council (Corporate Board). The most important decision that an elected mayor and council will make is in the selection of their city manager.
Pinecrest has been blessed through the years with honest, ethical, elected officials supported by professional city managers and their staff. It is unfortunate that the referendum’s architects failed in their due diligence and proposed such an unwieldy, cumbersome and distrustful charter change. My hope is that it does not portend future political chicanery in Pinecrest.
Merrett R. Stierheim
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