KVO's Appearance at our HOA Meeting

Dear Editor,

County Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge came to our HOA annual meeting last night. Mostly, he talked about the wonderful things he has done, is doing, and will continue to do for our district. He talked a bit about the development along Conquistador Parkway at which time I told him how disappointed I was with the Commission’s approval for the reduction of the mangrove buffer from fifty feet to twenty feet. He said that the commission made that decision based on environmental concerns. He tried to explain how the nitrogen in the soil is more concentrated as you move further in from the water line. So they determined to allow the developers to fill in thirty feet of our mangrove buffer so as to protect us from the nitrogen.

I told Mr. Van Ostenbridge that in the early '50s, I was a boy living in a little trailer in Gulf Park (now Sandpiper Resort). My playground was those mangrove swamps. Mr. Van Ostenbridge told me, in a joking manner, that I could have been arrested. Well, I was not arrested, nor did the nitrogen in those mangrove swamps ever do me any harm. I have been up to my butt in that muck. It has a terrible smell of sulfur. Thank God I survived. He called it a dead zone. He must never have been in it. It’s alive with trees, crabs, barnacles, raccoons and wonderful birds. One time I even came across a moccasin. I believe that God is a far better steward of our environment than those developers or their rubber stamp commissioners. I suggest that people take a little hike in Robinson Preserve, go out on the boardwalk through the mangroves, and decide if I’m right or wrong.

Robert Grace
Manatee County