Commissioners,
I am writing to formally voice my profound disgust and sharp condemnation regarding the egregious, multi-year failure of Manatee County leadership and the Property Management Department to properly maintain the downtown Bradenton parking garage.
Precast concrete filigree structures are engineered to easily achieve a lifespan of 50 to 60 years. However, that longevity is entirely dependent on basic, responsible stewardship—specifically, ensuring the structure is properly sealed against water intrusion. The county utterly failed to execute this baseline preventive maintenance. Now, our community is left holding the bag for a crumbling asset while your administration plays semantic games with public safety and actively misleads the taxpayers.
The timeline of documentation compiled by Karins Engineering between December 2021 and January 2026 exposes an astonishing pattern of official negligence and shifting narratives:
December 2021: Inspectors explicitly warned of widespread "delamination" and hollow-sounding concrete across large portions of the total deck area. They advised that major, invasive repairs were required within 18 to 24 months, carrying an estimated cost of $8.9 million.
The Response: Rather than acting decisively, the former administration chose to declare that the county had "a few years before we actually need to take aggressive action." The county then proceeded to order ten additional inspection reports over four years—spending thousands of dollars to repeatedly read the exact same warnings while the structure continued to rot.
Worsening Conditions: By January 2026, the cumulative damage escalated severely. Delamination on Level 5 jumped from 60% to nearly 80%; Level 3 worsened from 40% to 55%; and the roof level reached a staggering, hazardous 95% top-deck damage. Five of the structure’s deck tops have now crossed or met the 50% threshold of severe structural concern.
Obsolete Recommendations: The engineers explicitly stated in late 2025 and early 2026 that their original 18-to-24-month repair window and the $8.9 million cost estimation were completely obsolete due to the county's prolonged inaction and the compounding deterioration.
Yet, despite your own current County Administrator previously admitting in 2023 that the structure had roughly two years remaining unless millions were poured into it, the county's public relations apparatus is now attempting to claim the situation is "relatively stable." Pretending that a clock resets every time a new inspection report is printed is a direct insult to the intelligence of Manatee County residents.
Most offensive to the taxpayers of this county is the absolute lack of fiscal discipline. In May 2025, this Board voted to approve a budget amendment that stripped the entire $34.8 million originally allocated for the downtown garage rebuild and transferred it to buy and renovate a secondary "East Campus" administration building in Lakewood Ranch.
You completely defunded a critical downtown infrastructure asset before you even opened the Invitation to Negotiate (ITN) for its redevelopment in August 2025. Unsurprisingly, because you completely crippled the project's funding and offered no strategic plan, the ITN failed to produce a viable proposal. Meanwhile, you have readily committed taxpayers to a 20-year generator agreement for the Lakewood Ranch building that will bleed over $12 million alone, while the downtown core is left with an unfunded, disintegrating parking garage.
If Manatee County cannot handle the fundamental responsibilities of public asset management, it has no business managing them.
I demand that the county immediately stop wasting time chasing "second opinions" to downplay structural degradation. The county must move to offload this parking garage to the private sector. Let a private entity take over the parcel, execute the necessary demolition, replace the structure, and maintain it under strict contract.
The public deserves an immediate, transparent accounting of how downtown parking infrastructure will be salvaged after years of deliberate, documented neglect. We need a drastic change in how our community's assets are managed, and we expect accountability now.
Glen GADFLY Gibellina
Candidate for Manatee County Commissioner District 4
https://electglengibellina.com/
That's really sad. 3 Keys had great food and atmosphere and was pet friendly. Motorworks, with seating under the huge tree was kind of magical. And they both had great beer.
Let’s think about this. Is E. Jean Carroll a threat to this democracy? Is she plotting a takeover if the government? Has she done anything that might warrant her being investigated?
Apparently our President thinks so otherwise he wouldn’t use the US Justice Department to investigate her. He owes her 80+ million dollars but the billionaire won’t pay her. Not only is our President a serial *** addict but he is also a cheapskate. If he does pay her he’ll probably obtain the funds from the “criminal slush fund” he developed. Who weaponized who here? James Tierney
There is no such thing as a free lunch in politics. Either the effected programs will be drastically cut causing significant harm to healthcare, education, etc. or citizens will be taxed covertly through sales tax, or other forms of hidden taxation. This is just a major flimflam the Governor is trying to play on us.
He's got that right! New College is on track to crash and burn as a politcal right wing money loser. The Hillsdale indoctranator of the south... degrees to the cellar of academia.
What kind of changes are in the document? Did the planning commission simply ask the staff whether it was pro development and take their word for it? If the new plan considers SB180 as permanent, then it is definitely pro development. The BoCC should provide the 90 day delay for public consumption that the advisory board recommends. Why would they not allow that transparency?
The percentage breakdown of registered voters by party affiliation in Florida is 30% Democrat, 38% Republican and 30% no party affiliation. This gerrymandering could backfire on DeSantis as they spread the GOP voter more thinly in across districts. The no party affiliated voters have shown a larger percentage of liberal voting in their group and they could actually reduce the GOP hold on the State.
Just when we thought this BoCC could not go any lower, today they stooped to a new ethical low. The board tried to reimburse Charlie Bishop for his decision to hire an attorney to negotiate his contract. The Clerk of Court ruled this improper because (obviously) paying Charlie Bishop's personal attorney serves no public purpose. To get around this ruling, the board instead tried to sneak the reimbursement through on the consent agenda as a "merit bonus." Unbelievably, Commissioners Kruse and Beaden argued that taxpayers owed Mr. Bishop his attorney fees because the perk-filled contract that Bishop sought was not approved. They argued that, had Mr. Bishop received the fat new contract, then taxpayers would not be forced to pay his attorney. That argument is preposterous. How is the contract Bishop was offered in any way relevant to whether reimbursement serves a public purpose? Taxpayer money should not be used for personal benefit - period. This was a dishonest circumvention of ethics and good government.
Once again, DeSantis’s second try to “eliminate homestead property taxes” is a classic bait-and-switch. His abstract proposal isn't about saving the middle class—it’s about securing his post-presidential legacy.
By engineering a summer special session to force this onto the November ballot, DeSantis is trying to use a populist tax cut to juice conservative voter turnout before he leaves office for his national political dream, but he is intentionally leaving future leaders to deal with the fallout.
Framing this as "giving money back" merely distracts us from a cold reality that Floridians don’t realize their own politicians plan to fund its multibillion-dollar budget deficit directly on the backs of renters and the working poor. Replacing billions in local revenue means skyrocketing sales taxes or higher taxes on landlords, which will immediately be passed down as higher rent.
When you squeeze renters until neighborhoods crumble, you devalue the entire community. You cannot maintain a high-value home where the teachers, nurses, and first responders who serve you can no longer afford to live. While the middle-class dream slips away, we are being tricked into stepping on the person below us, while those at the top walk away with the ladder. In this feedback loop, "me-first" means everyone else loses.
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