Ed Martin's INSIDE VENICE FLORIDA Blog          These are all the Blogs posted in November, 2008. Thursday, 27 Council Votes Preliminary Approval for "Bridges" and to settle "Sharky's" suit. Inside Venice is planning to provide a new service-- weekly updates on Council actions, providing some personal views on the actions. Questions or comment may be posted and I will try to answer them, as time permits. As the Council discussed whether to settle the suit with Pier Group, (Sharky's) several members of Council, myself included and City Attorney Robert Anderson, reviewed the process to help citizens understand why Council was acting to settle. A number Read more | 1 comments Posted By Ed Martin at 1:47 PM in Category:Inside Venice Thursday, 20 "Why Would Anyone Want To Be An Elected Official." During the November 19, 2008 court hearing, carefully balancing the needs for information by the plaintiffs in Lorenzo et.al v. the City of Venice, et.al. while protecting Constitutional Rights and the burdens of complying with such discovery requests, Judge Robert Bennett mused quietly, “Why would anyone want to be an elected official?” It is a question, that in one phrasing or another, I have heard increasingly frequently from citizens, friends and associates around the count Read more | 1 comments Posted By Ed Martin at 4:54 PM in Category:Inside Venice Wednesday, 12 A "well oiled machine" or as the Gondo headline says, "An anti-machine." The election of new members to the City Council, and the re-election of John Moore, is not the result of a political machine of any kind. Rather it results from the people caring deeply about the future of the City and preferring certain candidates' views. Click Here to Link directly to this article publisheed in the The Venice Gondolier Sun. Read more | 1 comments Posted By Ed Martin at 3:26 PM in Category:Inside Venice Thursday, 6 Haiku for 11/6/08 Like leafless fall trees, Neighborhoods have lost color, Election signs gone. Read more | 1 comments Posted By Ed Martin at 6:35 PM in Category:Inside Venice Wednesday, 5 Inside and Outside Venice--In an Amazing Lifetime Fifty-five years ago this fall my wife Peggy and I, newly married, drove from Pennsylvania to Tuscaloosa, Alabama and the University of Alabama. In 1953 the South was shockingly segregated to two “Yankees” or as some Southerners later told us, “Damnyankees.” The difference was, that “Damnyankees” stayed rather than keeping going. When we stopped for gas in rural Tennessee at a country station there was a water spigot on the side of the building, pointing up so th Read more | 3 comments Posted By Ed Martin at 8:22 PM in Category:Inside Venice