Watch out! – The “Chicago Way” has arrived in Naples!
The “Chicago Way” is an infamous practice where political insiders -- who benefit from sweetheart treatment by public officials – return the favor by throwing their money and clout behind the officials during election season.
Now a Chicago-based real estate developer who has spent over a hundred million dollars in recent years buying up real estate in Naples – a developer who claims he wants to turn Naples into a “Disneyland for Adults” – has become a major funder of a Political Action Committee (PAC) attempting to control the outcome of the March 2020 Naples City Election.
Why? He and several other major real estate developers have recently poured tens of thousands of dollars into the new PAC to support the reelection of Mayor Barnett and several incumbent members of Naples City Council (Reg Buxton, Michelle McCleod, and Ellen Seigel) – all of whom are seeking re-election in the March 17, 2020 election.
This new PAC is mainly funded and led by real estate developers and their friends – including some developers (Mr. Disneyland included) who have received from Naples City Council grants of unlimited density growth for the developers’ buildings in central Naples.
This developer-funded PAC claims that the challengers in the upcoming election – Teresa Heitman for Mayor and Mike McCabe, Paul Perry, and Ted Blankenship for Council) – are anti-growth and against development. That’s flat wrong.
Growth and development are important to the health and prosperity of the City of Naples. What the challengers support is controlled growth and reasonable development, all within strict compliance with the community’s agreed upon parameters that we know as zoning and land development codes.
What the challengers oppose is unconstrained overdevelopment that degrades the character, environment, and quality of life that we in Naples cherish – an unconstrained overdevelopment that Mayor Barnett and his allies on City Council have promoted by a host of variances, deviations, Code relaxations and loopholes provided developers in recent years.
This real estate-developer funded Political Action Committee (PAC) has been carefully crafted by public relations experts with warm, “feel good” messages and images – suggesting that all is well in Naples. Indeed, these developers have recruited as messaging advocates some respected Naples citizens who may be unaware of the political largesse showered upon these developers by Mayor Barnett and his Council allies.
The name of this developer-led and funded PAC? It’s called “Citizens Who Love Naples”**. If you are a major real estate developer in Naples – whose high density overdevelopment has benefitted from the political favors granted by Mayor Barnett and his Council allies – you might ask: “What’s Not to Love?”
If you are a Naples resident concerned about the future of our community, ask yourself: Do you really want Disneyland in Naples?
** The real estate developers deliberately chose a name for their PAC similar to our long-standing well-respected Naples citizen group – “Citizens for Preserving Naples” – clearly hoping that the casual reader would think that the PAC’s pro-Barnett literature was coming from Citizens for Preserving Naples.