This Monday, February 17, we celebrate Random Acts of Kindness Day, a reminder to perform small yet impactful gestures for others. It is also our wedding anniversary, a moment to reflect on the incredible partnership that marriage brings. My wife Tami and I work together to pursue our shared dreams and overcome life’s hurdles. I am profoundly grateful for Tami and her remarkable gift of kindness. She baked sourdough bread for the entire Gulf Coast staff during the holidays and has dedicated her career to nurturing children's development at the Kinder Garden School. At home, she is a loving mother to our two sons and an incredible planner who makes our busy lives enjoyable and manageable. Tami truly embodies the essence of kindness, inspiring everyone around her to contribute to making the world a better place.

In my work leading Gulf Coast Community Foundation, I also have the privilege of seeing acts of kindness from our donors and team daily. Kindness and philanthropy are deeply intertwined; philanthropists give from a place of love for humanity, and their generosity spreads joy throughout our community. With thoughtful planning alongside their Gulf Coast philanthropic advisors, our donors contribute to causes and nonprofit organizations they care about, ensuring a lasting impact. These nonprofits play an essential role in our community providing critical services, like delivering nutritious meals to isolated seniors and supporting children in overcoming academic challenges. Many of our donors thoughtfully plan their legacies with Gulf Coast, securing a future of continued community support for generations to come. Their gifts, whether financial contributions, volunteer service, or nonprofit leadership, can be transformative, fostering growth, changing lives, and spreading kindness.

One remarkable project made possible by a generous, kind Gulf Coast donor is Project HEAL (Helping Everyone Align with Love). Project HEAL is providing four homeless-service organizations – Community Assisted and Supported Living (CASL), Family Promise of South Sarasota County, Harvest House, and Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness with training to become trauma-informed. These organizations are making significant strides in creating safe environments that foster healing and recovery, both for their staff and those they serve. Project HEAL emphasizes core principles such as safety, collaboration, empowerment, transparency, and trustworthiness, all of which are vital for building thriving communities. Addressing trauma is increasingly recognized as an important component in overcoming homelessness and promoting mental wellness, key priorities for Gulf Coast.

Family Promise of South Sarasota County’s (FPSSC) is an organization making a profound impact. Dedicated to supporting children and their families experiencing housing insecurity, FPSSC helps working families regain stability and navigate obstacles to permanent housing. Currently, over 450 children in South Sarasota County schools have been identified as housing insecure. Through Project HEAL, FPSSC has enhanced its approach, prioritizing comfort, safety, and support for new program participants. They meet individuals where they are, engaging them with empathy and kindness, offering a welcoming and safe environment for meaningful conversations. The results have been inspiring - increased participant satisfaction, improved staff retention, updated organizational values, and a renewed focus on staff well-being.

On this Random Acts of Kindness Day, I hope you take a moment to recognize the incredible work happening in our community for the greater good. Kindness can be seen in our own families, our careers, volunteering, community, and philanthropy. Philanthropy has the power to ignite a ripple effect of generosity, inspiring others to take action and create lasting change. Together, let’s continue to cultivate a culture of kindness across our region.

Phillip P. Lanham is President | CEO of Gulf Coast Community Foundation. 

Photo courtesy of Gulf Coast Community Foundation.

Last week the business community in the greater Manatee County region came together to celebrate successful leadership and a long list of accomplishments at the Manatee Chamber’s Annual Dinner. The event also marked the 8th Annual Robert P. Bartz Award for Outstanding Leadership, named after the late Bob Bartz who was President of the Chamber for more than 30 years. His leadership was marked by humility, tenacity, and a deep commitment to doing the right thing.

All of the speakers on stage talked about the importance of partnerships, recognizing that we are stronger together in facing challenges and seizing opportunities for our region. The past five months of hurricane response have brought that to the forefront like no other time in my memory. Short- and long-term recovery efforts have required constant communication, collaboration, trust, perseverance and leadership that does not demand nor expect accolades for doing the right thing or going the extra mile.

One highlight of the event was honoring representatives from Manatee County, our six cities, the School District of Manatee County and area non-profits. The individuals attending represented the collective efforts of thousands of public sector and non-profit employees who have given so much to keeping our region safe and on the road to full recovery. They received two well-deserved standing ovations from the more than 550 business leaders in attendance!

The pinnacle of the evening was the presentation of the Bartz Award to Janene Amick, CEO of the Florida Cultural Group / Manatee Performing Arts Center (MPAC). She has spent the past 19 years with MPAC, with an overall career spanning multiple sectors, including arts, marketing, development, facilities management, education and nonprofit leadership.

Janene leads her team with the empowering philosophy of “leading with your strengths.” City of Bradenton Mayor Gene Brown shared this, “I have had the privilege of working with Janene Amick for many years. I have remained inspired by her continued passion in helping others. She is particularly skilled at bringing others together to help them achieve their goals through her volunteerism.”

Ron Allen, a former Bartz Award honoree, said this, “Janene’s passion for the arts and community is truly unmatched. A true bulldog for the betterment of Bradenton and Manatee County, she is relentless in her dedication and drive. There is no stronger advocate for our community’s growth and success.”

In accepting the award, Janene shared her personal priorities of faith, family, friends and service as well as her belief that by working together we all achieve more. She also encouraged each of us to consider what we can do today to mentor and serve others.

It was an inspiring message – we are stronger working together.

Jacki Dezelski is President and CEO of Manatee Chamber of Commerce.

Pictured: Janene Amick (center) received the 8th Annual Robert P. Bartz Award for Outstanding Leadership from the Manatee Chamber of Commerce. Janene is pictured with her husband Tim Amick, Vicki Bartz, and Jason Bartz. Photo courtesy of Manatee Chamber.

We live in a wonderful place. The evidence is how many people have moved here from other places and how traffic has increased in the area. It’s one of the biggest complaints here, and when traffic is one of our biggest problems and not crime, or economic deterioration, or education, like you see in the cities where people are fleeing from, it really highlights how lucky we are, and it also means people will be passionate about our community.

One of the frequent arguments I hear is that Florida and Sarasota County should go back to the idea of transportation concurrency. But transportation concurrency is what really created our traffic and planning problems that we are dealing with today. There were legislative attempts to fix some of the problems within concurrency, but these problems were never fully solved in this flawed system.

In 1985, the State of Florida, through the legislature, implemented transportation concurrency – the idea that new development has adequate facilities and services to support it. It led to the requirement that a developer make improvements if there is not enough capacity to handle the development or wait until the government made the improvement. Sounds good right? It did until the concept was applied, and you saw the results.

It triggered a race to develop, making development occur quickly and with less thoughtful planning to it as the last man standing was left holding the bag, or rather, paying the price. Property owners developed fast to use the existing capacity of roads to not be the one who triggered the need to improve it, which meant that they would have to pay. Or, they would have to not develop and wait until the government paid for the improvement and hope that they could use their property someday as the costs of increasing capacity for everyone would be prohibitive.

This uneven distribution of costs between developers, not based upon the capacity they used but the capacity available, incentivized quick and cheap development. At the same time, it discouraged redevelopment in urban areas, as the costs to increase road capacity, many times in an already failing or near failing system, would exceed any reasonable profit in redeveloping.

The result of redevelopment being too costly had a negative effect on sprawl and congestion. First, it would push developers to invest in areas where road capacity was available. This resulted in development in areas like the suburbs and even rural areas causing more cars to be on the roads for longer periods, and it led to more congestion.

Courts later weighed in and made proportionate share the rule if a development triggered a road deficiency. Development that triggered the deficiency would only be responsible for its share of that deficiency. However, it never solved the problem of the developments leading up to the deficiency not contributing for their proportionate share of impact.

Concurrency also drove up housing costs and had a negative impact on affordable housing. Since costs were not distributed evenly across developers by the effect of each development, this led to an unpredictable system where a developer could suddenly have to pay for his development’s impacts and everyone else’s impacts.

Developers would have to automatically bake these costs into their pricing, driving up housing costs and leading to less affordable housing. It would also drive up the housing market overall, even if a developer did not have to end up paying the concurrency-related costs.

When the recession was in its worst years, Florida began converting to a more equitable and sustainable system that made all development pay for its impacts with mobility fees. Development pays for its impacts no matter whether the road has capacity or not. It would be up to the government to use those funds to improve the roads with those accumulated funds.

In 2015, Sarasota County established the mobility fee system to more effectively fund transportation infrastructure improvements created by new development. We operate on this system today but still see the negative effects of thirty years of concurrency with our road system where infrastructure was not funded by all new development within the county.

This new system also allows for fee investments in alternative forms of transportation like transit, sidewalks, and bike lanes/paths. Some of this money has been invested in the Legacy Trail.

Sarasota County is now on a more sustainable path with mobility fees, and while we have to catch up from the deficiencies of concurrency, all growth is now paying for its impacts under this system. Concurrency is not an answer to our congestion problem, but rather the cause of it.

Christine Robinson is the Executive Director of The Argus Foundation. 

As we step into Spring 2025, New College of Florida is experiencing unprecedented growth and transformation. From our rapidly expanding athletics program to the launch of the Socratic Stage Dialogue Series, our institution is leading the charge in academic excellence, open dialogue, and fearless inquiry.

Championing Free Speech & Open Discourse: In an era where free speech is under attack, New College is committed to unfiltered debate and rigorous intellectual exchange. The Socratic Stage Dialogue Series has become a national platform for civil discourse, bringing together leading voices in media, politics, science, and philosophy.

Spring 2025 | Socratic Stage Events

• Feb. 18 | A Conversation on Gender: Culture & Academia – Dr. Judith Butler, Dr. Stanley Fish
• Feb. 25 | The Value of Liberal Arts Education Today – Dr. Joshua T. Katz, Tom Steiner, Dr. David Rancourt
• March 6 | Defeat, Hope, & the Creation of the Hebrew Bible – Dr. Jacob L. Wright
• March 8 | The Politics of Medicine: Who Controls the Future of Medical Education? – Dr. Scott Atlas, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb
• March 20 | Borders, National Sovereignty & U.S. Immigration Policy – Chad Wolf, Special Guest
• May 6 | Truth, Bias, & Power: How Media is Reshaping Society – Dr. Scott Atlas, Ben Domenech, Mollie Hemingway
• May 22 | Justice or Politics? The Weaponization of Law – Alan Dershowitz, Steven Donziger

For event details and livestream access, visitNCF.edu/SocraticStage.

Athletics on the Rise: New College athletics is experiencing historic expansion, becoming one of the fastest-growing collegiate sports programs in the nation. In just two years, we have:

• Joined the NAIA’s Sun Conference
• Expanded from six sports to over twenty
• Celebrated our women’s volleyball team reaching the playoffs in their debut season

On March 1, we will host the Athletics Gala, an evening to honor student-athletes and secure the resources needed to fuel our continued success. With elite facilities and a culture of academic and athletic excellence, we are building a program that competes at the highest level.

To support our student-athletes, visitNCF.edu/Athletics.

Alan Dershowitz: 2025 Commencement Speaker: We are honored to welcome Alan Dershowitz, one of the nation’s foremost legal scholars and defenders of free speech, as our 2025 Commencement Speaker. His work in civil liberties and due process makes him an ideal voice for our graduating class at a time when these principles are more relevant than ever. Dershowitz will also take the Socratic Stage on May 22 for a discussion on law, politics, and justice in America. For Commencement details, visitNCF.edu/Commencement.

A Movement for Free Thought & Excellence: New College has always been more than a leading liberal arts institution—it is a movement for free thought, academic rigor, and fearless dialogue. We invite you to join us on campus this spring—and be part of the journey.

For more information, visitNCF.edu.

Richard Corcoran is President, New College of Florida.