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Top Stories this week on Anna Maria Island: Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2010
Left: A front-end loader moves sand on the beach where authorities searched for evidence in the Sabine Musil-Buehler case. Right: Manatee County Sheriff’s Office investigators put up crime-scene tape on the beach in Anna Maria.
Detectives, forensics experts and a farmer plowed the sand on the beach in Anna Maria last week as the search for clues in the disappearance of Sabine Musil-Buehler continued.
On the scene — the beach between Magnolia Avenue and Spring — Manatee County Sheriff’s Office detectives said they were searching for evidence in the case, which dates back to November 2008.
MCSO spokesman Dave Bristow was more direct. He said the excavation team, which also included members of a special forensics team from the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, was searching for a body.
“Is this where they’re digging for the body?” asked Marlene Holcomb, who took a day-trip from Lakeland to Anna Maria Island Feb. 4.
Holcomb went to the beach in Anna Maria, not to sunbathe, fish or swim, but because she wanted to watch a team from the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office dig into the sand in the search for the remains of Sabine Musil-Buehler.
The curious arrived one by one, and in pairs and in larger groups to watch the digging, which began Feb. 2 and continued through the week.
Anna Maria is facing another potential legal challenge to its comprehensive plan.
Attorney Stephen Thompson, representing Richard Friday of 104 Park Ave., Anna Maria, sent Mayor Fran Barford a letter Feb. 1 claiming the city violated its comp plan by approving development in the Banyan Tree Estates subdivision adjacent to Friday’s property.
If the intent of the recent influx of stimulus money into Anna Maria Island transportation projects was to create jobs on the Island and in the Manatee area, the effort failed.
One job was created with the more than $1.2 million the federal government spent for projects on the Island from October 2009 to February 2010 under the U.S. American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and that worker came from Georgia.
Anna Maria’s parking safety committee will meet again this week in hopes of agreeing on its recommendations to the city commission.
The committee is scheduled to present its recommendations to a joint commission-planning and zoning board meeting the same evening.
Committee Chair Larry Albert and committee member Terry Schaefer presented some possible designs at the committee’s Feb. 4 meeting that call for on-site parking.
The Bradenton Beach City Commission voted Feb. 4 to drop contract negotiations with one firm and revisit its options for updating the city’s land-development code.
The vote came during the commission’s regular meeting at city hall, 107 Gulf Drive N.
The commission had agreed last May to hire Wilson Miller as a planning consultant to update the LDC in partnership with the city planning and zoning board. The project involves bringing the LDC into compliance with the city’s comprehensive plan.
A proposed ordinance creating a new process for businesses seeking to sell alcohol needs more scrutiny, Bradenton Beach commissioners agreed Feb. 4.
The commission, meeting at city hall, 107 Gulf Drive N., was scheduled to take up a second reading of an ordinance establishing a conditional-use permit process for alcohol sales and removing distance limitations for alcohol sales on Bridge Street.
But instead of moving forward with a second, final reading, commissioners unanimously voted to continue the reading to a meeting at 1 p.m. Feb. 18.
The U.S. Coast Guard ended its search for a boater after locating him at about 9:30 a.m. Feb. 6 at Moore’s Stone Crab Restaurant & Marina on Longboat Key.
A caller contacted search-and-rescue coordinators at Coast Guard Sector St. Petersburg at about 9 a.m., after watching the news and reported he saw the missing boat moored at the marina and boater Peter Amos near the restaurant.
U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge K. Rodney May recently gave former Island real estate developer Robert Byrne some bad news.
May withdrew the attorney-client privilege that the asset-protection law firm of Presser-Goldstein LLC in Deerfield Beach had with Robert and Arlene Byrne.
The Seaside Gardens neighborhood in Holmes Beach is unlike any other Island neighborhood.
There are no land-development regulations for the Seaside Gardens area, according to Holmes Beach superintendent of public works Joe Duennes. The area is governed by a homeowner’s association, and Deunnes believes the lack of regulations have resulted in a lack of policies to indicate what is or is not allowed.
The Holmes Beach Parks and Beautification Committee is taking steps toward a Florida Forest Health Improvement Initiative Grant, the committee announced at its Feb. 3 meeting at Holmes Beach City Hall.
The federal stimulus grant could provide the committee from $2,000-$24,000. The committee said it would use the grant to add trees along the north side of Manatee Avenue just inside the Holmes Beach city limits and east of Westbay Cove condominiums.
Top Top Notch: Waves, camera, action
Chris Pate of Holmes Beach won the grand prize in The Islander's annual Top Notch contest with his photograph of a wave-skater at White Avenue beach. Pate won $100 from the newspaper, plus gifts from Islander advertisers, including a $50 gift certificate from the Chiles Restaurants Group, a $50 certificate for Hair's to You Salon, a $25 certificate from Mister Roberts Resortwear, a $10 certificate for Minnie's Beach Cafe and the framing of the winning photo by Karly Carlson Custom Framing. The weekly winners received Islander "more-than-a-mullet wrapper" T-shirts and front-page placement of their photos. Next week, The Islander's honorable mentions in the popular contest.
