HOLMES BEACH – City leaders are making sure that state leaders know where they stand on the idea of consolidating the three Anna Maria Island cities.
Prior to an upcoming Manatee County Legislative Delegation meeting planned for Thursday, Oct. 5, Rep. Will Robinson Jr. (R-Manatee) and Sen. Jim Boyd (R-Manatee) sent out a letter warning the mayors of all three Island cities that if they don’t have a proposal for how the three municipalities can better work together, the state leaders would be seeking a state-funded and run study to determine if the cities should be consolidated into a single municipality.
Holmes Beach Mayor Judy Titsworth responded individually to both legislators on behalf of the city in letters dated Sept. 26. During a meeting on the same day, she added that she’d also spoken with Boyd on Sept. 22 and felt that they’d had a productive discussion.
Titsworth said that while city leaders are not in opposition to the study if it is used to find ways to reduce the tax burden on residents, they’re not in favor of using it as a means of paving the way toward consolidation of the three Island cities. While the cities share a single 7-mile island, she said they each have their own character that charms both residents and visitors alike.
She added that during her discussion with Boyd, she apprised him of the steps the leaders of all three Island cities are taking toward making processes more streamlined across the board, such as the building permitting process and the efforts they’re making to work together to consolidate some other processes.
While state leaders had made suggestions such as combining law enforcement, public works and building department efforts into a single department across the Island instead of one for each city, there are currently no plans to integrate any of those departments into one.
