The beaches are a lot cleaner this week since Manatee County mobilized heavy equipment to rake up seaweed that covered the white sand with a squishy brown blanket.
The smelly mess had tourists and accommodations owners complaining so loudly that the county took the unusual step of raking during sea turtle nesting season, which is generally avoided due to the hazards to nests.
Raking the seaweed also removes a major source of nutrients for shorebirds, which feed in the “wrack line.”
First Place
Editorial Writing
2012
Most of the funds for the unexpected expense, including staffing, came from the county parks department, which made sense when the raking was limited to the two public beaches, Manatee and Coquina, which are both county parks frequented by county residents. Some funds for equipment operation came from tourist tax funds.
But when the raking project was expanded to the rest of the beach, where the majority of tourists stay in motels, condos and houses, the tourist tax fund should have been tapped.
The tourist tax/resort tax/bed tax is paid by short-term (less than six months) renters – mostly tourists – to the owners of accommodations. The tax is remitted by the accommodations owners – at least those who collect the tax as required by law – to the county.
Second Place
Opinion Writing
2013
The county uses one fifth of it for beach renourishment and the rest is allocated to the county’s tourism agency primarily for marketing and advertising to draw more tourists to the area.
County beach officials say there won’t be enough money for the next beach renourishment until 2014.
But there’s money in the county’s tourism marketing budget – this year’s budget is $2.9 million.
And there’s a $1 million emergency marketing fund set up by the Tourist Development Council to promote the area as safe in case a disaster like a hurricane or oil spill happens close enough to us that it keeps tourists away.
The TDC should include a line item in future budgets for actual emergencies – as opposed to marketing emergencies – for the next, inevitable, beach problem.
It may be more seaweed.
It may be dead mullet gutted by fishermen at sea for their roe, which washed ashore in late 2011.
It may be dead fish from red tide, which plagued the Island for most of 2005.
It may be diesel fuel from a ship collision, which happened in Tampa Bay in 1993.
It may be an oil spill like the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010.
But whatever washes ashore on our beaches, it will affect tourists.
And the tourist tax, not the parks department, should pay to clean it up.
