HOLMES BEACH – City commissioner Dan Diggins suggested implementing paid parking within a quarter mile of the city-controlled public beach access points located at numerous street ends throughout the city.
Diggins proposed the pursuit of paid beach parking as a non-agenda item during the commissioners’ comments given at the end of the Aug. 26 Holmes Beach City Commission meeting.
Mayor Judy Titsworth and commissioners Steve Oelfke, Terry Schaefer and Carol Soustek said paid parking might be inevitable someday, and it might warrant further discussion now, but they don’t support paid parking at this time. Commissioner Carol Whitmore was more adamant and said she’d fight any city efforts to implement paid beach parking.
When proposing paid parking and requesting future commission discussion, Diggins acknowledged he’s not a parking expert and he doesn’t have any logistics or specifics worked out. It’s simply an idea he’d like to pursue.
“I’ve been giving this a lot of thought and I talked to staff, I talked to the mayor, I talked to some of the county folks about this,” he said.
Regarding the currently free parking areas designated at the city’s street-end beach access points, Diggins said, “Where all the ropes and bollards are, those would be paid parking, with an exception for residents.”
Diggins referenced the 42-page Island-wide Urban Land Institute (ULI) study completed in 2015. The ULI study was never used to any significant degree by any of the three Island cities, which each contributed more than $30,000 to help cover the $125,000 cost of the contracted study that offered a never-implemented “Vision for Anna Maria Island’s Future.”
“One of the recommendations said free parking is not a right,” Diggins said. “I’m just wondering if it’s time for us to revisit our paid parking policy at some point in the future and develop some type of plan for paid beach parking. I think it might be time to do that. The county would have to do it and the other cities would have to do it at the same time. I want to know what you guys think. I think it’s a way to raise revenue because we know revenue sources are drying up.”
Manatee County owns and controls Manatee Beach and the beach parking lot in Holmes Beach. The county also owns and controls Coquina Beach and Cortez Beach and their parking lots in Bradenton Beach.
Diggins said he talked to representatives of a couple of companies that provide paid parking systems and he was told the automated payment technology exists and the automated systems can also help motorists find available parking spaces without having to drive around looking for an open space.
“If you want to go to the beach, you have to pay for it,” Diggins said.
Commission feedback
Whitmore, a former county commissioner, said, “I 100% don’t support it. I didn’t support it when I was at the county.”
Whitmore said there’s not much left in life that people can enjoy for free anymore, especially the elderly and those who don’t have a lot of money.
“I don’t think that we should do that to our citizens. We have so many more important things to do than charge poor people for more stuff,” she said.
Oelfke agreed with much of what Whitmore said.
“I think we want to try avoid that as long as possible, but I think it might be inevitable at some point,” he said, noting he’d want the county to take the lead on paid beach parking.
“I do like the idea of looking for additional revenue sources. I would support increasing parking fines,” he added.
“I’m not for it,” Soustek said, noting the city “worked long and hard” on its current parking provisions.
The city’s current parking provisions include designated free parking spaces at the street-end beach access points and those areas are marked with ropes and bollards and small white, green and black markers that feature an encircled letter “P,” or parking bumpers designated with an encircled “P.”
Red and white signs designate the nearby city rights of way further from the beach access points where streetside parking is restricted to residents between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., with city-issued stickers used to identify residents’ vehicles.
“You’re never going to have enough parking out here. I don’t care what you do,” Soustek said.
“Until it’s an issue we have to look at, I would prefer not to,” she added, noting that she doesn’t mind discussing it further.
Schaefer said, “I’ve never been a proponent of paid parking. If it ever comes to pass, I can’t imagine charging our residents to park within our city.”
Schaefer noted the city had to previously defend itself from the previous county commission’s desire to build a multi-level parking garage at the county-owned Manatee Beach. Schaefer said he favors leaving the current parking provisions in place until it’s necessary to get in unison with what the county and the other two Island cities do in terms of paid parking.
Titsworth said the city did some preliminary research on paid parking when the since-discarded county parking garage was still in play, but she hopes paid beach parking doesn’t happen while she’s mayor.
“It’s inevitable. I hope inevitable happens when I’m not in this chair,” she said, adding that many residents live on the other side of the bridge now because they were priced out.
“The fact that they get to come back here and park for free and enjoy the beaches is good. Whether it’s now or later, that’s entirely up to this board,” she said, adding that she hopes it can stay free “for a little bit longer.”
Regarding the search for additional revenues, Titsworth said convincing the Legislature to provide the Island cities with a larger share of the significant tourist development tax revenues generated on the Island is a more immediate concern than paid parking revenues.
After hearing what the mayor and other commissioners had to say, Diggins said it would likely take a year or two, or longer, to come up with a workable paid parking plan that includes the county and the other two cities and now is the time to start working on it.
“We could have a workshop on this,” Soustek said. “Be prepared to have this chamber filled. Bring them in and explain why you want to discuss it, because you feel the inevitability of it.”
“It’s worked in a lot of beach communities,” Diggins said.
Whitmore again noted some people, including those who live on the mainland, can’t afford to pay for parking when visiting the Island beaches.
“Those are the people that really need our beaches,” she said.
Oelfke and Schaefer supported discussing paid parking with county officials to get a feel for where they currently stand on the issue. Titsworth said she would ask county staff to add a paid parking discussion to the agenda for the joint Holmes Beach/Manatee County meeting to be held at the county administrative building in downtown Bradenton on Wednesday, Sept. 3 at 1:30 p.m. That meeting will be livestreamed at the county website.
“Don’t we have more important things to talk about?” Whitmore lamented.
Diggins noted the county plans to charge boaters to use the boat ramps to be built at the county-owned Cortez Marina when that county facility is constructed on the property formerly occupied by the Seafood Shack and Annie’s Bait and Tackle before the county bought the property in December. There’s also been some informal public discussion about possibly charging boaters to use the other county boat ramps as well.
“People who use the service have to pay for it; and to me, paid beach parking fits in that category,” Diggins said. “We don’t have to implement it, but we can gather information to see what we don’t know.”
“I’ll fight it all the way,” Whitmore said.
