Running afowl of its own rules

The whole peacock dust-up should just be a fun moment worthy of a hundred groaning puns.

Unfortunately, it is not.

First, for many of the residents of Longbeach Village, the birds are a nuiscance, pests. Pretty pests, to be sure, but pests that damage property and wake people in the early morning hours, not to mention lure visitors onto private property and even into Longboaters’ backyards to get that special picture.

Who would want to put up with all that?

“We need to address the peacock issue,” Commissioner Phil Younger said during a workshop last week that included the peafowl, as they are more accurately known. “It’s been dragging on for years.”

Indeed. And the story of that raises the bigger reason that it is not just a laughing matter — although a little giggling is hard to suppress. It is yet another example of how government, even our little town of Longboat Key, often tries to do everything for people. In this case, pretty pest control.

In 1982, the town commissioners passed an ordinance setting a limit of 12 peacocks. Yes, town leaders, in a fit of micromanagement, actually decided to set the appropriate number of peacocks to allow on Longboat.

Well, over the years, the peacocks were not informed of their population limit and thrived. Michael Drake, who has been battling the fowl for years, said at peak times there have been about 140 of them. And that is a lot of peacock pooh.

Last year, the town authorized a small expenditure for the Longbeach Village Association to reduce that number. Drake said 86 birds were removed by a professional and that there are maybe 40 or 50 left. But they breed quickly, and their natural predators are few.

Some commissioners, tired and annoyed with the topic, wanted to put a time limit on the town’s peacock involvement and just walk away after six months or so. Others wanted to know what the residents in the area wanted.

But the town cannot just walk away. It has a law. There are more than 12 peacocks. If it is going to have the ordinance, it needs to enforce it.

And that creates a dilemma. It is morally questionable and can get the town in legal trouble to choose to enforce some law and not others consciously when it is in its power to change the laws.

So the discussion at the workshop ended up at what we’ll call the 12-male solution: Try to get the number down to the 12 prettiest birds — that is, all males. That way, there will be no reproduction issues to deal with. And in a few years, there should be no issue at all.

“I’m really tired of talking about peacocks,” said the town’s newest commissioner, Jack Duncan, urging the 12-male solution.

The best long-term option, though, is to get rid of the ordinance and take a small lesson from this pain in the derrière — limit government to the things that only it can do. This sort of issue is nothing that a homeowners association cannot and should not handle.

Rod Thomson is editor of the editorial pages for The Observer Group and can be reached at [email protected].