Our View

Oh, the dilemmas of the city’s parks.

On St. Armands Key, the residents surrounding St. Armands Circle and merchants surrounding St. Armands Circle Park struggle over events — how they affect the merchants and how parking disrupts the neighbors’ side streets.

At Gillespie Park north of downtown, vagrants, wanderers and homeless have become vulgar and messy, making the residential-neighborhood park a place where its neighbors don’t want to go. The disrupters make the park more of a liability than an amenity.

You could go down the list: Five Points Park, Payne Park, Pioneer Park, etc. City officials and police constant wrestle with managing access to the parks — who should have it and what are the limits.

Surely you can understand the nearby residents’ frustrations. And making them worse is the fact City Hall — the caretaker, overseer and de facto owner of the parks — can’t seem to find the right formula to alleviate the angst and frustration that dogs the parks’ immediate neighbors.

Here’s one reason for that: Fear. Fear of lawyer Andrea Mogensen and her associate, Michael Barfield, who lurk daily as alleged defenders of civil liberties and the downtrodden, seemingly ready to sue taxpayers at even a hint of attempts to restrict socially unacceptable behavior on public property.

But it also should be acknowledged that City Hall and the City Commission do indeed have civil-liberty limitations. They cannot discriminate.

What to do?

Private property.

We have advocated this many times. Privatize or sell the parks.

St. Armands Circle Park and Gillespie Park are perfect candidates for converting to private ownership.
As private property, or even leased property, the owners can secure legal rights that the city cannot.

Take Gillespie Park.

The Gillespie Park residents or homeowners association could form a nonprofit company; purchase the park from the city; and then create its own covenants on how the park will be operated; what activities and behaviors would be acceptable; and how the park would be maintained.

If, say, Gillespie Park residents want to forbid users from littering, they could adopt rules to bar litterers from the park. If Gillespie residents deem vulgar language unacceptable, they could bar those with foul mouths from the park. If they wanted to require park users to pay a fee or purchase a membership, they could do that. They could do each of these without fear of lawsuits from Mogensen or Barfield.

The mechanics of such a transaction would not be unprecedented. Nonprofit conservancies and organizations have privatized parks successfully all over the country. Two of the more celebrated privatizations occurred in New York City at Central Park and Bryant Park — with remarkably positive results. Once overrun with vagrants and drugs, Bryant Park now teems with families, children and others in a safe, clean environment. And ever since its privatization, taxpayers have not contributed one dime to its upkeep.

To be sure, Gillespie Park residents might say they could never afford to purchase their neighborhood park, or even manage it. But there are multiple, creative, affordable ways to structure such a transaction.
Look, the struggles in Sarasota’s city parks have been going on for decades. Law enforcement officials have employed all sorts of strategies to try to manage the miscreants, vagrants and disrupters, but the same problems always come back. The definition of insanity.

Privatization is one strategy the city hasn’t tried. It works. When you look at the condition and success of private property versus public property throughout the world, there is no comparison. Private ownership brings far superior results.

+ Misperception
When a reporter asked Sarasota County Commissioner Christine Robinson last week whether she would have a conflict of interest serving as a county commissioner while also serving as the new executive director of the Argus Foundation, a well-known advocacy group composed mostly of business owners and executives, Robinson flipped the question.

“Would you,” Robinson asked the reporter, “be questioning this if I were becoming executive director of an environmental group?”

Robinson said the reporter responded: “Probably not.”

When Lourdes Ramirez, president of the County Council of Neighborhood Associations, ran for County Commission, did the press press her on potential conflicts of interest if she were to be elected?

The Argus Foundation did indeed name Robinson last week to succeed retiring Kerry Kirschner, Argus’ longtime executive director. And the appointment drew immediate rebukes from the likes of Dan Lobeck, founder of Control Growth Now, and former Sarasota Mayor Mollie Cardamone.

They challenged whether Robinson can “serve two masters” — the pro-business Argus Foundation and the taxpayers of Sarasota — and questioned whether she can represent taxpayers fairly without being unduly influenced by allegiances to her employer.

The law is definitively on Robinson’s side. Before accepting the position, she sought counsel from Sarasota County Attorney Stephen DeMarsh. DeMarsh produced case law and state ethics rulings showing the dual roles present no legal conflict. Argus receives no money from the county, and Robinson knows that if she lobbies other commissioners on Argus’ behalf, she would be toast, legally.

What’s more, if you think about it, with Robinson’s hiring, it’s not as if Argus has just purchased a vote on the County Commission. As a pro-business Republican, Robinson already has taken positions that align her with most of the Argus Foundation’s points of view.

Nonetheless, there is still that thing called “perception.” Robinson’s political and philosophical adversaries will always make their perception of a conflict a reality.

As a result, Robinson will always be doing a “Wallenda” — walking a thin line with a cloud of perception over her head. But that cloud also will have a salutary effect. It should make Robinson all the more careful and conscious of her behavior, fairness and integrity.

+ Midnight Pass roundabout
Bring up the subject of roundabouts, and it used to be Sarasotans would raise their defensive mechanisms — no way!

That attitude is changing, especially now that downtown Sarasota motorists have experienced the roundabouts at Five Points on Main Street downtown and at the intersections of Palm Avenue and Ringling Boulevard and Pineapple and Ringling Boulevard. They’re working.

Installing a roundabout at Beach and Midnight Pass is one of the options the Florida Department of Transportation is considering for this important Siesta Key intersection.

Siesta Key residents might consider driving through those downtown roundabouts to get a feel for how they work. Once you drive them, your resistance to change disappears, and not having to stop at a stop light becomes a pleasant advantage.

+ Another parking dilemma
Laurel Park residents near downtown Sarasota and Burns Square are worried that someone may develop a high-rise on the vacant lot owned by Michael Saunders at Laurel Street and Orange Avenue.
Burns Square merchants would like city taxpayers to buy the property and erect a parking garage for their patrons. After all, the city did that on Palm Avenue and is doing that on State Street.

The better alternative would keep the property in private hands, and work with its eventual developer to include rentable parking spaces for the Burns Square merchants.