Some Greenbrook Village residents disagree on newly installed posts

Greenbrook's introduction of barriers at seven locations on its community trails has not only caused disagreements between neighbors, but in some cases between even husbands and wives.

Peter and Heidi Easton are an example of a couple who respectfully disagree on the community's solution to curb the use of golf carts on trails and sidewalks. CDD 4  installed additional posts, also called bollards, at the seven locations in November to make those locations impassable to golf carts.

Peter Easton is one of many residents who are pleased the bollards have been installed. He has to slow down when he rides his bike though the 40-inch gap between bollards, but he is not bothered by it. He has seen golf carts use the sidewalk in Greenbrook “countless” times, sometimes at unsafe speeds, and added that he’s even seen a sports car do so.

“This is Florida,” he said. “People do stupid things and this is the end result of it. Somebody is going to get hurt. So they don't get hurt, the necessary precautions have to be taken.”

Heidi Easton disagrees with the decision to install the bollards. While she agrees that golf carts in Greenbrook are a potentially dangerous problem, she is concerned the bollards will be a hazard for cyclists.

“If you don't have very good vision, you're going to have to stop and just walk your bike through it,” she said.

Other Greenbrook residents took to social media to argue both sides of the remedy. Some believe the bollards are ugly and cause a hazard to cyclists and walkers. Others say the trail is safer now that the golf carts can't use it.

Golf carts are not allowed anywhere in Greenbrook, but their use on the community’s trails and sidewalks has been especially problematic, according to Keith Davey, vice chair of CDD 4.

“People were repeatedly warned that they should not be riding (golf carts) on the trails,” Davey said. “Some people just insisted, and it got to be concerning because they were pretty reckless. They almost hit some of the pedestrians and the bikers.”

The addition of more bollards was deemed the most appropriate way to deter golf carts by the CDD 4 Board of Supervisors, which thought it would be consistent with four bollards that existed since Greenbrook’s conception at the community trail’s two bridges. Those bollards, in the middle of the path at each end of the bridge, were ineffective because golf carts would just go around them.

On top of the three pairs of bollards that have been added at new locations on Greenbrook’s trails, the community added second bollards at the ends of each bridge (four locations in all) and repositioned them to prevent carts from simply driving around them as they did previously.

Greenbrook resident Stacey Carlin doesn’t like the bollards. Although she, too, agrees the golf cart issue needed to be addressed, she said the bollards are unattractive, among other issues, and that a better solution was possible.

“There could have been a much better process that this committee took to get resident input as to what we would like to see done in order to handle the golf cart activity,” Carlin said.

Davey said CDD 4 felt installing the bollards were the best decision. Using a gate would provide an obstruction for pedestrians and cyclists, while hiring the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office to ticket golf cart users would be too expensive since the community would have had to pay for the deputies' time.

Davey said hiring the Sheriff’s Office deputies cost approximately $35 an hour with a three-hour minimum. Hiring them for a long-enough time span to ticket the amount of riders necessary to deter most golf cart users in the community would add up quickly. By comparison, Davey said the cost of installing the bollards was about $3,000.

“We didn't want to put in gates,” Davey said. “We didn't want to do anything extreme. We wanted to simply add to what we already had.”