- November 23, 2024
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Since his arrival as the city’s general manager of parking last February, Broxton Harvey has been on a mission to make the parking department financially self-sustaining.
He's also been tasked to strike a balance among serving the parking needs of businesses, residents and visitors to downtown and St. Armands. With that in mind, Harvey presented findings from feedback from citizens and community groups to the City Commission at its Jan. 8 workshop.
When he first presented his parking plan to commissioners in August 2023, Harvey’s stated goal was to increase parking revenues by $3.5 million.
Following a directive to receive public input on his proposals, Harvey’s recommendations were largely well received by commissioners, but the plan to add metered parking to the currently 80 free spaces along Benjamin Franklin Boulevard sparked the most — and sometimes heated — debate.
In support of staff’s recommendations, Harvey cited feedback from St. Armands Circle Association surveys, a Downtown Sarasota Condominium Association presentation, Downtown Sarasota Enrichment Association surveys, a Downtown Improvement District presentation and general emails. Some recommendations can be implemented administratively by City Manager Marlon Brown while others will require ordinance changes by the City Commission. The recommendations include:
Commissioners appeared generally in agreement to all of those recommendations with the exception of the last.
Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch said open access to the beach remains the lone bastion of free family entertainment for Sarasota residents, and that adding the expense of metered parking along Benjamin Franklin Boulevard would pose an undue hardship if the 368 free parking spaces at the Lido Beach Pavilion are full. And taking public transportation, such as the Bay Runner, is not a viable option for many.
“Picture yourself with three little kids, beach chairs, a big basket of toys, the eight towels that you need, they’re 2 years old, 4 years old and 6 years old,” he said. “You’re not getting in a bus with all that stuff to come downtown to wait to take a trolley when it's 90 degrees and you've got three little kids. It's not going to happen. That's the group that I'm looking after, not the group that has the luxury of just a towel and a book and going to the beach.”
“A couple of hours to pay for parking to go to the beach, that’s a hamburger and fries,” replied City Manager Marlon Brown.
“But it's also it's $3,” countered Ahearn-Koch. “We need to be extremely mindful that the beach is accessible to everyone and not just to those who have $3, and that can be a lot of money to a lot of families. I think that we just need to be mindful of that. It's a really important point in our community that we are proud that our beach is accessible to everyone.”
Ahearn-Koch found an ally in Commissioner Erik Arroyo, who suggested a resident card or vehicle decal that would allow citizens to park free at on Benjamin Franklin Boulevard, acknowledging that administering such a program would carry its own costs.
“The median income in the United States is $39,318, and many of the individuals that we have here in Sarasota not only have a larger family and they're working numerous jobs, but also many of them are on fixed incomes,” Arroyo said. “They’re retired and they're living off of Social Security. They live in a million-dollar house that they bought for 10 cents, but they can't afford to pay the taxes on a new house so they stay and they live there for the rest of their lives.
"There are certain arguments that I don't think we think we should steer away from like, just because you pay for other things you could pay for this because those other things were increased on you as well.”
