Rules? Developers Rule!

Unless the residents of Anna Maria reject it, our City is about to become someone’s little parking experiment.

Our present regulations require all parking for new development to be on-site. Our developers don’t like those regulations so we’re going to accommodate the developers and change the regulations. Actually, we’ll do much more than that. We’re going to eliminate the regulations altogether.

That’s right. If we adopt the new public parking option, the developers no longer will be required to provide parking. The City will provide it for them.

Oh, and we’re going to move the sidewalks to make it all work, if the owner of each developed lot agrees to allow us to move the sidewalks. It’s all optional. Their option.

One would have hoped when the developers learned the City had mistakenly approved past site plans and allowed noncompliant parking configurations to go forward, the developers would have altered their plans and instituted compliant parking configurations. But that’s not what happened.

Instead, the developers and their supporters have used every weapon at their disposal, including public records requests against two Commissioners and a host of others, lawsuits against a Commissioner, ethics violations claims, a Recall attempt against a Commissioner, and a general smear campaign aimed at discrediting their opponents. They've decided they're going to build what they want and no one, but no one is going to stand in their way.

As things stand today, the City of Anna Maria is on the verge of instituting a “common parking” option. The developers found our parking regulations too restrictive, so we’re going to throw out the parking regulations.

No loading zones required. No handicap spaces on their lots. No tedious calculations to satisfy the parking needs they created.

No more rules. Period.

Guess that’ll teach ‘em, huh?