Come to Pine Avenue Parking Commission Meetings!

I went to the Anna Maria City Commission meeting yesterday.

They talked about sand for awhile, then in the last few minutes, it seemed, they apparently adopted what looks like a new parking plan of which no citizens, and perhaps not even the commissioners themselves, understand the consequences.

From my view in the audience, it appeared that the commission will do away with the regulation that says businesses on Pine Avenue need a certain number of parking spaces on their lot. Instead, they will let cars back into the street. Everything that had to do with previous parking regulations has disappeared.

Now Alan Garret is going to write up, I think, (it was all kind of muddle-y,) new regulations that redefine “on-site” to mean a general parking area which has no relationship to the size of the building, and may or may not include a bit of on-site area.

The unintended consequences of this new parking idea has not been addressed. A few of these consequences include:

- 1 This plan increases congestion:

lots of cars will back into the street, as opposed to our present requirement of one driveway into the street from each on-site parking area

- 2 This plan is not safe:

lots of segways, bikes, four-man-bike-carriages, and pedestrians will pass behind cars on the right of way. Even though a meandering sidewalk near the buildings will be built, people generally want to get from point A to B in a straight line--in this case one that follows the street behind parked cars. And passing behind a parked car is never safe.

- 3 This plan changes the ambience of Pine Avenue:

Instead of each business providing their own solution to parking on their premises, the look and feel will be that of a strip mall, where all the cars are parked next to each other with a grand view of their rear ends

- 4 This plan is contrary to our comprehensive plan and the desires of most residents:

The comprehensive plans calls for minimizing access points to businesses; this plan makes all of Pine Avenue an access point. And what most citizens want is to keep Anna Maria the residential beach community it now is, which is not what this plan creates

The sad thing is, hardly any residents came to the meeting or spoke their opinions about this proposed change in our law.

There are a few commissioners who are fighting hard for our interests, and they deserve our support.

I encourage citizens who agree, read or write for this blog to attend the next parking meeting and urge commissioners to leave the definition of “on-site” as it is. They should keep the requirement that the number of parking spaces a business must have, be based on the size of the building.

This doesn’t have to be a done deal yet!