Guest Essay: Islanders need to be effectively informed, involved
BY EMERSON WICKWIRE
I applaud the Beacon, serving both as a community platform for ideas to identify and resolve community issues, as well as a central source of information on issue background and facts.
I have followed the surge of Beacon letters commenting not just on our ever-present parking issues, but also on the pending direct involvement of our controlling authority, Lee County. The letters almost universally decry what they perceive as Lee’s approach to, and even involvement, in our local parking issues. Is this disparagement fair to Lee County?
Like it or not, control of many of our important community issues are weighted not to us, but to Lee County. When I first joined the island 25 years ago, community dissatisfactions led to cursory examination of the merits of leaving the county and forming our own government. The examination showed costs to outweigh benefits of self-governance. With changed times, whether a new analysis is now warranted or desired, the fact is that Lee County’s role remains hugely significant. It may rightly be said that the county itself has thus far failed to resolve our parking issues, but it is dubious to accuse it of causing our parking malaise. Could it in fact be ourselves who have “dropped the ball?”
While some letters appeared more stringent than others, they reflected individual complaints on parking (a symptom of an ongoing core island issue), but none successfully defined the underlying cause (expanding congestion), its history and likely future trend. None suggested a comprehensive examination.
I am concerned this focus on individual complaints, however justified to the writers, risks unnecessarily exacerbating community divisions rather than encouraging a productive community approach. Such divisions have worked against us in the past. Do any of us want yet another repetition?
The Beacon’s letter complaints include the perpetual “church parking on the Gilchrist median,” the snarky “beach residents knew what they were getting into when they bought,” the merchant concern “my customers need more than two-hour parking,” the resident concern “parking controls risk lowering our quality of life,” and the issue denial “there is no parking problem in Boca Grande.”
Don’t we all concur with the letters’ universal wishes for preservation of Boca Grande’s unique assets and heritage? Those letters which did acknowledge parking to be an issue seemed to view it as static: once some sort of parking regulations are implemented, the issue will likely “cease and desist.” But is it naive to deny that the very nature of the expanding congestion has already changed the island and may well continue to do so going forward, whether we like it or not?
Congestion, the underlying issue, is not and has not been static. It has evolved and will continue to do so in the years ahead. As virtually all village residents affirm, it is undeniable that Boca Grande has a congestion problem. The problem has grown and will continue to grow.
How did we get to this unhappy juncture? Have we consistently over-focused on the symptom rather than the cause? Do we genuinely understand how the Gasparilla Island Act and its related entities were structured?
Years ago, Bayard Sharp and others devoted to this island bequeathed us what few other communities have had: the Act and what were meant to be its separate-but-integral entities, GICIA, Historic Preservation Board, Gasparilla Island Bridge Authority, Community Plan, etc.
Each of these entities, despite individual legal structures, was conceived as an integrated manager for different sectors of the community’s safety and preservation. None were conceived to function in isolation. Have we islanders been as effectively informed and involved as needed to bring those frameworks current as times and needs have changed?
In line with the ACT, our 2014 Community Plan admirably laid out a broad concept of B.G. community standards. Specific details for Plan implementation and updating, however, are still vague and sometimes unrealistic for today’s circumstances. The now 10-year-old Plan draft includes such admirable goals as avoiding “parking lots.” It encourages emphasis on visitor activity in the village and discourages emphasis to shift southward. It sorely neglects specifics on how to accommodate the ever-growing traffic into the community. Since the Plan was drafted, daily GIBA Bridge traffic has increased by almost 700 vehicles per day. If traffic trends continue, GIBA tracking points to another possible 500 vehicles per day over upcoming years.
My concerns from reading letters that focus almost exclusively on personal complaints, we risk undercutting opportunities to come together as a community to address not merely the parking “symptom” but the underlying cause of growing island congestion. Congestion has grown exponentially since the ACT and the Community Plan were first implemented. We have extremely limited physical capacities to absorb unrestrained growth, much less to attempt such without a realistic plan. Our existing resources are barely adequate to enforce even our current parking and visitor regulations, much less those needed to manage future growth. We neither want nor should promote plans to exclude beach and day visitors. But we neither can nor should accept the abuses currently extant for island owners, renters, and other taxpayers.
We cannot change the island’s physical size limitations. Even given those physical constraints, there is little reason Boca Grande and its fabulous atmosphere cannot be preserved going forward. But we need to examine the underlying cause, not just the parking symptoms.
I sincerely believe there are many opportunities for us to pursue as we discuss how to move forward equitably and effectively as a community. We can improve individual involvement, integration and proactive information-sharing among our island authorities. I will try to lay out hopefully useful ideas in a future Beacon op-ed.
