How dare you

To state Sens. Jim Boyd and Joe Gruters and Reps. Will Robinson Jr., Mike Beltran and Tommy Gregory:

How dare you try and force a parking garage at the entrance of Holmes Beach without going through the normal process with the local commission. All with no site plan, no rendering, no traffic study or environmental study and no referendum for the people to increase the height limit, which is a requirement of the city charter.

Are you really going to let Manatee County Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge dictate how you govern?

The city has a comprehensive plan in place to protect the city character, the livelihood and the environment. Do you realize that during construction this will remove hundreds of parking spaces for years? Where are people going to park during construction?

Can you even imagine what the parking garage will look like at the end of the day with trash, dumped coolers, sand and shells and stinky fish carcasses? Can you imagine what the elevator ride will be like with sandy, sweaty beachgoers packed in with their coolers, blow up rafts and bathing suit-clad bodies full of tanning oils?

Can you imagine how the environment is going to suffer, packing in hundreds and hundreds of more beachgoers on that tiny parcel of a beach? Our quality of water is awful now. What is it going to be like if you keep paving paradise with parking garages and packing in hundreds more people to pee and rinse off all their sunscreen and oils in the water.

What about all the runoff from a parking garage? Where is all of that going to go?

We are at a standstill now during high-traffic season trying to leave the island at the end of the day. What is it going to be like at the public beach when several more hundreds of cars are all trying to leave at the same time moving a few yards every five minutes and stuck inside parking garages with their cars running and with toxic exhausts filling up the air?

Manatee County has had years and years to acquire property around Holmes Beach that could have been turned into quaint parking areas. This would cost much less than the millions of dollars it will cost driving pilings and building a four-story parking garage in a coastal area. Have you researched how many millions it will cost taxpayers to build this?

While approving more development east of the island, you would have thought the county would have been more forward-thinking and purchased land for parking areas. It should not fall to the city of Holmes Beach to fix the county’s oversight.

Have you thought about getting permission from churches, available Saturdays and Sunday afternoons and the school, available all day Saturday and Sunday? This could actually be FREE parking, costing the taxpayers nothing. Even if you agree to lease this parking from these organizations for weekends, it would cost millions less than your proposed parking garage.

What this all amounts to is Van Ostenbridge not getting his way and not wanting to go about things in the normal process. He doesn’t want to ask, he just wants to bully and take. If you haven’t figured him out yet, you need to do your homework. He has thrown a line to you to over-power a local municipality and you took the bait.

You need to do the right thing now and stop this power struggle. This whole Manatee County commission is a joke and they are all in bed with developers. If I were you, I would try and distance myself as far away from them as I could. If you don’t, the next election might just not run in your favor.

        Jeannie Bystrom, Holmes Beach