The Florida Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability has made landfall on Anna Maria Island.
OPPAGA chief legislative analyst Todd Clark and deputy coordinator Claire Mazur visited Bradenton Beach and Holmes Beach’s public works departments on March 20 to ask city staff for their responses to questions about consolidation and dissolution.
Holmes Beach public works superintendent Sage Kamiya told The Islander March 24 the pair relayed many of the questions the cities had received directly to staff for responses, as well as explored potential consolidation/dissolution through the frame of public works.
“I didn’t see a huge benefit, other than maybe sharing some equipment and machinery as possible positives,” Kamiya said. “One of the potential cons would be how responsive is the county or the city of Bradenton going to be to people on the island if they are that far away?”
Anna Maria’s public works manager was out for the week on personal leave, so the city did not receive an OPPAGA site visit, according to Mayor Dan Murphy.
OPPAGA is a research arm of the Florida Legislature that supports lawmakers by providing data, research and analysis that assist budget and policy deliberations.
OPPAGA has been working since last fall on a study into the potential consolidation of the island municipalities.
The study was proposed by Rep. Will Robinson Jr., R-Bradenton, and unanimously backed by the Manatee County Legislative Delegation, including state Sen. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, who represents the island.
The visits came around the same time as the cities were responding to OPPAGA’s follow-up requests for information related to its consolidation study.
OPPAGA began the study by sending requests to the island cities, asking for information and documentation from the past five fiscal years.
The requests also asked for narrative responses to discuss the benefits and challenges of three possibilities for the island cities’ futures, including:
- All three cities are consolidated into one new city on the island;
- All three cities are incorporated into the city of Bradenton;
- All three cities remain incorporated municipalities on the island and work to consolidate existing services where that makes sense.
OPPAGA then sent follow-up requests to the cities asking for more information, including narrative responses for an option previously unveiled to the municipalities: the three cities’ dissolution into unincorporated Manatee County.
OPPAGA’s March 7 request to Bradenton Beach established a March 22 deadline for a response but the city did not fulfill a March 22 records request from The Islander before the press deadline.
Anna Maria received OPPAGA’s follow-up request March 5 and had until March 15 to respond.
The city provided additional financial information, the number and type of employees, a contract with Waste Management and a response to the question of dissolution.
The city lists four benefits of dissolution as an unincorporated city in the county, including:
- Lower tax rates for property owners by discontinuing the city’s current 2.05 millage rate;
- Access to the county’s public works equipment, which includes a “far greater range and inventory of heavy equipment;”
- Uniform building rules and enforcement;
- Uniform law and code enforcement standards.
On the other hand, the city provides six cons in response to the dissolution option.
The cons include:
- Increased financial and administrative burden on the county and negative impact on tourism;
- Loss of local environmental safeguards;
- Loss of diversity among the island’s three culturally distinct cities in favor of “one vanilla entity;”
- Elimination of charters and comprehensive plans;
- Loss of jobs;
- Potential legal challenges due to widespread island opposition.
Under the first con, the city wrote that the county only contributed $15,000 over the last budget year toward the city’s roughly $11,400,000 budget.
It wrote that the municipality uses its budget to maintain “an extremely high set of standards” for quality of life in the city that the county may struggle to maintain.
The city also noted under the last con, “Property owners, annual visitors, tourists as well as the island elected officials have all publicly stated their opposition to this option. This scenario is almost certain to be met with strong legal opposition, thus making such an effort costly as well as time consuming and delaying any savings of taxes.”
Holmes Beach responded by its March 22 deadline.
City attorney Erica Augello wrote the municipality’s narrative responses, including almost six pages on dissolution.
Of those six pages, a little more than one was spent listing the potential benefits of such an option.
Augello listed similar benefits as Anna Maria, such as the establishment of uniform standards for code and law enforcement, construction standards.
She also wrote that the centralization of certain services, such as building/land development, engineering, floodplain management and public works could also prove beneficial to the island.
However, many of the pros presented by Augello were listed alongside caveats and followed by almost five pages of cons, which include the potential flaws of centralizing services like public works, such as finding space to adequately combine the three cities’ equipment and materials, or how creating a uniform standard could negatively affect the municipality’s separately developed infrastructure.
Overall, Augello wrote in opposition to the potential dissolution of the island governments.
“Having to provide for the unique development and environmental concerns of the island communities is something that Manatee County’s regulations do not address,” she wrote.
Augello added that it would be “unwise” to hand reins of the island to a county that has “in recent years been rife with malfeasance, misfeasance, fiscal irresponsibility, ethical concerns, sunshine and public records concerns, and staffing and budgetary concerns.”
“These are not issues that presently face the island communities, and if so, certainly not to the degree that Manatee County faces,” Augello wrote.
Leave our island cities alone already. You know what consolidation should be studied? Bradenton and Sarasota. No one recognizes Bradenton until you mention Sarasota anyways. Or better yet…. Rename Bradenton “The Town Nearest the Gulf Islands of Manatee County.’ Happy April Fools if I wasn’t completely serious.