Sarasota People - Note this - City might close 10th st. ramps
 

Caught a blurb today about how the city is entertaining ideas of selling the 10th st ramps and all the property to developers.

It would be hard to find any city/county government who has sold our history to the highest bidder as badly as the Sarasota City/County Commissioners. Their only concern is to become the Palm Beach of the west coast of Florida. Their unofficial motto is "If you don't have seven figures in the bank, we don't want you".

There is a meeting on May 17th for public feedback. As soon as I confirm where the meeting is I'll post it. We need to have an army for this. Closing 10th st. ramps would take 80% of the launching capability for this area, besides completely screw up two races. This could be one of the biggest fights we as boaters face in this area.

Man that sucks, i did launch my boat over at longboat key island by the bird santuary when the races were in last year and that sucked because of no parking for 65' or trailer and rig, let along all the fishing boats and jet ski's. You would think that instead of selling the ramp to just charge a ramp day fee and see the income that way compared to a one time sell out. Get us email addys as well to send letters to

Sorry Russ I just posted about this without seeing yours I put some info on mine as far as email addresses to the city officials!

Bajaboat, absolutely no problem. We really need to get the word out on this.

This should bring anyone to the thread where I saw it.

http://www.outdoorsbest.zeroforum.co...read?id=195926

The above website has all the website addresses for those city officials involved. I've already written all of them.

Bajaboat, are you aware of the SOS poker run I'm doing Saturday May 15th. All info under the poker runs, rallys, etc. forun. Gonna be a really good time. Would love to have you along. Russ

emails sent out to them as well

I was just sayin that the ramp needs to be twice its size due to the amount of people who use it. I also thought they should charge 3-5 dollars to launch to offset the expences,but like Russ (formula outlaw) said "If you dont have seven figures in the bank go elsewhere". Thats the direction our society is going. I for the love of me can't believe that there are that many people in this country that well off when I see the prices of all these properties. Was everyone a professional in there careers. They sell properties all over here Tampa for 700,00 to 2 million and they cant build these condos fast enough.

Thanx for getting the word out here on this.

I guess I should have learned to tie a necktie..:rolleyes:

Not if it's a Colombian necktie.:eek:

That would put a serious damper on area boating. :mad:
It would completely screw up all the poker runs and races in the area.

It's going to be a tough fight.

We went through a similar thing here in St. Pete with the airport. Some developers put in a serious bid for the property, we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars.

We successfully got the issue on a ballot after gaining enough petition signitures and the public voted on what shall become of the land. The airport won, thankfully. Like boating, flying only benefits a small minority, however, spin it the right way and nearly everyone was in favor of it. Remember, developers are evil...

If we can conjure up good enough case to describe the tremendous benefit of the ramp, while proposing to charge a few dollars per launch to increase local revenue and benefit area businesses, people might be in favor of keeping the launch. Meanwhile shedding bad light on the development project which would instead further polluting the skyline with unsightly condos which benefit only a small percentage of the wealthy could turn favor in the right direction.

If we play the cards right, public support will pour in, but it's a tough battle.

Very well said Nick.

Sarasota City Commissioner emailed me just now and wanted to know where I got that info, "that the city is NOT even CONSIDERING closing the ramps, in fact they are negotiating with FPL for the land to the north for additional boat trailer parking". I am going to try to copy the email and post here for all to see. Here goes:

I'll be damned, it worked. :cool:

Whew...Glad to hear it! :cool: :)

That web site link is dead now.

Damn I hate people who have nothing better to do than start a false rumor and stir up crap.:mad: :mad: