On The Mark: Finding water access can be dangerous

Our lack of public access to the Gulf has reached a point where frustration and long waits are no longer the only concerns. Anyone heading towards Marco Island on a weekend can verify that a dangerous situation exists at the crowded county boat launch facility at Collier Boulevard and Isle of Capri Road.

Boaters have been forced out of most privately held marinas and are left with very limited public launch sites, making the county sites a commodity based on available parking.

With only a small number of parking spaces for vehicles and trailers at this launch site, boaters have literally moved into the streets in droves to park their vehicles. Recent photos taken by concerned local citizens show vehicles and trailers parking not only along all shoulders of the road for quite a distance coming and going from this launch, but also driving up and parking in the median on Collier Boulevard!

Concerns for the safety of everyone crossing and driving along Collier Boulevard prompted local residents to notify a myriad of county agencies seeking some help to avoid a serious accident.

The responses were interesting. One department noted they were going to be expanding the legal parking spaces in the future and once that is done, they will post no parking signs everywhere else. Guess that means parking illegally within right-of-ways and becoming an obstruction to traffic moving 55 mph is okay until the signs are posted. Odd sense of priorities.

The local law enforcement office requested that the next time this happens they be notified — again. This is a rather odd response since this activity is happening on a major public road frequently traveled by law enforcement personnel, yet they are not able to do something about it on their own initiative?

No doubt everyone is sympathetic to the boaters who are being squeezed out of water access in this county unless they happen to own a multi-million dollar waterfront home. Regardless of how wrong that may be, a dangerous situation is in no one's best interests.

As a county, we have placed priorities on many things that benefit huge segments of our residents, but the ability to increase beach and boat access has not kept up with our needs.

Undoubtedly due to the value of waterfront land, marinas have been closing up and selling to private interests for huge sums of money. It was not that long ago that the Wiggins Pass Marina sold out to a developer to be converted into multi-million dollar high rise residential suites.

That land was not sold cheaply. County records indicate the sale was over $24 million. Prior to its final designation as a luxury condominium, there was extensive discussion about the possibility of the county purchasing this land with and possibly retaining it as a public access marina. But $24 million is a lot of money for taxpayers to come up with and politically it was not a successful idea at the time.

Funny thing is, shortly thereafter, the taxpayers had $54 million of their money committed to an inland regional park that features numerous water-themed attractions. The park is supposed to help attract tourists and is priced accordingly.

We have sold off the beach, the Gulf, the bays and harbors to high-priced real estate. The coast is dotted with hotels and accommodations for tourists, yet we balk at purchasing that same high-priced, true water-access real estate to retain it in perpetuity for our residents and then turn around and re-create water-related recreational activities miles inland at over twice the cost of the waterfront land.

It becomes obvious that the tourists and the wealthy winter residents with their luxury homes become the beneficiaries of our tax dollars while local residents are left trying to find water access in dangerous ways.