Fourth of July Weekend - Fourth of July Weekend is a big deal in Sarasota, with the parade, the Offshore Grand Prix, all of the associated events and parties, everyone's personal and family celebrations, and Tuesday night's bayfront fireworks display, which wraps it all up and is easily the largest public gathering of the year. While most people have at least one extra day off to enjoy it all, there are a great many city employees who do extra duty to help ensure that the rest of us have a safe, satisfying holiday. In advance, there are those right here in the City Manager's office who wade through all of the requests for special event permits, making sure that conflicts are kept to a minimum and required services are provided with each event so that as much as possible everyone has a good time. There's the Sarasota Police Department, whose members take on the tasks of crowd control, traffic circulation, marine protection (can you imagine what that job must be like during and after the fireworks?) and other extra duties that come with a big holiday. Quietly but spectacularly in the background are our Public Works employees, who will be hauling barricades, dumpsters and whatever else is required logisticaly to pull it all off. If you're at the bayfront Tuesday night, take a look around as you leave at the unbelievable mountain of trash the fireworks-watchers leave behind. Then look again early Wednesday morning - I promise you will find yourself in complete amazement as to how everything went back to normal so quickly. THAT is your Sarasota Public Works Department.
I know I'm leaving someone out, so just take those few as examples of the many who will give up time with their own families to ensure that the rest of ours have a great holiday. To them and all of the private-sector volunteers who also work to make the many events possible I say a big thank you. And Happy Birthday, USA!
I know I'm leaving someone out, so just take those few as examples of the many who will give up time with their own families to ensure that the rest of ours have a great holiday. To them and all of the private-sector volunteers who also work to make the many events possible I say a big thank you. And Happy Birthday, USA!
posted by Michael McNees at 2:55 PM
4 Comments:
The city employees I saw working 4th of July weekend all did a great job. There are a couple of things the City of Sarasota administration could think about to make things a lot easier for them and the public. I think it's a huge mistake to give whatever permits are necessary to hold a boat show, or any event, on St. Armands Circle on the same day as the offshore races. The same mistake was made several years ago that doomed the Taste of Sarasota from being held at City Island, (and I've been told that someone decided that no more non-marine related events can be held on City Island any longer at all as a result). That was never a problem until, again, St. Armands decided to hold an "arts festival" on that same day. That date was picked after the Taste of Sarasota had already been scheduled and permitted for City Island. Traffic was backed up past Marina Jack downtown. (It had nothing to do with the drawbridge.) Someone needs to step up to the plate and tell those who want to try to glom off the traffic being brought into the area by another event that they need to pick another weekend. There are certain annual traditional events and the Offshore Races on 4th of July weekend is one of them. I don't think the city would want another event held in Bayfront Park at the same time as the annual Arts Festival in January downtown or to see someone try to schedule an arts festival in Burns Court the same night as the Holiday Parade. Putting some SCAT buses into service on the day of the boat races, maybe shuttling from Sarasota High to Lido Beach, would go a long way to alleviate the parking mess and traffic that keeps people from shopping on St. Armands that day.
Another item, that may someday actually cause an injury, is traffic on Main St. immediately following the fireworks. Every year I see this occur. There is no crowd control, (not that it would probably be possible without tear gas), and everyone streams out of bayfront park and parades up Main St. Lights are ignored as people cross against the red on 41. Cars are parked on Main St. and those people are now backing out and trying to drive away through the crowds of people. Trying to force those thousands of people onto the sidewalks, (a good chunk of the sidewalk on lower Main was closed for construction anyway), is probably a losing proposition. Perhaps Main St. could be closed for an hour from Gulfstream to Lemon and those folks who choose to park there will just have to wait.
Otherwise, kudos to the police, fire, sanitation for a great job during and after events.
To gulfer: As far as placing other venues under Ed Smith, better check with the folks there. I think they have their hands full running that facility. (Does the Children's Fountain actually have management full time besides those who do the physical work of keeping it going?) To a certain extent, I think it's good that Van Wezel doesn't control the Municipal Auditorium. That facility gives them a bit of competition and keeps them on their toes. Someone may want to look into what's going on at Bobby Jones, as I believe the folks who were awarded the contract to run the concession managed to shuffle the approved people who owned the LLC that had the contract and turn it over to new ownership without the contract being rebid. I know the city went through an approval process that looked at the individuals bidding. It wasn't just an LLC bidding for the contract. It was the people who owned that LLC being scrutinized. I would be surprised if the terms allowed the contract to be transferred without the second place bidder being given a chance or putting it up for bid again.
Gulfer - I've been talking to department heads about how we might tweak the org chart; for example with Payne Park, the cultural district, downtown pedestrian sleeves, etc. in the pipeline we need to be well organized to manage those projects, as of now we have people in different departments doing some of that work.
While there is opportunity to modify somewhat around function basedon how operations have evolved, unfortunately I don't see a lot of potential for major cost savings through reorganization - this organization just isn't overloaded on the management and supervisory side. I led an effort years ago at my previous employer where we cut a full 10 percent of our middle management and supervisory positions from the chart, and in the next couple of years only ended up putting two or three of those back because they turned out to be more mission-critical than our study group identified. (as a side note, nobody lost their job through that process, rather we did some reassingments and took advantage of position vacancies that we had.) The city organization is for the most part already pretty lean in the middle management and supervisory ranks, so budget cuts pretty directly also mean service level cuts. (This is I believe one of the most fundamental misunderstandings people have about local government, at least this one - that if we just "cut the fat" we could lower everyone's taxes considerably. It is more true that budget cuts=service level cuts, which we hear no request for at all!)
If you have some specific examples of where you think we're overloaded on the supervisory or management side let me know what they are, by e-mail or phone if you don't want to put them here.
srqone - that picture is sure local - though it seems a strange blog, as far as I could tell there's no way to post a comment, even though comments were requested.
srqcomment - You're right about the general chaos following the annual fireworks, and we have essentially every available body on crowd control dutry that night. The operative word is patience, and people need to understand that it will take a while to clear things out and to be careful and patient. For the most part I think people do a great job of that. Thanks for the good suggestion, and for recognizing the great work of all the public employees who are on duty that night.
srqgirl - as you probably know, the SCAT system is run by Sarasota County. I'm happy to report that they seem to be looking at the entire system in a big-picture way and assessing how it should go forward. I will pass your comments onto Mr. Ley, my counterpart over there.
Gulfer - I understand the point of reorganizing, and am not resisting staff cuts if appropriate, as I said we have been looking at the organization in that light. I am also saying that this organization is already pretty lean for the most part, and that there aren't huge savings to be achieved without service cuts that go along with that.
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