Street parking in Holmes Beach banned for now. There will be changes when it reopens

Anna Maria Island’s public beaches have been reopened but in Holmes Beach, all on-street, right-of-way and beach access parking in residential areas will remain closed for another four weeks.

There will be changes when a new parking policy, developed while the beaches were closed, goes into effect, said Police Chief William Tokajer.

The prolonged decision to close off on-street parking has, in turn, created a headache for Mayor Dan Murphy of the city of Anna Maria on the north end of the island.

Bradenton Beach, south of Holmes Beach, does not allow on-street parking while the city of Anna Maria does, but some of that parking may be eliminated. Murphy also is implementing a temporary hike in parking fines from $35 to $100. That policy will go into effect at 5 p.m. Saturday.

“Because Holmes Beach closed off all street parking, we got slammed on Mother’s Day weekend because people who couldn’t find parking in Holmes Beach came to our beaches,” Murphy said. “With the weather getting better, we’re going to keep getting hammered.”

Murphy said the temporary increase in parking fines will be for seven days but could continue depending on what Holmes Beach does.

“I may have to do it every seven days,” Murphy said. “I can’t let this continue to happen and it’s not something I want to do, it’s something I have to do to protect our citizens’ safety.”

Holmes Beach is waiting for up to 300 new parking signs to be delivered and it will take another two weeks to install them. Tokajer said once that is complete, then people will be educated as to where they can and cannot park.

“We are going to remove some of our neighborhood parking when we do reopen, which is about four weeks out,” Tokajer said. “We’ve had a problem for years throughout the entire city with people coming and inundating residential areas with parking in front of their homes, on their lawns and on their shrubbery.”

Tokajer said people have been somewhat responsible in taking their trash from the beach. But then they leave it where they parked.

“The neighborhoods have had to clean that up for themselves, and that’s unnecessary,” he said.

A 2014 study showed that the city had 374 public parking spaces, above the 300-space requirement to qualify for beach re-nourishment funds. A new study, which in part prompted the new parking policy, shows the city has 479 spaces available for public parking.

With that in mind, Tokajer said the new parking policy will eliminate on-street parking on residential streets that don’t have direct beach access.

“Every beach access street will be open again with parking at almost every beach access,” Tokajer said. “There will be two that will not. All other streets with beach accesses will still have parking spaces at the access area. So, it won’t affect beach re-nourishment funding at all. We have a lot more than what is required.”

Tokajer said once the signs go up, there will be no question about whether parking is allowed in a specific area.

“The minute the signs go up and it says ‘no parking,’ it will be enforced,” Tokajer said. “No will be able to turn into one of those roads without seeing the signs.”

This story was originally published May 15, 2020 at 10:04 AM.