Gate policies irk residents

LAKEWOOD RANCH — If Lakewood Ranch Golf and Country Club residents don’t want to sit in line at the visitor entrance to their gates, Lakewood Ranch Inter-District Authority Director of Operations Ryan Heise has a suggestion: Get a transponder.

In the ongoing battle of security versus convenience at Lakewood Ranch community gates, the lack of convenience has emerged once again as security guards ask each and every guest who they are and where they are going.

Although it’s always been protocol for guards to ask the questions, residents without transponders are getting annoyed as they sit in longer visitor lines behind lawn and maintenance vehicles. Residents are getting annoyed further, Heise said, when they are also asked by the guards whom they are and where they are going.

For the past few months, Lakewood Ranch Community Development District supervisors have complained that security was lax and guards weren’t consistently documenting who enters their communities and asking those questions.

Heise and his staff responded to the complaints.

“Complaints from residents about security have now decreased,” Heise said. “Now the complaints have increased about the guards asking too many questions and holding residents up.”

Heise, though, said the convenience issue for residents would go away if more residents purchased the $50 transponders.

Residents aren’t required to have transponders, and many residents opt not to use them and use the visitor lane instead.

To respond to the security complaints, Heise said his staff worked proactively to solve the problem.

“We have a staff member going out on a weekly basis spending time with the guards,” Heise said. “It helps the guards because they can relay concerns and it allows us to help them do their jobs better.”

Operations staff also makes sure the guards are entering the information they receive from visitors into a database, which lines up with license plate video surveillance that is collected on each vehicle that enters a gate.

Heise said a staff member now spends an hour per week reviewing license plate footage and checking the number of vehicles coming through the visitor gates, cross referencing tags and data to make sure guards are performing their duties correctly.

The measures allow the guards and operations staff to supply the Manatee County Sheriff’s office with data and footage when an incident in the community occurs.

Heise said the protocols have helped the sheriff’s office solve cases and suspicious circumstances on more than one occasion in the past.

“Because guards know we are periodically checking their work, it makes them more aware of what they should be doing,” Heise said.

The result, though, is longer waits during the morning and afternoon as guards get answers to their questions and enter the data.

Residents and CDD board members who have witnessed traffic backups to the community’s main thoroughfare have noticed the waits.

“The Balmoral gate had a line a quarter of a mile long almost to Lakewood Ranch Boulevard the other day,” said District 2 Secretary Michael Finney, at the board’s Sept. 18 meeting.

Heise said the issue of increased security versus convenience at the gates has been a back and forth issue for years.

“I think in some respects, the pendulum has swung, but the guards are doing a better job of enforcing what the district boards are requesting,” Heise said. “It’s a Catch 22 with this issue.”