City won't change event policies

A drove of downtown Sarasota business owners and festival promoters gravitated to City Hall, Wednesday afternoon, in order to express to the Sarasota City Commission that there's nothing wrong with the way the city handles and manages its events. Their words and presence paid off.

At a special meeting Wednesday, June 6 at City Hall, commissioners heard a report from a committee that was formed to review the way events were handled, especially on Main Street.

A list of more than 15 questions presented by staff and committee members included:

• Should the city provide an event manager for all downtown events and related extra fees be paid for by event sponsor (many of which are non-profit agencies)?

• Should there be a limit to alcohol sales during an event?

• Should there be an increase in damage deposits?

• Should there be events that close Main Street for two days?

Overwhelmingly, the answer to those questions and many others was, “No.”

While Downtown Sarasota Alliance board members pushed for an advisory ad hoc committee to discuss the matter further and consider other guidelines, including more permit requirements and additional event permit costs that would come with the cost of having an events coordinator, the rest of the more than 75 people in attendance said it was unnecessary.

While it was suggested by some that those serving food and alcohol during events that close Main Street take away from Main Street restaurants, Mattison’s City Grille owner Paul Mattison strongly disagreed.

“Whenever there’s an event in the street, our sales are better,” Mattison said. “Liquor sales on New Year’s Eve were off 30% because we had no event this New Years.”

Longtime downtown advocate and downtown event innovator Paul Thorpe told the commission they were wasting their time.

“The system isn’t broke,” Thorpe said. “It works just fine.”

Sarasota city commissioners agreed after more than an hour of public comment that, for the most part, the city’s permits and events don’t need to be scrutinized.

“There’s probably a handful of events that aren’t good neighbors and need to be motivated to be good neighbors,” said Commissioner Shannon Snyder. “I’m not inclined to add more government (by adding an event coordinator and additional permit costs).”

Mayor Suzanne Atwell agreed.

“We can tweak this, but the feeling I get here is this is more about an extraordinary, urban downtown core that’s thriving” Atwell said. “What a problem to have. It’s terribly exciting.”

Contact Kurt Schultheis at [email protected].