Exotic plants, Jolley Trolley funding on commission docket
By LESTER R. DAILEY
Article published on Thursday, Oct. 5, 2006  |
CLEARWATER – Not all City Council meetings involve life-changing decisions; most involve the mundane, but necessary, business of city government. The Oct. 5 meeting will be no exception.
Ed Chesney, the city’s environmental manager, appeared before the council at its Oct. 2 work session to request that it award a $182,000 contract to Luke Brothers Inc. of Holiday to remove non-native plants from about 100 acres of city-owned land. He also asked the council members to accept a $100,000 matching grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Pinellas County Environmental Foundation to pay for the project.
“Controlling, maintaining and preventing the spread of exotic, invasive species is the primary objective of the program,” according to a staff memo to the council. “This is the second time the city has been awarded grant dollars for this program, and in 2004-2005 the city removed listed exotic, invasive species on 94.2 acres of city-owned property.”
This time, the removal will be done at eight sites. The Drew Street site, at 31 acres, will be the largest, followed by the 22-acre Enterprise Road Wetland. Other sites will include the 20-acre Coachman Ridge Park, 9 acres on the Memorial Causeway, 8 acres along Kapok Creek, 3 acres on Cooper’s Bayou, about 7 acres on the south side of Lake Chautauqua, and a half-acre of right-of-way south of Lake Chautauqua.
Although it is one of the smaller parcels, the 9 acres on the Memorial Causeway drew the most discussion. Great care must be taken to avoid habitat damage while removing the Brazilian pepper trees and exotic vines.
“What we’re trying not to disturb is some nesting,” Chesney said, adding that there could be roseate spoonbill or owl nests in the area.
“We have to be careful, so there will be a lot of hand work.”
Off and on over the past several years, the council has debated whether to trim the mangroves on the causeway to create a scenic vista for tourists approaching Clearwater Beach from the mainland, but nobody had ever done a tree inventory of the causeway so the council members could properly analyze the scope of the job. As the removal crews work along the causeway, they will make informal notes of anything that could help the council make a decision on mangrove trimming sometime in the future.
The $17,620 difference between the $182,380 cost of the project and the $200,000 received from the grant and match will be used for wetland plantings at the Lake Chautauqua site and an endangered species survey of the Memorial Causeway.
At its Oct. 5 meeting, the council also will be asked to approve a $280,000 contribution, the same as this year, to Jolley Trolley Transportation of Clearwater Inc. for next year’s operation of Jolley Trolley service on Clearwater Beach, Sand Key and Island Estates and into downtown.
The company has been providing such service for the past 13 years, but Mayor Frank Hibbard suggested that the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority be allowed to bid on the contract.
“What I think the public is most concerned about is the service,” Hibbard said at the Oct. 2 work session. “I don’t think they care who provides it.”
But Councilman John Doran said the Jolley Trolley company isn’t doing a bad job. He noted that the city’s contribution covers only 54 percent of the company’s operating expenses, and it gets the other 46 percent from the revenue it generates. He said that similar subsidized transportation systems in other cites often generate only half that percentage of their operating needs. Besides, he added, the Trolley is providing an important service to Clearwater residents.
“One of the principal purposes of the Trolley is to drive the tourists around the beach and get them out of their cars to make room for those residents who live on the mainland and want to go to the beach,” Doran said.
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Article published on Thursday, Oct. 5, 2006
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