SRQ Daily Columnist Diana Hamilton, after living 35 years in Sarasota, labels herself a pragmatic optimist with radical humorist tendencies and a new found resistance to ice cream

It rained Thursday, just enough to lend evidence to a “river of water” problem the small shops on the downhill side of Bay Plaza on Palm Avenue have endured for much longer than a while. Unless you are a 10-year-old wearing Crocs, high-stepping it through water to do business is hardly preferred, and now with the Downtown Improvement District offering to solve the problem it’s difficult not to be pleased for those shopkeepers who must be thrilled.  However, solving their flooding problem appears to me to be a secondary effect masking a larger cause; the DID’s own long-held desire to scrape away a shady little grove of 26 bird-infested, Florida native cabbage palms, each approximately 90 years old, growing innocently in the right of way.

The DID, a special taxing district self-funded by downtown property owners, has its own Board whose focus and funding has gone toward achieving much of the Downtown Master Plan’s vision of more pedestrian-friendly, wider sidewalks, expanded outdoor areas for cafés and open space for people to enjoy the “gregarious environment.” The DID twice replaced our embarrassing, scruffy landscaping and continues to pay for maintenance.

Is it any wonder that with each success the DID has become increasingly autonomous, insular and protective of its turf? Or that its members, who volunteer countless hours developing a plan, are less than welcoming of questions from “outsiders?” Even so, reading the DID response to Jono Miller’s questions regarding the Palm Avenue 26 reminded me most uncomfortably of the parent who says to the child, “My house, my money, I make the rules.”  Simply unacceptable.

I don’t wish to start a fight with the DID, but I do hope to challenge you. I too am standing up for the Palm Avenue 26 because it’s the right thing to do, not just for them and the fauna they support, but for the DID as well.  I know how difficult it was convincing property owners to go along with an improvement district at a time when the economy was going south, but, forgive the pun, you did it. What the DID has achieved since is remarkable, but if you don’t begin to open up now today to a broader “outsider” perspective, one that supports choosing more natives and less exotics, the time will come when you may look around and see what many of us are already seeing—a stale, repetitive look that does not inspire.

One ought not need be a downtown property owner to have standing to debate a plan that essentially replaces 26 healthy native palms with an unnecessary, ecological downgrade to a less-than-nuanced landscape of exotics.  Getting your way just because you can doesn’t serve any of us, and at the end of the day it replicates the very attitude that so many of us resist and resent and have fought to change. As to the flooding, I’m happy to come dig a diverter trench the next time it rains, or perhaps the DID might spring for a good ole French drain. That should do the trick, and I won’t need to chain myself to those trees.

SRQ Daily Columnist Diana Hamilton, after living 35 years in Sarasota, labels herself a pragmatic optimist with radical humorist tendencies and a new found resistance to ice cream