Second reading necessary before staff can start enforcing payment and hours
It took only about 15 minutes on Feb. 2 for the Sarasota City Commission to vote unanimously on the fee and hours of use for day docks within The Bay Park in downtown Sarasota.
The fee will be $2 per hour, with a limit of five hours per day. The hours will be 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., which are the city’s standard hours for parking enforcement, Broxton Harvey, general manager of the city’s Parking Division, told the board members.
No fee will be charged on Sundays, which also is the city’s practice for parking in metered spaces that day. The day dock usage will mirror the parking policy.
Harvey had made a presentation to the board members on Dec. 1, 2025, proposing the fee and hours that won approval this week. The next step in the process will be a second reading of the ordinance, before it can go into effect.
In response to a Sarasota News Leader inquiry on Feb. 3, Jan Thornburg, general manager of the city’s Communications Department, wrote in an email, “A date has not been set yet for second reading of the day docks ordinance.”
As noted in the ordinance that won initial approval on Feb. 2, the installation of the day docks is a facet of the rehabilitation of the canal and south seawall in Phase 2 of The Bay Park on the city’s 53 bayfront acres in downtown Sarasota.
In response to a question that Vice Mayor Kathy Kelley Ohlrich posed during the discussion this week, Harvey said that the same enforcement staff members who handle vehicle parking will check the vessels using the day docks. If they see that the operator of a vessel in a slip had not initiated the pay process, or the vessel had remained in place beyond the five-hour limit, “Then we will either provide a warning or a citation. It just depends on the situation.”
Ohlrich next asked him whether data would be collected over time, to be used in determining whether the fee should change, “up or down, or not?”
“Always,” he replied.
His staff collects data about all of the division’s operations, Harvey added, which is reviewed annually in preparation for his recommendations related to the next fiscal year budget. The goal is to learn whether the specific fee is at the market rate, above it or below it, he added, so any adjustments can be made.
Envisioning a variety of scenarios regarding enforcement procedures
When Commissioner Liz Alpert asked whether meters would be installed at the day docks, Harvey told her that, at the outset, signage that already has been installed will direct vessel operators to use the ParkMobile app or the Passport app to pay for the space. In the future, however, meters could be installed, he said.
Thus, as with use of the parking meters, Alpert responded, a boater could arrive at 7 p.m. and just end up paying for an hour.
Harvey confirmed that she was correct in that assumption.
“Are they allowed to dock after 8 p.m.?” Mayor Debbie Trice asked.
Signs will be erected to provide the hours of operation, Harvey explained. Yet, even though people will not be charged to dock after 8 p.m., he continued, “You’re just not allowed to stay overnight.”
Again, as with parking in metered spaces, he pointed out, city staff is not going to require people to come back to their boats by 8 p.m. He noted that boaters may be dining nearby or at a show at a Bay Park venue.
“So how do we define ‘not [docking] overnight’?” Trice asked.
Harvey indicated that if the enforcement staff will checks the slips in the morning and finds that a vessel seen the night before had remained at the dock, that would indicate that it had been there all night. Then the operator would be fined for docking overnight, he said.
“I believe that The Bay Park’s hours end at 11 p.m.,” Trice told him.
Harvey said that his staff could check the day dock slips until 11 p.m.
Further, Trice said that, in reading through the materials he had provided the commissioners, “It seems to me that there were very few municipal day docks.” Conversely, she continued, it seemed to her that in the Sarasota area, “There are quite a few waterfront restaurants who own their docks, so their patrons come and dock [for] free …”
Harvey did note that the St. Pete Pier and the Tampa Convention Center are municipal entities with facilities comparable to The Bay Park day docks. The Convention Center, he noted, has a “$10 flat rate [for] up to three hours.”
“It is rare for cities to actually have day docks,” he acknowledged.
“I would say,” Trice replied with a laugh.
“And you will be monitoring this, to see whether or not we should adjust the [fees], adjust the hours, adjust the rules?” Trice asked.
“Yes,” Harvey assured her.
Then Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch asked whether a boater could leave one slip after five hours and move to another, to keep the boat at The Bay Park.
“There’s not another block that they can move to,” he pointed out. However, Harvey conceded, if they could find a free slip at The Bay Park, “They possibly could do that.”
In response to another question posed by Commissioner Alpert, Harvey said, “We don’t even know what the usage is going to be right now.” Staff may need to come back to the board to seek an adjustment of the hours, he added; perhaps to midnight.
Alpert ended up making the motion to approve the ordinance on first reading, and Vice Mayor Ohlrich seconded it.
“This is [an] extremely low price that we’re asking for,” Alpert pointed out, “so I think we should feel pretty comfortable going ahead with this …”
At some point, she added, the data the Parking Division will collect may indicate the need to raise the fee.
“It’s a really very scarce commodity,” Alpert noted of the day docks.
Ahearn-Koch agreed with keeping the fee low at the outset, “as we tiptoe into this new area for us …”