Letters

Here we go again.
Remember back in 2007 when an “unbelievable” offer to buy Briny Breezes evaporated when the financing collapsed amid a volatile market? Remember 2018, when a small group of shareholders in the mobile home park failed in an attempt to get approval to market the park for sale?
Well, a small group of residents (some of them the same) wants to try again.
This time, they want to bring much of what most residents enjoy about this special place to a grinding halt for two entire years.
Here’s some of what will happen if their proposal gains 51% of the vote at the park’s Feb. 22 annual meeting:
• Friends and family, the typical purchasers of homes, won’t buy into the park — only speculators will do so.
• Grants that the town has been pursuing to help with immediate infrastructure needs will dry up.
• Residents will no longer want to serve on corporate or town boards, since any discussions of the future will be moot.
• Every offer that’s scared up by this “marketing” will require time and effort of staff and officials and cause upset among residents.
What sort of a vacation retreat does this leave?
I suspect the self-important residents behind the push to market the park for sale could not care less. Dangling billion-dollar dreams as short-term enjoyment of the park crumbles is unconscionable. Especially as Realtors position themselves to profit from speculators in the interim, regardless of some unlikely sale of the park.
The original founders of Briny Breezes had a vision for the park and it wasn’t for self-enrichment. They found a way to keep viable all that they cherished about the coastal lifestyle.
Once they purchased the land by selling shares and setting up the corporation, they preserved their “trailer park” lifestyle by driving to Tallahassee (not easy in the early 1960s) and successfully lobbying to incorporate as a town.
It took commitment to their friends and neighbors and a vision for the future to pull this off.
That same dedication was evident when town leaders later sold bonds to install sewers — some of the first on the barrier island. Visionary leadership.
Briny is again in a position where vision will be necessary to move forward as climate change raises sea levels and delivers flooding rains. All of Florida faces these challenges. Briny’s coastal neighbors are dealing with identical issues. They aren’t giving up.
Many of Briny Breezes’ elected, appointed and hired officials have roots back to the visionary leadership of the past and they, too, are looking at options to keep this lovely, thriving vacation community moving forward.
This latest selfish and shortsighted effort to market the community for sale should fail.

NOTE: Mary Kate Leming and her family have owned mobile homes in Briny Breezes since 1998.

— Mary Kate Leming, Editor