Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/115375
Sarasota News Leader That was one reason he felt the SCAT system never had gained widespread popularity, he noted. "You're trying to convince people to ride a bus instead of drive a car," he said, but the lack of shelters means they usually have to stand in the sun or rain while they wait for the bus. March 15, 2013 Page 20 proposal for a chickee at the Casey Key Fish House. It was a topic he had covered as a reporter for the Pelican Press. A Feb. 14 memo to the County Commission outlines expenses for recent bus shelters. Image courtesy Sarasota County He began wondering, he added, "Why can't you have a little chickee [at a bus shelter]? They're inexpensive and easy to maintain." Moreover, GurGurney said at ney said, "People are standing in the dirt and they're getting the time, he estimated the cost of a chickee their feet chewed up by ants." at $3,000, though that would not include a poured concrete pad for the floor or handiGurney added that he and a couple of other cap-accessibility. Tree Advisory Council members decided to drive all the way to Naples one day to check During the March 5 County Commission meetout the types of bus shelters erected in other ing, Barbetta pegged the cost per chickee communities. shelter in the range of $3,500 to $5,000, "built "All of them look an awful lot like steel and and installed." He pointed out that was "a lot glass," he pointed out. "People go inside those cheaper" than the $40,000 estimate from staff. things and they're just going to cook." Gurney noted that a chickee generally needs Shortly after the group took that road trip, a new thatched roof every six or seven years, Gurney said, he was in Deland, near Dayto- but the county probably could factor that into na, when he spotted "really modest … little the overall bid specifications. wooden shelters" with cross-ventilation. In fact, he said, the contractor who built the That brought back to mind, he said, a sto- chickee complex at O'Leary's weaves new ry he had written some time earlier about a fronds in on an as-needed basis.