Don't buy a golf cart just yet!

This month Saint Johns County will be passing into law, regulations for using a golf cart on local roads. But at this time reading over the new law Treasure Beach has been cut out from the deal like most anything our county does. The golf cart idea is another way to reduce traffic on the streets according to our commissioners. Well if you think about it, golf carts travel pretty slow and would hold up most traffic on any road in our area. The new law has several problems for us here in Treasure Beach, so lets go over them. First and for anyone operating a motorized vehicle within the state of Florida you need a driver's licence. This alone means no children can drive just about anything on the street, but we've been living with that law for a long time now, and this will still apply to golf carts too. Its somewhat a feeling that most wives would argue over the definition of children, but yes even drunken men on the golf course should have a drivers licence if they cross a road. The new law removes Treasure Beach for now from having golf carts running around the development because of the speed limits written into the law. So my next point is the new law is for developments that are posted with below 25 mph. Our roads are presently posted at 25mph so this means we are out of golf cart reach for now under the new law. This makes me wonder if Treasure Beach lowered its speed limits to 20 mph zones, would the county lower the golf cart rule to 15mph ? Now the real question comes into mind, should we lower our speed limits within Treasure Beach development ?

On another point, if you've ever encountered a speeding golf cart at night, it can be a sudden meeting with your car or truck. In a way the golf cart deal would allow us all to move about the development quickly without the car, and we could say reach the local store or plaza at our entrance. It appears the new law is for communities that have a golf course, this use for a golf cart would be about the best application. Most are private roads within the secured area and are technically exempt from our local road laws anyway, so the new law doesn't really provide anything. I call on our thoughts here, but did anyone notice some new developments have small garage doors built into the new homes under construction on the island ? Did someone already have this new law in mind when building ? Perhaps the beach will become the new race track for golf carts. You can after all buy four wheel drive golf carts these days. Like each time I think about our canals and the mud down in those trenches for boats, perhaps we should lower our speed limit and grow grass in the 5+mile canals. A NEW GOLF COURSE!

I hope your laughing at this point, cause those little golf carts do not float. Treasure Beach was built for boating, but no law seems to help us out, so maybe we don't play enough golf here! Well, I'm not running out to buy a golf cart for now. Certainly our only golf cart couple Mandy and Morris found out about our laws within Saint Johns county over golf cart use on the streets or sidewalks for that matter. The start of this new law can be traced back to a development in Saint Augustine, Florida called Nocatee communities. Somehow this caused public hearings to approve a proposal for an ordinance to provide using golf carts within a development. Who has that kind of power ? Well, the Nocatee community was owned by the Davis family that is Winn Dixie. Apparently the bottom line this month for Treasure Beach is we need a nice family to move here that has some large Wal Mart size background to get what we need from the county. In the future of Treasure Beach perhaps we should get the speed limits lowered, and then build a nice small road where the brand new beach walkway is for us all to " drive" our new golf carts to the beach side! Just imagine in front of the Palm's Grill all those carts parked out front of the restaurant. Tourist would be asking where the devil is the golf course in Treasure Beach? We could get a new cart painted blue and white with a flashing light to patrol our streets at night! Down on the beach we could have racing on Saturday nights with golf carts! Cool uh?

My thinking is we need our boats, not golf carts right now, but lets give it some thoughts, perhaps we'll have to install parking lots for golf carts to access our beach entrance. On the good side of all this is our development will not see golf carts going down our roads for now with this new regulation coming into effect. So, don't buy one just yet if you live in Treasure Beach, but drive safe and here's to our new year ! Lets hope its a good one.

LA Panchuk ( Author: The Devil's Magnet ) Reporter for Xzone Radio
Treasure Beach resident

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