Proposal limits public beach
OKALOOSA ISLAND - A proposed ordinance amendment the Okaloosa County Commission will vote on this week could ultimately restrict access to beaches.
A public hearing has been scheduled at Tuesday's County Commission meeting to discuss amending its ordinance regulating recreational activities on the beach.
The two main changes relate to registering and regulating beach vendors and providing corridors for beach safety crews.
"This is our first stab at it," said Amy Allen, the county's parks coordinator. "I'm sure there will be some issues addressed (in the future)."
The commission meets at 8:30 a.m. at the Water & Sewer Administration Building on Lewis Turner Boulevard in Fort Walton Beach.
The amended ordinance would require all beach vendors wanting to do business on Okaloosa Island to register with the county and go through a certification process. Condominium owners and other upland properties would also have to register and will be given a list of approved vendors they can use.
Property owners will not be required to contract with a beach vendor unless the county sees the need for one.
"This is public property and it needs to be used as public property," Allen said.
Another change to the ordinance would establish safety corridors on the beach that would be off-limits to vendors and beachgoers.
The county staff has proposed a 20-foot-wide safety corridor near the dune line that would run from El Matador condominiums at the western end of Okaloosa Island east to Beasley Park.
Additional lanes will branch off from the main one to the Gulf of Mexico. The lanes are designed to give the beach safety crews easy access to the beach and water.
However, David Sherry, a resident at Surf Dweller condominiums, said the safety corridors would actually make up to 20 percent of the public beach off -limits.
"I'm not really sure what problems they're trying to solve with this," Sherry said.
He said it appears the county is trying to use the amended ordinance as a way to collect fees from the upland property owners and beach service vendors. He said Florida voters approved the Amendment 1 tax reform because they believed they were paying too much in property taxes, not because they wanted counties to come up with creative ways to collect money from residents.
Sherry said the county should review how it will be enforced before it is approved.
"My preferred outcome would be for the county to pull this off the table for this year," Sherry said. "I don't see that we've had a whole lot of problems with any of this."