all right good evening everyone i'm going to call the city council meeting to order today is April 7th 2025 and up first we have uh I don't believe we have a pastor here so if everyone could please stand with me for a moment of silence
all right thank you Councilwoman Abear with the pledge please please join me with your hand over your heart i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for
all all right all right so at this time it looks like we have a little bit of technical difficulty so I'm going to start doing uh audible uh votes yes up first is going to be the approval of the agenda
do we have any modifications or approval i'll make a motion to approve all right councilman Braden yeah Mayor before we get started I just like to ask um we got a lot on agenda tonight um is it possible we can try to follow Robert's rules tonight i will do my best yes sir
thank you all right got a motion we have um an item to add as I emailed you about Mr fogert's request can I add that to the agenda then since I made the motion to approve as is do we Where would it be added to the first item under city manager reports uh I make that motion to
add Mr fogerties to the city manager first all right got a motion in a second with that I will call the vote council Schmidt yes yes yes yes yes trim yes yes all right eyes
have it 70 so moved up first is going to be uh the presentation from Kimley Horn awesome yeah just hit that gray button there you go yep all right good evening so my name is Lindsay Slaughterback i'm a transportation planner with Kimley
Horn um so we're here tonight just to give you a quick overview of the ECRC's smart regions plan and then talk a little bit about US98 Installment Avenue um I'm joined by my colleague civil engineer uh Jared Wall from our Jacksonville office so he'll go over some of the nitty-gritty about the
technology improvements and potential um updates so we can go so the smart regions plan I know y'all are pretty many of you are pretty involved with the TPO and the regional council the smart regions plan is part of ECRC's seven layer cake initiative and so the idea is
that they're kind of reimagining the transportation network in the region to promote efficiency and safety throughout so City of Destin is included in that um there also is a safety action plan which feeds into the smart regions plan so the
the um impetus behind this is just to really promote that efficiency technology and safety and so this is just the vision and purpose we're really looking to leverage those smart technologies enhance quality of life for our
residents visitors and then um outline kind of a roadmap for deploying these strategies throughout the region and again in the city of Dustin and so um several goals so the smart regions plan looked at safer mobility so those are vulnerable road users bicyclist pedestrians reducing
congestion i know that's big especially on US98 um looking at economic growth and opportunity uh resilient infrastructure so you know we get hurricanes quite a lot in this area so want to look at some of that make sure our roads are safe from that perspective and then efficiency when it comes to
energy and spending and so this map shows the annual average daily traffic and so this is something we looked at in the smart regions plan and so this map obviously is for the city of Destin specifically and I'm sure you all don't need a map to know that US98 is your big problem lots
of traffic there that's why it's highlighted in dark red um so that's essentially why we're here today so something that we looked at pretty specifically in the smart region plan is the bottlenecks uh throughout the region and so bottlenecks are really where you're seeing a lot of congestion
i don't think this is a surprise to any of you either but we like to map things as planners and engineers so here you can see those yellow dots are where you're seeing a lot of congestion and bottlenecking so of course um lanes come down traffic gets kind of clogged through there um and then it's not quite
at US98 installment but very close which can cause some of those issues y'all are seeing there you go and then just to kind of highlight some of the safety piece of this um we did the safety action plan this segment of 98 that includes Stallman Avenue is um number two
priority for this area so that would make you all eligible for safe streets and roads for all funding and the grant program is open until the end of June so great opportunity there um but you'll see along 98 through Dest and a little bit on the eastern edge of the city limits there are quite a few
intersections that are an issue just based on uh traffic crashes and then bicyclists and pedestrians and so I will hand it off to Jared now to talk more specifically about um technology improvements yes so just really want quickly wanted
to cover some of the technologies that are identified as part of the smart region plan um with the idea that technologies can be used either to supplement capital projects or even be a stop gap to the more uh funding intensive capital projects it's a lowerc
cost option um to get some benefit out of your existing system so a few of them here identify bicyclists and pedestrians there's pedestrian hybrid beacons that's a way to cross get pedestrians across a roadway without having to build a full traffic signal impavement lighting improves um improves the visibility of
pedestrians passive detection and bicycle detection both would provide um uh actuation at a signal or or or information to the signal of a user that might need to cross there that otherwise wouldn't have the need or ability to provide that
um active traffic management so if you have staff that's able to monitor and react in real time to traffic incidents you can then cut down on your congestion so that's through investing in technologies like active traffic management systems CCDV systems um
dynamic message boards um gives staff at a TMC the ability to see what's happening and then respond live with changes in your signal timings advanced traveler information system so this is really just about ways to give information to the users of the roadway so we all know ways in Google um
Florida 511 it can give you alerts to incidents that are on the roadway there's also some proprietary apps that can be integrated with traffic signal systems um nationwide about 25% of traffic congestion is a result of an incident that happened on a roadway
if we can reduce the frequency of crashes we can reduce the frequency or the the duration and impact of the congestion that's caused by that so one of the big ones is a Q warning system if you have um a queue of vehicles up ahead you have traffic traveling at the speed
limit and they come up to the back of the queue that's where we see a lot of those rear-end crashes that then cause more congestion which then in turn could lead to more crashes upstream systems that can detect the presence of a queue and then provide that information to vehicles that are
traveling um in that direction you know that think about the one you know coming over the East Pass Bridge we have a lot of congestion right there and that could be something that that we look at for Stallman um and then data analytics so investing in tools that are able to provide advanced data information so
that the operators of our systems can make decisions not only in real time but decisions with with better information so it's automated traffic signal performance measures um that's probe based data and I I'll show an example of something that we pulled here on coming up slide for for our um
location so US98 installment avenue just a really quick overview of kind of what we've seen at that intersection and what are some of the technologies we might could look at in our existing conditions so this is a something we can pull real easy through through a program called RIUS um probe based data analytics so it pulls
information that from the users of the roadway we can pick up speeds um of uh the vehicles that are driving on the roadway this is a snapshot of March 17th through 19th so it was a Tuesday to Thursday and this is showing our eastbound and westbound travel times or actually these are travel speeds that we
picked up and you can see really kind of hard to see on the graph but on that bottom line you can see where it really starts to bottom out around 4 pm um in the westbound direction speeds crawl down as low as about 10 miles an hour at the intersection so we know know that we have congestion at that
intersection um this slide's showing pretty much the same thing but really the the only thing to focus on is that whole left side of this is is uh the westbound direction and that really that middle area darker means more congested or darker red is more congested green is less congested um and it shows us that
really throughout a lot of the day we have that issue westbound going through that location um and then we also look at crashes so in the last 5 years 112 total crashes in this location 65% of those were were in daytime hours which seems
to be a a heavier percentage of nighttime crashes than you typically would see um and the majority of those crashes are rear rear end crashes so when you see rear end crashes that could tell us that people are running up into the back of a queue traffic stopped there those crashes then proliferate
into more congestion um so potential strategies from a technology standpoint so this is not capital improvements these are what are some technologies we can leverage traffic signal timing is always the lowhanging fruit that's taking advantage of the existing equipment you already have and making sure it's operating most
efficiently then we can look at advancing our our traffic signal capability so traffic responsive signals is where we look at these systems that are designed to respond in real time to the to the demands of the traffic and react to that
in real time so it's it's very similar to our preset signal timing plans but it gives us a broader set of applications can respond in real time and it can communicate with signals downstream to keep the flow going so if you get a lot of traffic or you get times where it's 4 p.m and maybe it's a not nice day like
it is today and maybe we don't have as many pedestrians crossing there um maybe it doesn't need to do something quite as drastic but if it's a really nice day and you got a lot more pedestrians out it can react to that and bulk up the signal timing plan some additional strategies that you
there's some of the ones we kind of covered but for this location specifically Q warning system are we having issues with cues our crash patterns seem to suggest we might be um ATSPM so that advanced data that tells us exactly what problems are we seeing
at the intersection when are we seeing those problems we can look back in the past and see what are certain days of the week that it might be worse that gives us the information we need to know then to make an informed decision about what we need to improve monitoring active monitoring of the system being able to have a human go in and actually
u validate the issue that we're seeing on camera and respond to it in real time um and then traveler uh information systems so I can just wrap things up real quick because we know you guys have a very long agenda tonight but um we just did a
quick cursory glance of this intersection specifically and like I said there's a longer segment included in the safety action plan so there are funds out there for this project to do you know a deeper dive a bigger study uh potential capital infrastructure project
so um you know this is very kind of just like quick eyes on the street we even drove down there on our way here took a look saw pedestrians so um pretty good to kind of get it it makes sense in our mind so thank you so much for having us we're happy to answer any questions we're always available um if you all
want to talk after this meeting or another day um but thank you so much all right Councilwoman Abear um you were saying how there's a lot of traffic that comes up on it when traffic is slowing down um I've noticed that there's been a lot more of the looking at their cell phone and just driving fast not paying
attention and then just slamming into traffic not that it's dead stop but have you taken any of that into account in your studies yeah it it certainly makes the challenge a lot harder to solve um and and what it really does is it tells us that if if we're if we have a system
where cues are present we're more likely to see crashes now than we probably would have been before that was common um from a from the perspective of the engineers all we can try to do or not saying all we can try to do but the the most impactful thing we can try to do is
figure out what we need to do at that location to reduce the presence of cues and reduce the likelihood that somebody can can uh make a mistake council McG thank you for your presentation i have a quick question about slide 15 of 19 the existing conditions it looks like the uh
the red is in the passing lane more than not uh do you guys have a plan or any recommendations for keeping dumb asses out of the passing lane and this this chart right here is it's it's kind of difficult to explain this is one of the exports we get out of that that
RIUS um platform on the left side of the screen is the westbound direction and you can see the left to right graph is time of day so on the left side is the morning and you see everything's kind of green and then as we get around that 400 p.m it starts to get red and then going
up and down on the graph is I think Bending Road is um at the top and then the East Pass Bridge is kind of in the middle so that's just showing us in time and space where we're seeing the issues it doesn't necessarily show us where in the lane or where it it's probased data
so it really just knows that you were here and five minutes later you were here so you took this road all right um and that's what they pull excluding that data we we all recognize that we do have that issue what's your recommendation to keep those ship bags out of that passing lane uh I'm sure there's a study we can do
but I I don't I I don't know the exact uh issue that you that you're talking about at the moment right council Dustin thank you mayor um we've been trying to get something like this done for several years now and we still are not making any progress what is the deployment time
on a a system from something as basic as an actual human being who's running the control to AI computers if we started today when could you get some kind of a system out there for us to try and see what kind of improvement it makes yeah I
I don't want to represent or misrepresent any vendors but there there are several vendors in the market that that provide um what they call solutions um a lot of them are really good um and it's just a matter of procuring equipment usually when you've got the equipment procured the the software
platform that comes with it you get with the equipment i mean so at that point in terms of uh in terms of your turnaround it's really whatever your lead time is going to be on that specific equipment six to nine months um and then generally low cost we're talking about things that
are in the tens of thousands instead of hundreds thou or thousands exactly what we're looking But it looks like we're going to miss another year we'll be on our third year of trying to do something um which is is very discouraging but we certainly need to march in that direction so uh I'll be happy to make a
motion later at the meeting to go forward with trying to attempt to see how we can make this come to fruition councilman Bagby yeah I'm more and I appreciate that but I'm more concerned about the long term so the county tells
us that they have $3 million in certax for this project does is it just the technical assistance or is that the D you know planning uh PD&Es for underground tunnel
or it doesn't really matter or you don't know well I think so that's up to you but the um because you spoke with Scott Berman so he was on our steering committee for the safety action plan and so he understands the safe streets and roads for all funding but essentially there's
money for planning there's money for infrastructure so it would be up to you all what you want to apply for so you know if you want to say I believe you need a uh 20% match it's 20 or 25% so for example if the 3 million is your 25%
match then you can go up to 12 million is your request and if that covers whatever you need for the tunnel then that that's probably how um that application would go but it's really up to you how if you all wanted to go that route with it and kind of do the technology signal piece and look at
infrastructure as well to address the issue then then we certainly could assist with that okay and you can help us write the grant yes okay jeff you got that thank you thank you Councilwoman Traml i think Mr bagby just answered my
question because um for a long time the county controlled the stop lightss out here and they they monitored all of those so I didn't know how much of a county city project this was going to have to be um and how much
control we actually had of it um we gave them the control we can take it back okay that's that's what I was thinking so this is we're looking at um contacting the county and and getting them on board so I think our TPO
representatives should be working that real hard thank you got a meeting with Tim Smith tomorrow all right got two people councilman Braden oh yeah thank you Mayor um in reference to the traffic signals the low hanging fruit um can
that crosswalk I know they're wearing that button out on that crosswalk um can that be extended that the time of that i know we can extend the time of the the light itself but what about the crosswalk the the amount of time it takes you're talking about the amount of
time it takes to to cross no just I mean it's I don't know how they how that works but you know when somebody pushes that button how long it takes for the light to turn red so they can cross can that time be extended to keep that light going the amount of time that's being provided
to pedestrians extended or the time that I don't know you're talking about the delay between when they push the button and when they get the correct it can it is adjustable um and it's it's it's most likely adjustable with the existing equipment you have that's probably just something the county we'd have to ask
the county because I think they extended that light to that light but okay that's all mayor thank you and then just to add on that as far as the pedestrian crossing um you guys talking about because I see it a lot over at Bow Champamps where they push the button and
then by faith or fate there's a gap so you shoot the gap and then the timer still goes so now I'm halfway down to AJ's and now it turned red and now we kind of have like a ghost red pedestrian thing is there any kind of like small solutions that could either allow for a
manual stop of the of the switch or some kind of detection of all right they've clearly crossed and now that that button is invalid yeah that that that's a concern that's been brought up that I've that I'm aware of in various agencies and I think it's it's one of those
things where are we ever going to be comfortable enough with the detection systems we have in place to be 100% confident that there's not a pedestrian in the crosswalk because the last thing you want to do is have somebody who really needs a lot of time to get across and then the system says "Oh there's nobody there let the cars go." And I
don't I don't know if there's an agency out there right now that would be comfortable or I don't know if there's a detection system and an agency out there right now that would be comfortable with that now advancements in dete detection technology could get us to the point where we say yes we are comfortable with that and we believe we can do it with
100% accuracy and then that would be a very good um a very good application hopefully we'll have a tunnel by then yeah all right i don't see anything else thank you guys so much for the presentation thank you mhm all right up next is the Arbor
Day proclamation celebration proclamation stand over here by all right I have some of the park foundation not park foundation park committee here so thank you guys so much for joining me up here uh this is the city of Destin proclamation Destin Arbor Day whereas in
1872 J sterling Morton passionately proposed the planting of trees as an act of stewardship leading to the establishment of Arbor Day a legacy celebrated now throughout our nation and around the world and whereas Arbor Day Arbor Day's inaugural celebration
inspired the planting of more than 1 million trees igniting a global movement to to continue the growth transforming our environment and community and whereas trees are vital guardians of our environment reducing soil erosion moderating temperatures cleansing the
air we breathe and producing lifegiving oxygen they provide essential habitats for countless wildlife species supporting biodiversity and ecology balance and whereas trees and destin significantly enhances our quality of life by increasing property values
strengthening the economic vitality of our commercial areas and the beautifying of neighborhoods they offer shade tranquility and a connection to nature that rejuvenates our spirits and uplifts our community here comes my favorite part whereas while palm trees are iconic
and decorative for our coastal community they are botanically classified as grasses and provide limited environmental benefits such as reducing shade minimal oxygen production and limited habitat value compared to true tree
species no offense whereas our commitment to planting and preserving true trees today will endure a healthier more sustainable destin to generate to for generations to come creating a legacy of environmental stewardship and community pride now therefore I Bobby
Wagner mayor of Destin on behalf of the city council passionately proclaim April 22nd 2025 as Arbor Day in Dest Florida thank you guys so much for being here thank you all right thank you everyone for allowing me to take a local jab at palm
trees all right moving along is public comments i'm going to start on my right and move to my left y'all's right uh you have three minutes just name and address and the floor is yours do I have anyone here from the middle hi there uh Tammy Whitinghammer whoa
that's really loud um 2004 98 Palms Boulevard and I just have a comment um I wanted to represent for the 13 Widenhammers that showed up this weekend for the Pooch Palooa to help put it on and pull it off and a
special thank you to the chair of the parks and right committee Autumn Widenhammer who organized it and put it all together and worked very um diligently with the city and also very uh a lot of thanks to the city staff who
worked very very hard and had everything excellently pulled off so that was a great experience and also thank you to the Okaloosa County Sheriff who shared their canine with us so that was great everybody loved that presentation and to the council women
that showed up thank you very much we greatly appreciate it so and uh just a great thank you to everybody it was a great community everybody had a great time and looking forward to doing it again next year so thank you so much for everything and everybody's help and it was great awesome thank you so much all
right anyone else no all right to the right anyone all right all right all right we're close the public comments and moving right along consent agenda motion to approve i have a motion second have a second any consideration seeing none all
right we'll call the vote vocally I believe councilman Braden yes yes yes yes yes yes yes all right eyes have it so moved and now we'll go
into the city manager report and we will do the walked on item first thank you mayor so this walked on item was on the March 17th city council agenda but was postponed to tonight so that's why it didn't show up in the agenda package but
if you go back to the March 17th agenda um for the public all the details are in there so this is a request from Max Fogerty of Maxed Management regarding one vessel seeking an exception from the livery vessel moratorium prohibitions for similar reasons as have been
expressed by the yachts recently in the community the vessel at issue in this request is a 35 foot long pontoon known as the Destined Party pontoon the vessel holds up to 12 passengers four people per car plus a parking spot for the captain um is in place this vessel has
received a BTR through Parrot Head Yachts and has been in operation since 2021 as a bearboat charter with the captain they too had the confusion similar to the yachts um the operations are located at 530 Harbor Boulevard which is Gilligans via a lease with the
property owner and I believe Mr fogerty is here if you have any questions um but as you all know the moratorum contains a process to request exceptions if you know money has been expended in reliance on the ordinances and in this case the
applicant has expended in excess of um $50,000 per the information that um he has informed us awesome so Mr fogerty did you want to speak to the council or just be available for questions y just hit the gray button first there
you go max Fogerty 500 Driftwood Lane um I've you guys have all heard my story before and she kind of summarized that I've had to work through all these other people and do all these avenues to try to do everything as legally as possible i've always tried to follow all the rules and I really do just want to be
legal and like a shining example of like how it can be done the right way so I just kind of wanted to come up here and just say that to you guys again to reinforce it to let you guys know that I think uh we are are on the same page i want the same thing that you guys want i
want people to make the city better i don't want to have to operate behind you know gray areas and do all this stuff i just want to be legal and I want to make the tourism industry better here i don't want to just ring the city out for whatever it's worth and exploit it i
want to be a healthy part of the economy and I just want you all to know that and that's my whole purpose here um and just take that into consideration so thank you all for your time and I really appreciate everything awesome council Schmidt yeah um I'll just add
um I spoke with Max for a couple years now as he was going down the pursuit of doing a legal business in Dest and he's been doing nothing but trying to get there uh now he has a lease with the property owner on on the harbor and so I I 100% support the fight you've been doing
for a couple years and thank you for doing it the right way so I'll move to approve the request as presented i have a motion council second i'll second it yep got a second there any further discussions all right council Gal do the staff do the the parking analysis to make sure he
has enough yeah so if you I know you don't have it in the agenda tonight it was here it was in the packet on the 17th but it says provided that all of the codes are met so if he got the exception he would still have to come into compliance with all the codes if he's not already meaning parking bathrooms i believe that he already does
have everything but we don't know because we don't have the formal application until staff gives him the permission it would be reviewed and if he did not meet those requirements he wouldn't be allowed to operate um but yes yes yes sir I do have uh more than enough parking plus an additional spot
for my captain to park um I rent at Gilligans right now so um I have four parking spots rented for my customers and a fifth for my uh captain so all right see no further discussion i'll
call the vote oh yeah uh Council Schmidt yes my computer will Yes yes yes yes yes yes awesome congratulations awesome thank you guys
so much i really appreciate it hey turn it off yeah just hit that button thank you guys you can go home now yeah you get back to your real life all right Larry thank you Mr mayor the item 4 A uh in your packet is the final deliverable
from the SRS master plan um no action uh requested tonight other than presenting it to you for your review u unless there is any um recommendations from council that staff move forward in any of the components of it or uh any direction you
would have for us we'd certainly entertain that tonight or at any future meeting but this was the last deliverable in their contract and so we just want to make sure you had it as they presented it to us i'm going to jump in on you there um so last thing I
I'd be afraid of is uh this join the rest of the master plans that are collecting dust on a shelf somewhere um so obviously probably the biggest hurdle is the financial contribution that it'll take from us um so I didn't know if we as a council had any discrepancy or
direction on with our lobbyists perhaps and with different buckets of money out there between Triumph and some of our business partners and community partners out there if there was a place that we could consider directing staff and perhaps some of our lobbying resources
to go towards finding the money for something that we can agree on as part of one of those phases in there um so I don't know if you guys have any considerations now of what you would feel is probably most prudent to get towards um or where we should we'd start
that probably has the most legal um sway up here so Councilman Schmidt thanks Mr mayor um I appreciate you saying a few words here i agree i think we need to do something with this plan and not just
put it on the shelf with some of the other ones um I think for the sake of for our sake of our taxpayers as well that spent quite a bit of money on putting this plan together we should uh continue the pursuit of something uh
it's a very big chunk very big projects and I think that's we all agree on that um but I don't think in my opinion we're trying to do something like this next year a couple years from now um so my thoughts are and this will
be kind of part of my discussion later as well um I believe we need to have staff start bringing this uh in in a plan of a multi-phase approach over the next 10 to 20 years on how it
could be achieved um cleaning these items up some of these things on the list that we already have or maybe we don't need proposing the triumph funding the grant opportunities the state the county the TDC um really presenting it
in a manner to us as we are coming up on our budget and our capital planning cycle i'd like to see it so um that's kind of my thoughts and I can finish off with a motion later but I'll let Sandy and whoever else speak too all right
Councilwoman Traml um I was going to make the recommendation that that um somehow this council has to decide where they want to start i I don't think I don't think staff has any direction as to where we want to start so maybe we should look at
a workshop regarding this or another council meeting regarding this where we can give them some delineation of where to start and where to go from here and that's and I ran it I had it run off it's about this thick so there's a lot
of meat in there u but we do need some idea of where to start i agree councilman Bagby yeah I kind of agree with both of you the uh this would have been good to get before we had our strategic visioning so that we could sit
down in a workshop workshop environment uh you know there there's lots of things that I think are good in it there are lots of things I kind of disagree with i don't think we need two open air amphitheater or whatever you want to
call them 500 ft from each other one on Harbor One and one at where the community center is that you know pick one or the other or neither and put it all over in here uh but I think a workshop is probably the way to go
because for us to sit up here and spend two hours trying to give st you know figure out what direction we want to give staff is probably a waste of our time a waste of their time and definitely a waste of the people who came here to see us make
some decisions so I'll support a workshop uh but it it's not like I don't think Triumph will fund this larry and I have had conversations with uh them and it's if you're not creating jobs you know not and I'm not talking
two people working in a welcome center type job you know jobs uh it's it's not going to do so uh yeah I'll right does anyone have a motion yeah I'll move for uh staff to bring us
back some options for a workshop uh in the next June summer time frame i'll second that all right we got a motion to second any further discussions on that seeing none are you up nope all right Kevin run down voice vote oh yes right
yes yes two three yes four yes yes six yes seven all right seven yeses so moved all right larry thank you council mr mayor the next item is 4B which is the STR compliance solutions RFP um
previously uh in fact back in November the 18th um we had this discussion and council member G was the legislative sponsor to move this forward regarding uh the issuance of an RFP to manage the short-term rental registrations
um and to work on some compliance matters there uh so this would be your approval of this would move forward to putting the request for proposal on the street to ask for um um proposals to manage this we're looking at another
four to 5,000 units u to be in this program once we bring the condominiums on board so that would be a very heavy lift for staff and we believe it would be better managed with an outside party um and we've also would include in that
conversation uh some contact with the clerk of court to find out what their uh potential would be to serve in this capacity and um um we you know spoken uh some of our briefings this afternoon regarding that so there may be some further details there but in any event
uh we would perhaps run both of them parallel to see which one would have the best option for us we would anticipate that from our research it's about $50 per unit per year to implement this and to manage it which if we move forward
with the U $300 number that's been floating around not that it's been nailed down but that leave about $1.2 million in revenue for the city after this is taken care of so our recommendation would be to move it forward in conjunction with having
conversation with the clerk of court and their ability to to provide such services to the city all right thank you uh council bagby yeah I would uh I did talk to the clerk of the court right before I came in here uh and he and I are going to meet next Monday either 9
or 9:30 uh the clerk of the court is the one that collects the bed tax just so all of you know and they have all the worldwide list of bed tax remitters in Okaloosa County specifically in Destin so everybody that would be paying
this fee whether they're condominum condominium or a uh house uh they already have and they have about a 98 to 99% efficiency rate on identification of those short-term renters uh rental units
and they are already collecting the money they charge they are allowed just so you know by the state statute to collect up to 3% of the bed tax revenue to use collecting it uh all they charge the county is what their actual costs
are so which don't exceed the 3% obviously so if we can get somebody who actually helps us collect this for less than 3% of the 300 to 500 how muchever we're going to end up charging these
people that is by far and away the most efficient methodology I think so I would just ask that we table this until the next meeting and then I'll be able to provide y'all feedback from the uh clerk of the court's discussion and see if they can because they already have all
the information and all they have to send out and oh by the way yes last month they uh noticed uh I think he told me seven people who they have a crawler so it crawls through VBO it crawls
through uh all the rental websites and stuff and identifies people in this area who are not remitting the bed tax and that's how come they have such a high efficiency rate on collecting that so they can use the same service to help us at the same
time all right so before I um acknowledge the table I'm going to get Councilman Dustin in there so we don't cut off everything on the conversation okay yeah and and I was just going to support that at $50 on a 300 that's what 15% uh 3%'s a lot better than that and
would net us another $150 $200,000 so we need to explore that and uh I'll even make the motion for Jim to postpone this until the next meeting so hopefully he'll have information then i'll second this all right i have a motion to put
this on the next meeting with a second uh my only further discussion we we got down the rabbit hole um honestly because of the dogs and we can start talking about things that Walton County does and perhaps if the if that's the route when we go that route this kind of becomes
not significant but if we do go with a third party to potentially open that up to allow us to have multiple different permits or different fees that we could collect if we were to go a subcontract route um from a for-profit company uh
your guys's thoughts on potentially opening that up to allow for a lot of different permits or a lot of different options that we would provide for services so we're getting pushed to the next one but I just wanted to throw out there that's kind of a a conversation we had that I I thought merit a little bit
of potential value for later on cal [Music] realistically if we're worried about the $50 we can always pass that along as part of the fee just like whenever you sell something at a restaurant you pass along a 3% credit card fee we could just pass the $50 along with the registration
fee initially and then you've captured the entire amount of money um I think it's more beneficial to look at an outside service i I want to listen to see what uh they offer but um I think we have more versatility with an outside office and we can try to manipulate the
company a little bit more than we can uh the the county clerk's office or or inside entity all right so I got a motion and second and I will call the vote to push this to the next meeting after we get some clarification councilman Brandon
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes all right i have it so moved 70 thank you Mr mayor council next item is 4C this is in regards to the shores at Crystal Beach uh park concept review uh
when we published the agenda the we had not received any comments back from the county regarding our comments on their proposals uh we have since received that back and it's under staff review to
uh better understand the compliance with our code and the need or the lack of need for any uh variances um on the revisions that they have made um so what you have in your packet were the two uh
plans that came back from the county with our comments from staff uh and where they didn't comply with our code since uh this was published again we have gotten feedback from the county and that is under review with our staff right now to determine where there may
need to be variances granted if we move forward with either of those two so we would recommend that we um not take any action tonight but let us bring you back at the next meeting what um our staff finds uh where we're in compliance where we may need a variance they've uh the
county has presented us with two options in their review from the county and of course we're not going to rely on that one option required no variances and one were minor variances so we'll get that information and get it uh our arms wrapped around it so we can present it to you in a more meaningful form at
the next meeting right y good nick next item 4 D is pickle ball uh we had bids received we had two bids the lowest responsible responsive bidder was BGN
uh for a total of 686,70.90 that's a base bid of $644 62090 uh for plus the alternate which is the shade structures and the parking of $41,450 so we would recommend that we move forward with uh negotiating a
contract with uh BGN um and we'll bring that back to you u as soon as we get that done uh recognizing that we have a commitment from the TDC for uh the $300,000 to help fund this and that may be the first board of county
commissioners meeting in May before that's totally approved but we anticipate no problem with it but in the meantime we will be negotiating this contract with BGN council Bagby move to award the bid for RFB25-02-REC to BGN second all right got
a motion in second anything else considering pickle ball seeing none I'll call the vote council Schmidt yes yes yes yes yes yes all right that is 70 so
moved all right boss man next item is 4E um which is a discussion concerning the minor development order for improvements to the existing Captain Royal Melvin Park u there's no action required for this uh it's kind of we're bringing it
to you to see if the council has any wishes regarding uh the uh 10-ft sidewalk which would make it code compliant or perhaps a handicap or code u a compliant parking space on site uh
otherwise uh we just want to bring your attention that there has been some issues raised from some neighbors uh that we're requiring to comply with codes and when the city put Captain Royal Melvin Park in it was use of some
federal dollars and it goes back for a number of years and when it was built it complied with the code but there are certainly some questions asked um whether there's some things we'd want to do now that would make it compliant we don't have to do anything um but there's some options there of you know closing
the driveway leaving the driveway open putting in a handicap compliant to putting in the 10-ft sidewalk or leaving the 5ft sidewalk is completely at council's discretion whether you want to do anything or not all right Councilman Braden yeah like I said in my uh gender
briefing I the only thing I would like to see is the sidewalk brought up to speed or whatever else is you know our neighbors are putting in i think that should be done okay Councilwoman and my thoughts are we
were federally funded on that we should be grandfathered in this is a situation where you know we did this way before all these rules and regulations came out and it was a federal product so we need to make sure we don't do anything that jeopardizes future federal projects and I I think Miss Cob will comply that
that's our position that it is grandfathered and nothing is required but we can if you choose to okay c Councilman Dustin oh sorry you'd like to respond Miss Cop did you yep okay um on the sidewalk we would have the
only 10-ft sidewalk I believe i don't know when the next one is if there's even one between us and the bridge probably Mike Abbott uh so that issue is I don't know why we would do that and spend that money on the issue of the handicap parking space that is the largest if not the only handicap ramp on
the harbor and the very concept that we were going to place our handicap parking across the street in another parking lot was uh very questionable legally morally no question at all you need a handicap
parking space there otherwise I guess you're going to wheel across street that was always a crazy idea i was pretty sure that I didn't have the option to put my handicap parking across the street in a separate parking lot when I remodeled the restaurant and no one else can do that so I would like to see us
come up with a way to and there are some drawings and and it can be done to to put at least one handicap so someone could actually use that beautiful ramp we've built to take people down to the uh to the harbor front and we also at one time spoke about trying to put a
handicap ramp so people could actually bow board a vessel in their wheelchair down at the city's uh space down there i'd still like to pursue that there's there's really no handicap ramp where someone could get on a boat with their
wheelchair in Destin so the first step toward that is at least having a handicap parking space and that's uh where my thoughts on this issue are but to put in a 10-ft sidewalk where there's no 10-ft sidewalk for hundreds and hundreds of yards or feet
whatever it is up and down the road just doesn't make a lot of sense unless we just like spending money miss Cop do you have anything nope it's up to council i didn't know is that a substitute motion or an amendment or what just discuss motion i think so far it's just been
Okay no you made a motion you didn't make a motion you're just you're advocating for the sidewalks councilman Braden yeah that was all and if we're going to do that then I mean if when somebody remodels no matter where it's at we're going to wave that sidewalk as well because there's no no sidewalk
around it or attached to it i mean I thought that's what the ultimate goal was for the city in the multimotal so I mean we made one guy do it so we're not going to make anybody else do it unless they're attached to his or how's that work no everybody that comes
in for redevelopment today is asked to do the 10-ft sidewalk the city's project of course was approved many years ago and received the federal grant money so they came in before that requirement however today if anyone comes in to
redevelop they're required to do the 10-ft sidewalk okay we don't we do not ask the property owners that are existing already to change their sidewalks until they come in to redevelop in some way okay thank you okay uh council me
I think my question was just answered but um I want to make sure right now there currently is not a parking spot for handicap correct correct okay it's it's across the street okay so we're talking about adding a parking spot for handicap how does that
not constitute an upgrade where it requires us to bring things to compliance if we add the parking spot i just want to understand if we add it how that doesn't You're not talking about redeveloping the property you're talking about adding a parking spot so we have the four options that you all can discuss or other options but the way we
the way we um presented it was to just keep the current configuration including the access the sidewalk and the current parking or close the access point and install the sidewalk or keep the access open install
the parking spot and the sidewalk or just do the parking spot without the other changes the in my opinion the less you change on a federally funded project the better but there are uh laws federal laws about ADA
compliance that um you know have been met you have to have handicap parking on site if possible so at the time this was approved it was determined clearly that it wasn't possible but if there is a way to do it and we can do it that would be great for the ADA
all right and I'm a little I think something's a little bit contradictory because what we're saying is there are no handicap along the harbor so let's add a add a handicap but then the other conversation was there are no 10-ft sidewalk so let's not add a 10-ft sidewalk no there there are some there
are some 10-ft sidewalks for people that have come in and redeveloped there is not one adjacent to the park at this time all right thank you to clarify no one made the argument that there's no handicapped on the harbor the harbor is full of handicap parking and
except for in our park everybody else that's down there has handicap so I misunderstood what you said i apologize yeah we just need to have our handicap parking spot where we should have had it all along we kind of self-p
policed ourselves and said it's not possible to put one in when we built the park which was absolutely not true well there's a huge parking lot right next to it that has a gate that goes right into the park which one is that right there and and for the record if uh I
volunteered to to give up a handicap parking it was rejected at the time we can explore that again but to have the giant handicap parking ramp and no handicap parking within sight is is pretty amazing stuff only only the city
could get away with that well If I can if I don't if you don't mind if I just talk about that real quick the the building code the accessibility code actually states if parking spaces are provided then one must meet handicap
parking being that the park we didn't provide any parking at all that means we don't have to have a handicap parking space but and and of course that's not true we provided parking of course that's not true we provided parking across the street as part of our permit
so we did provide parking but there's handicap parking over there isn't there those are dancing around the rules and should we ever get a real rooting from the handicapped people in Washington I think we would get a big thump on the side of the head Councilman Bagby
so I'm not in favor of 10-ft sidewalk unless we redevelop which is about standard uh on the handicap parking you know I see three options uh option number one is do nothing and say "Hey it's across the street." Option number
two is to do a cutin drop off uh for handicapped folks because I agree that we ought to provide some access to the biggest handicap ramp on the harbor our option three is to work with one of the
adjacent property owners uh and see if they can well there's two so but we could uh to get a handicap parking spot at the north end of their lots designated so that they could park there
and then and it would have a sign that says parking for you know Destin City Park only or handicap parking for Destin City and I'm actually okay with all three of those i think my preferred might be a drop off the the problem is
everybody in their brother who's not handicapped would be using that as a drop off and then somebody would be stupid enough to actually park there because it wouldn't say buses only or whatever and then we that would might create more problems but you know my
recommendation is we have staff bring back one of those proposals or the city manager bring back one of those proposals or a proposal and say here's here's actually what we recommend unless this is you're recommending we just do it across the street and keep the 5ft
sidewalk yeah i'm just going to throw in my only fear of adding another ingress egress is just the same kind of study that we just got with Kimley Horn just one more place for a rear end bumper i mean we're it's a highway and we're trying to ingress
ingress so I I do appreciate having the ADA over there but I I I kind of like the idea of hopefully partnering with a a neighbor um with something like that so do you need any direction or is that pretty clear only thing I would add is we've got a engineer coming on staff
early next month uh and be a good project to turn him on to nice if everybody's good with that all right i I would I would like to a little clarity sir yes sir yes sir turn loose on what because nobody said to do anything to review whether I don't think
we're going to do anything okay unless somebody wants to do something so then if you want to do something make a motion we'll we'll we'll do it fair enough Counc all right okay i'll make a motion that we enter into discussion with the adjacent property owners to see if we
can procure one handicap parking space at the north end of their lot uh adjacent to our park council member Dustin would you like to abstain from this vote i thought he wanted a free sidewalk or free ADA sidewalk
council tremble yep i just have a question Mr bagby um is it okay if if both of them have one hey I the more the marrier if they both want to give us two each that's four handicap parking spots that people can use to access the AR i'm
fine with that all right thank you Brad i'll second thank you mayor um I'm I'm confused because I don't know what the difference is having a handicap parking place next door across the street it's still not on the property so I mean we we're still
not not there and plus we've already spent I don't know$10 $20 million on this piece of property so you want to spend more yeah it's ridiculous i mean it was I don't want to spend another dime on it doing doing nothing to be honest with you but and we we we're not
putting a parking on it we got one across the street now we want to put it next door so it's we're not accomplishing anything all right all right uh call the vote uh Council Schmidt none right
now no three yes yes no oh all right where we at one up no oh so I get I get to tie break the tie there's no tie sorry he couldn't two against oh it's Oh good
oh gotcha he's a stand okay gotcha doing my little finger math all right so all right dies and we'll continue on so with that just to be clear staff's not going to do anything can we make a motion just leave it as is you can Rodney okay I'll make a motion to just
leave it as is i'll second that all right motion to second i don't think there's any further discussion all right call the vote Braden yes yes yes yes yes
all right there we go 6 with a possible abstension council member Dustin abstained and did not vote so two six oh all right thank you uh Councilman Tremble you anything i I just have something that that is sort of
kind of related to this um the storm water on the lower half of that is still flooding on other properties so if you wanted something for the engineer to do when he gets here if he could study the storm water on that piece of land and make sure we have it adequate storm
water is that a motion yes I'll make that motion all right all right do I hear a second for our new engineer to study well you don't laugh at me do I hear a second second all right any further discussions
on studying the storm water in the base of the park yes yes i'm once again not sure am I supposed to be voting on this um we got a legal question should I abstain on this one also I'll and but
for the record which should I abstain on this but for the record we're having no problem with water coming from the park on our side what was the precise motion uh to have the engineer study the storm water runoff on the base of the park on the bottom side that is I think that
motion would be to the city manager to direct the city engineer first yeah that's your mic's not on unless you have a financial unless you have a financial interest I don't think you need to abstain okay I'll vote on that one okay
all right so we have a motion if we want to correct it for to direct the city manager to have the engineer look at the storm water okay to the park it would be to direct the city manager manager to have Yeah to have the city engineer okay and I got the second with that I will call
the vote councilman Braden yes yes i will vote no since I don't think we have problem all right yes 31 i'm going to vote no because he's got a lot going on or 32 no 33 no 34 all right
dies all right great time for ideas all right appreciate that lively discussion next Jones Mr mayor is 4F regarding the purchasing resolution 2210
um back in December we had some discussion about it at council um and we late getting it back to you but we have it before you tonight with some uh recommended uh changes uh from staff uh for your perview and uh any further
recommendations that you may have either tonight or over the next few days that we'll bring back to you for action at the next meeting uh anything any changes you see there that you don't don't think we should make or any additional changes we'd certainly entertain those that any
discussion yep okay yeah I have two recommended changes okay uh the first one is I think on page two or it's in B uh sub paragraph V the
per uh I don't have a problem with them temporarily or permanently removing the names of vendors who have defaulted but there needs to be a mechanism where the vendor can appeal uh some of these v you know they change ownership or whatever and that was the old guy or they had a
bad employee that violated this or needs to be some mechanism so I would ask that staff bring it back with a mechanism for the vendor to appeal the per particularly the permanent i don't mind the temporary but the permanent uh
removal of a of a vendor uh seems a little harsh without the ability to appeal and then on uh part article two uh I think the 5,000 that became $5 in the second paragraph there an
encumbrance purchase requisition/po will be required for purchases over $5 i think that not sure maybe we were a little overzealous on the line through and it should be 5,000 so we're a little aggressive on the
delete button i I will make a motion to approve pending those changes those two changes coming back to us for because I'm not sure what the I'll second a mechanism to appeal would be all right I have a motion and a second any other
considerations for the topic seeing none Councilman Schmidt you like to start us off yes yes yes yes yes yes yes all right 70 so moved okay item 4G are draft
minutes from the standing committees and board for information um and 4 H are announcements just a you know me okay um first of all David Pashard our new community development
director will be on board next Monday so we're looking forward to getting him here and getting him moving uh Robert Thomasac our engineer will be a little later than that he's working on selling a house and getting a kid out of school so probably first couple of weeks of May he'll be on board and ready to go um two
things um at the last meeting you asked us to submit a letter regarding House Bill 991 and Senate Bill 1242 regarding the U cra legislation those went out and we've gotten some feedback that that
those bills are getting butchered up pretty good in committee so if they ever make it to the House or Senate floor they'll probably be considerably different than what we've seen so far uh then you gave us direction to get the no trespassing signs up on Norga Point they're there and I believe Captain
Fuldram has let us know that they've had no incidents or issues since they've been up so I just want to give you an update on those too good evening our annual Easter egg hunt will be Saturday April 19th at 9:00 a.m at Morgan Sports Center friday April
25th is Arbor Day as we heard earlier we'll be holding a ceremony at Kelair Nature Walk at 10:00 a.m with a tree planting and everyone is invited to that our library has received a $3,000 grant from Florida Humanities toward its 2025
summer reading program also the library will be closed on Friday April 11th for its annual staff training day the county has let us know they received nine bids for the beach access phase 2 tarpon improvement project they are planning to take it to their board
on April 15th the city was awarded a $2,782.50 matching grant from the Florida Department of Agriculture for the purchase of 12 trees eight trees will be planted at Kelair Air South and
four at the dog park the tree species are live oak holly willow and maple does our mayor approve no palm trees no palm trees and and lastly the Primrose celebrates her 100th birthday on May 3rd
so we wanted to give a shout out for that the Destin History and Fishing Museum is holding a birthday party for the Primrose that day from 12:30 to 2:30 and um all of the public is invited to attend that thank you thank you so much all right Miss Cup i would like to say
my birthday is May 3rd but I will not be 100 no okay um ordinances this is going to be the first public hearing ordinance number 2405 CNN an ordinance of the city of Dustin Florida providing for authority providing for findings of fact
providing for abandonment of a segment of environmental preservation area in Pine Ridge Trace subdivision providing for severability and providing for an effective date this is second reading the applicant is here but since you heard him at the last meeting um there won't be a presentation unless you have
questions awesome all right well thank you guys for being here with that seeing that this is a public hearing at this time if anyone from the public wishes to speak on this specific topic this is your time to do so uh council Mr mayor thank you and good seeing you all tonight
approximately 5 years ago I stood in front of you many of you were still here and um my vacation or right away proposal was the audience looked a little different it was more akin to a Frankenstein movie uh per there were probably even some pitchforks there the
law enforcement was here and they did in fact uh you know have duties to perform that night so you know I'm here maybe it's kind of a cleansing thing but I tell you you know it was very very tough the applicant you know
one of the main people against our vacation right away sits in front of you tonight asking for the very thing that she reveled against was so evil for me to want i could talk about the fact that she has been on record in front of the
LPA and the city council stating that vacation rideways are bad we shouldn't be doing them it's it's giving away land i could talk about how her house is not only in the setback it's actually in the rightway but I'm not going to talk about
that either could talk about how there was talk that I was trying to do this to get the land i was going to sell the house and make a bunch of money but I'm still there and yet the applicant has her house for sale but you know what in
a surprising move maybe even to me i'm not going to ask you not to approve this you know why it's none of my business this doesn't impact me much the same way that my vacation didn't impact her but
it didn't stop her and other members of the community from going after me the signs and that is what I will talk about tonight there were signs that the applicant put all over the neighborhood stop the vacation stop the steel some of
those signs were actually on the very piece of property point of order this This is about this application not applications that came previously can we direct the applicant to Fine i'll I'll wrap it up thank you and I understand why you feel that way
so the pain that that caused and my wife imagine going home and looking at those signs after a hard day's work it made me mad but what it did to my wife I will never forget but you know what i'm going to take the higher road Miss Traml and I'm going to say "Go ahead approve it if
it's the right thing for the community." Cuz we're all supposed to be here we're a small community we're supposed to help each other we're supposed to love thy neighbor a wise person once said so I just hope that the applicant has learned that people who live in glass houses
shouldn't throw stones thank you did you get his name and address oh tim sorry about that Tim yep name and address tim Krueger 604 Harbor Lane appreciate it Destin thank you uh
Councilman Braden thank you Mayor i'll make that motion i move the city uh council adopt ordinance 24-05-C my bad sorry yeah sorry yeah sorry still public sorry Brad yeah anyone else from the public wish to speak on this yes
attorney Jeff Burns on behalf of the applicant Miss Amanda Belchure um her house is not for sale that's her next door neighbor's house that's for sale this is her forever home thank you all right seeing no other public comments all right I'll close the Oh yes sir
all right just push that gray button it'll turn red name and address all right craig Schultz uh 21 Pineriidge Trace um so I I just had one question really about the whole situation with the culde-sacs the way they are is anybody going to come around because I think the culde-sacs are belong to the
city is anybody going to come around and clean those up u as a city thing or do we as neighbors need to take care of that that's my only question thank you all right do we have that right away or is I'm not sure what culde-sacs you're talking about do you know Mr burgess can
you be more specific we're not sure what you mean or we can meet with you and figure out what you mean yeah happy to help um so there's I think three culde-sacs on the north side of the airport side and then there's one culde-sac on the main street side um if
I looked at the map properly those areas um between plots is considered city property if I understand that right from looking at the maps and I was um we're just wondering if that area is going to be uh taken care of and maintained by the city or if we as neighbors need to
maintain and clean that up i guess still not sure what you're talking about but Mr burgess is going to look into it and he would be able to provide you with a response oh thank you absolutely thank you all right Councilman Braden please go ahead i'll make the same motion all right I
got a motion do I hear a second second second by Councilman Bagby any further discussions all right seeing none call the vote uh Councilman Braden yes yes uh Mayor I think I will have to abstain
i abstained on the last time so okay i filled all those forms out tonight yes all right i also have to abstain all right two obstensions yes yes all right i have a Oh Massard five five two
absentions and I guess you guys will tell the Y on the paper all right great well I think they told the why at the last meeting but the reason for Miss Abear is property ownership and the reason for Mr destin is family property ownership
okay okay next ordinance is number 24-16 CN an ordinance of the city of Dustin Florida providing for authority providing for findings of fact providing for abandonment of the environmental preservation area in Pine Ridge Trace subdivision providing for severability
and providing for an effective date and as you know this is the city's application for the parcels referenced in the ordinance this is second reading all right all right and seeing that this is second reading of 2416 CN if anyone here wishes to speak on this topic this is your time to do
so right seeing none I'll close the public comments and entertain a motion for this hearing i'll make it mayor I move the city uh council approve ordinance 25-01-LC on first reading and bring back
for second reading on April 21st you're 2416 2416 see you skipped down one too oh that 24 2416 CN you good with that
yeah i move adopt the 24-16- CN and execute the easement agreement with Destin Water Users Inc awesome all right I got a motion by Councilman Braden do I hear a second second councilman Bagby seeing any
further discussion seeing none all right we'll call the vote council Schmidt yes yes abstain yes i will abstain because family members will be affected by this abandonment right yes yes yes all right
50 to abstensions so moved all right thank you mayor the next public hearing is ordinance number 251 LC and also ordinance I'm going to do two ordinances together uh
252C and I'll explain why we're doing them together after I read the titles 251lc an ordinance of the city of Dest Florida amending article 20 building regulations of the land development code relating to contractor insurance and contractor revocations removing section
2080 contractors from the land development code providing for a business impact estimate as required by state law providing for findings of fact providing for incorporation into the land development code providing for conflicting provisions providing for severability and providing for an
effective date ordinance 252C an ordinance of the city of Dest Florida amending chapter 13 of the code of ordinances licenses permits and miscellaneous to address contractor insurance and contractor revocations providing for findings of fact providing for incorporation into the city code of
ordinances providing for a business impact estimate providing for conflicting provisions providing for severability and providing for an effective date and the reason we're reading these together is because what these two ordinances do together uh is
remove the provisions from the LDC and simply place them into the code of ordinances and this is part of the ongoing LDC rewrite and movement by the building official of building related regulations from the LDC into the code of ordinances so that they are all in
one place all right so at this time if anyone's here to speak on 5C or 5D this is your time to do so all right seeing none I'll close the public comments on both of those public hearings councilman Bagby I move that
city council approve ordinance 25-01-LC and 25-02-C on first reading and bring back for second reading on April 21st 2025 second motion got a second by Councilwoman Traml any discussions on both of those seeing none we'll call the vote
councilman Braden yes yes yes yes yes yes yes at seven to zero so moved thank you mayor and the final public hearing is ordinance number 259LC an ordinance of the city of Dustin Florida amending
section 71600 alcoholic beverage dispensing of the land development code creating an exception to the separation requirement from churches for certain taxexempt organizations that specifically benefit veterans of the United States Armed Forces providing for authority providing
for findings of fact providing for incorporation into the land development code providing for conflicting provisions providing for severability and providing for an effective This is first reading and this ordinance would allow
501c19 organizations that are specifically benefiting the veterans of the United States armed forces to be located within the 500t separation distance um from churches that is currently in the code right now so it
carves out a bit of an exception for them because sometimes they do engage in the sale of alcohol uh Council Member Braden you got Oh I'm sorry guys i'm losing it all right if anyone's here from the public to speak on 259 LC this is your
time to do so awesome sorry about that it's okay it's not trick me oh no i always blame our seats it's okay last time I was here I didn't have a trick there you last time I was here was 30 lbs lighter and had a lot more hair
anyway uh Ed Smith 725 Harbor Boulevard broker owner Remax Coastal Properties been in business for 30 years here in the city not as long as Dwey but but yeah a while um here to speak on
behalf of this and the reason is the uh Amad organization has been here for 40 years uh in the city uh they are a 501c19 which is for the specifically for the benefit of u our uh US armed forces
members uh it is a membersonly uh social organization and um let's see the other thing is oh and of course they're very uh philanthropic how do you say that philanthropic yeah thank you um anyway
they donate to literally dozens of charities around the city including um the Destin High School Shoreline Church First Baptist Church on and on and on um so um again uh the good weeks good works
and deeds uh should be allowed to continue in the city and in order to do that they're going to have to get a new location and this is about the only one available so uh I hope y'all will consider approving it thank you thank you so much anyone else here
all right seeing none oh thank you i close the public comments and Councilman Braden thank you Mayor i'll make that motion to move the city council approve ordinance 25- 02-C on first reading and bring it back for second reading on April 21st
2025 i'll second that all right I got a motion i got a second uh Councilwoman Traml was that for the motion you got anything else i well I was going to make the motion but I also I wanted to uh make the request that when they come back for second reading they have a letter from the church that allows them
to do that um I know many years ago I had to have that when we were a restaurant that served alcohol and that just lets us know that the church close to them is okay with this so just for clarification this ordinance is not specific to any one property it would
apply citywide to any 501c19 organization near any church there is one in particular that we know is under contract to buy a property or so I'm told but this wouldn't be limited to just them but I think it's important
that we do that for any church i mean any alcoholic establishments that going in that meets this or any other requirement um outside of our current ordinances that are asking for an exemption if the church is okay with it I'm okay with it do you want to amend
the ordinance to create a requirement for approval from the church yes or the religious whatever you want to call it religious whatever church school preschool cemetery church or school or whatever if they're okay with it I'm okay with it
because we are we are adding a modification this is an exemption and I have nothing against them having the exemption i just want to make church sure that the church is is good with this and we're not all of a sudden because there is no representative here from the
church have we met with anybody from the church wouldn't that have to be with all the churches in the citywide it would be in this particular case that they're asking for there is a church yes that's what I'm asking for she needs to make that let me just let
me just ask Well so this is going to be citywide the only way we could do that is if we always require if we'd have to reward the ordinance because right now they're exempted from the definition and they wouldn't even the whole section would not apply to them so we would have to
create an exception and then require a letter of no objection from any affected church within 500 ft or if there's a major development order involved for any particular project a condition could be put in the major
development order and I don't see anybody from Oh Noel do you know anything about this application or is there even an application yet probably not no because they haven't purchased the property yet oh okay so there's no application not yet they they're under
contract to purchase property and probably doing their due diligence all right thank you okay uh Council Schmidt yeah um if we were to pass this both readings what is the process
then is it just an application that staff staff level approves and and would would then approve because changes for for the application for the new Ambits no just if this particular ordinance were to pass both readings then any any
501c19 were to come to the city and apply is it a automatic approval based on staff level because it's they wouldn't be applying for anything under this ordinance they this ordinance so our our code has a requirement that you not have a establishment that is
principally engaged in the sale of alcohol within 500 ft of a church citywide now if someone comes in with an application that violates that they wouldn't be allowed 501c19s if this is passed we'll be able to be there regardless with that regard
to this code because they'll be exempt from it what would happen is anybody that comes in with a development application would go through the regular development application process anyway regardless of this code so depending on what they're doing they would need a development order if it's a major
development order they would come to council if it's a minor development order they would go through the minor development order process which is staff level and usually TRC um so it depends on the specifics of what's being proposed and if it meets the code requirements for a major deal or not i
guess let me just not do hypotheticals and if we're not building something if there's already a structure it's already within 500 ft and somebody would like to then come and apply but I have the same I mean they still need a development order do they thank yeah everybody needs a development order for uses in the city
thank you yeah I just don't know if it's going to be major or minor and whether it would come to council without seeing it or it could be a possible change of use or something too right but they still need a development order i mean they have to have a development order councilman
Bagby yeah I was going to speak to Sandy's motion that I think we ought to alert the church and give them the opportunity because they probably don't pay attention i don't think that would change my vote but we ought we ought not
to I don't want to say hide the ball because we're not hiding the ball but people have busy lives and they might not know hey this and they probably won't object to it i mean heck their their church used to be you know right
around the corner from my old house and I hopefully they just did a thorough cleaning before they moved into that facility but the uh but they ought to we ought to notice them and give them the opportunity to come to the second
reading if they want uh because that to your point that would be fair in my mind you know we we we changed it and you we let you know uh because we're going to see we we potentially will see more of this in the future as people redevelop
or go to other I mean the church went to nighttown you know now the so we may have this more often right so I would just ask that staff that somebody reach out to the church and let them know when the second reading is
then maybe we should reach out to all the churches that would be affected that's fine which is all the churches in the city so we'll try to do that that's fine custom yeah i was also going to address
that Sandy's ad that didn't go in but Kim I've read on a number of occasions about the constitutionality of separations of uh these type of statist i know that you can't give a ruling for the Supreme Court but what's
the state of the law right now if we have a land use regulation and a a reason a legitimate reason that's non-discriminatory then we should be able to regulate the land in a non-discriminatory way which I think we are i don't think we're discriminating
against churches the code doesn't just apply to one um so I think we're okay i think our code's enforceable okay council Schmidt yeah i'm I'm not too much in favor of Mr bagby's idea um that's kind of my questions of what I
was asking earlier if if if this ordinance is were to pass at both readings and nobody was notified beyond what we were legally required to notify a DO may or may not eventually be applied for when that DO is applied for there's public notice
given based upon a surrounding area right 300 feet 300 feet so I don't think it I I don't think it's the city's best interest to pick and choose when we want to start going and giving people heads up about things that are happening i mean if we're going to do that we better
start doing it across the board on all of our city business because I don't think it's right to just on this particular one to call churches across the city and give them a heads up so I don't support that and I would ask that we don't do it unless you're going to direct the city manager with a motion to
do that okay um because I just I don't think that's good practice for us to get involved with right now the let the process unfold let the DO situation take care then the churches will be notified is my thought i'll say this too it I mean there is public notice of this ordinance and there will be twice in the
paper for anyone i don't know that the churches are reading it but it's out there and it's also on the city's website it's not secret so I mean anybody that even is interested would know i didn't know they still printed that thing it's on the website too oh
I've seen it on the website i I didn't know they kept printing things all right any further discussion the motion in Hey that's a question approve this uh yeah approve as is first reading first reading
all right I will call the vote councilman Braden yes yes yes yes yes yes yes all right eyes have it so move 70 all right man we got 15 minutes left
too we can slow it down nice and slow 15 minutes all right councilman Braden uh the only thing I Thanks guys thanks thanks Mayor the only thing I have is for staff i will not be here for the
first meeting in May i'll be in Africa thank you so much all right Councilwoman Dram nothing tonight all right Councilman Dustin uh to support the people who would like to watch the basketball game i have nothing
tonight all right Councilwoman Abear or no Bagby i'm sorry just start thanks i appreciate I know I know where you're at longwinded i just want to congratulate Mr dustin and his restaurant on being selected or uh recognized as the number
four uh dive seafood dive in uh Southern Living magazine this latest issue of Southern Living magazine and making our city proud getting our name out there nice council Abe uh thanks mayor uh I have um reached out
to a couple of um folks about this dogs allowed on the beach i wanted to bring it up because we can't talk about this unless we're all together and I was hoping that Sandy you were saying something earlier today about Henderson Beach um just sort of because they allow
dogs on the beach right like the hotel end can I speak yeah go ahead um yes i I I read this and and I thought right now um one of the things that I think if you if we want to allow dogs on the Gulf Beach okay this I'm assuming
that's the beach we're talking about at this point um the Henderson Park allows dogs on the beach if you're camping there and it's very confusing for those that are just partaking of the pavilions
or whatever swimming down there to wonder why those dogs are on the beach so maybe it would be an option to have someone reach out to the park and see if um they would not agree to allow dogs on
that beach um for the golf and with that idea I figured if we could just I talked to you Larry about what they did in Walton County and it was like you know certain parts of the beaches and it's county beaches or you know some of them are city but they're county i think this
would be the best fix for people if they really want to use the beaches can you reach out to the Henderson and find out if we have like our destined residents that get a sticker and are part of the annual pay for it if they have a sticker
that would entail them to be able to allow their dog on the beach as well can you just ask that question see if what they think and we can cross this bridge on the next meeting whatever you find out okay thank you sir yeah just for what it's worth I spoke
with I think four different people different individuals on this matter and they suggested that we allowed them on the beach from a time period from like 5 to 9 or 6 to 9 or something like that it was kind of crazy that all four of them said a short time period but um that's
just what I found out appreciate the insight all right uh Cal I have a quick question for Jeff where are we at on that harbor dredging brother we are working right now on getting the engineering support services in place
that we'll need to bring that forward so okay hopefully we're making we are making progress we've been talking to a couple of engineering firms to uh get that support all right thank you sir right councilman Schmidt yeah sure just uh bear with me for a
minute sorry got a few things since I was missing oh I do too um first item is our livery vessel situation it's one of the items that I think we've talked about for at least at least 5 years since I've been up here um
we had a uh illegal uh delivery vessel doing a pickup at a city dock on the harbor and it was reported through our code system um the the case was basically immediately closed without
any anything going on um few days later there was another same location uh a delivery vessel illegal delivery vessel picking up on our city dock uh this time the code uh submission actually included
uh the boat registration numbers so we have an actual Florida registration numbers of the actual boat picking up illegally uh again within hours the the case was closed
um I know we've talked about this many times up here do do y'all do y'all know of anything that we can do differently or that has been done differently that we should try to do to help the people that are doing it legally have y'all have y'all heard of anything that I'm
missing maybe we should try to get some code enforcement officers like to stay down there well that was the the was supposed to have been done several years ago the council voted on it and it passed and I spoke with the city manager and they wanted to know what we wanted and I told him and then
that just went in one air and out the other so we have had a a code compliance officer that would walk the docks and I was checking emails and it was Yeah i walk the docks everything's fine okay i mean that's impossible to walk those docks and not find nothing is it
acceptable if a code complaint is turned in with registration numbers that that can be a warning i mean is that a legal thing is that a warning or can we notice people for that or if a violation is found and pictures of of evidence of a
boat being picked up on a city dock of course you can is that can that be immediately like a notice if if a code enforcement officer deems a violation it can immediately be a notice as long as they've been warned once at some point do they have to see it in person or can they take a picture as
evidence usually they like to see it in person um so how do we fix that whenever they're picking up within 15 minutes they pick up illegally and then they're gone how can we fix that well if you want to do it through the notice of violation procedure then they can take
input from other people but if you're asking for an instant citation they need to see it themselves because when we have a notice of violation then there's due process built in where there's a hearing and everyone that has um something to say can testify and so
someone else that took a picture can testify "Yes I took this yes it's accurate." And the special magistrate can ask questions and the the respondent can cross-examine so then is it is it acceptable to expect if a community member submits a code violation through
the city of Destin's code complaint system and they give picture evidence of an illegal operation happening that our code officers will notice a violation from that is that acceptable understanding that our legally acceptable i would ask the city manager
what has done is that something that we're going to be able to start doing if it passes legal must certainly if it passes legal muster we'll take whatever steps we can the state law says if a code enforcement officer in his discretion sees a violation and a
warning has been issued at least once a notice of violation can be issued doesn't say you know he has to personally see it himself but he has to reasonably believe there's a violation so if there are photos that lead them to reasonably believe there's a violation then they can proceed okay did you have
something to add to this Mr dustin yeah cuz Dustin and we deal with this all summer down on the bay right the only way I've been able to make progress with any of them is go explain to them that if I find them at the dock again we'll have the sheriff's department issue a no trespass notice and the next time they
come they'll be arrested that gets their attention but that's at your private property versus our city transient it is but but I don't think the city has an obligation to allow folks who are violating city ordinances to use the city property so it's a concept that may well work for the city too
as a council are we okay with if evidence is being submitted through our system that shows an illegal boat operator breaking the law are we okay to immediately give them a notice of violation i think we all are but you have to give them a warning so we're
okay with immediately submitting a warning then based on that evidence immediately are you okay with that yeah I'm sure we are but here's the problem sure if it is a operator from out of town who doesn't have property in Destin if it's just simply code
enforcement it gets a little spicy a little hard to to cause them to do anything because if they don't pay it right as it go I mean when we turn them over to collection sure i mean I would say yeah yeah yeah the no trust can get arrested right gets gets them gets their
attention much better g can we can we ask um Captain Fulgum if there's some kind of signage we can put on city facilities that would give them the authority we'll probably have to make a code amendment i know what he's going to say but we can ask him anyway tell us what we can do tell us we need a code
amendment and a sign i wasn't clear on where you're talking about them picking up you talking about them picking up in a city park this is at um right there behind the famous Royal Melbourne part that we were talking about yeah it's a city transient slip yeah if if they are picking up in a
city park we can issue them a trespass warning just with the city telling us that the city wants us to issue them a trespass warning and and all I have to have is is enough of a photo that I can identify who it is that's trespassing for me to issue issue them that warning
on that now I mean if you just send me a picture of a boat with a guy on it and say "I want this guy issued a trespass warning." Obviously there's not a whole lot I can do with it sure we have the live feed now at Joe's Bayou so we can go back so perhaps if if the infrastructure is in place if we have some cameras at our transit slips we
basically have a 24-hour code mechanism there not a person but the ability to capture the data we need to do what we need to do sure okay i I think I think we're all in agreement it's just this is something that's been discussed many many many times by the people that do
the thing the right way and then we don't do anything with the wrong ones and case in point when case when code cases are being instantly closed there's a there's a problem there so I appreciate it kevin while you're on this
real quick can we put a sign on our peers that are transient peers that say no business to be conducted here or you will be caught as trespass well we can and we've had them in the past we've had huge signs that say no commercial
activity $500 fines per person we've had a a massive one at Joe's Bayou like the light up one last year so we can do signs cool okay uh I got a couple on here for that sure uh Gile and Bagby
so one of the questions I was going to bring up is a sign can we count that as the warning though can that be the initial warning no even though the sign specifically says it's illegal that's That's not the warning god dang it public execution no I'm not done we had a former council member bring up
something about a harbor master can we dedicate one of the code enforcement people or positions as a harbor master so that there's somebody down there full-time keeping an eye on these things we need a designated harbor master you you can designate a code enforcement or
a code compliance person to be in any part of the state they've done this and they're not master confusion is is confusion because there's a technical term in the statutes that people are getting confused with to do what's in the state law with respect to a certain
type of harbor master yes we would need to make a designation of the harbor and so on but just to assign a code compliance officer down there is something we can do anytime okay the city manager wants to do it we say that but two years ago I spent what three weekends down there going and generating
reports with pictures with all the violations and nothing got done so we can sit here and claim all day long that we're going to assign a a code enforcement down there but I think unless there's an official title or official position it's just getting bypassed it's just getting ignored you you have a totally different city
manager now so maybe he's interested in doing it we're certainly interested in enforcing our codes to the best of our ability including those on Harbor and we will have those discussions internally and uh hopefully come up with a better solution
than what's in place today and has been in the past councilman Bagby yeah I was just going to say when you put the cameras down there make sure they're angled where you can get the sign and you can get the registration
number because a picture when you say a picture but you don't show us or share with us the picture or none of us other than I assume you saw it notice what the picture is it's just like captain said I got a picture of a guy on a boat helping
people get in a boat on a dock okay well there there's only one of those in Destin you know so you it's got to be able to be proven that it's our doc when it was you know time stamp and you got the registration number and you got the
you know the for hire sign on it or we can track it down to where it's a a livery that's for hire or whatever it it's not just and so right now if it came before us I probably wouldn't be able to say yeah I mean I think we all conceptually
agree we need to fix this we also need to fix the parking in the rightway we also need to fix the trash and the noise and all this but if we don't have a photo that actually shows a clear violation there's not a lot I don't think ei the sheriff or our code guys
can do okay thank you uh the pause contract is that coming to us at the next meeting or in May i I understand our pause contract is expiring or expired we're waiting on pause to respond to um moving that forward uh we'll certainly reach out to
them uh again they they know that we we've had conversation with them and they know that we're we're not satisfied with what they presented to us which was a substantial increase and um we've kind of asked them to come back and we've not received that but we'll follow up are we
operating currently on an expired contract on the existing yeah we've they've agreed to allow it to move monthto monthth okay until we get a new agreement okay um I'd like to uh make a motion to nominate Aubrey Sanucci for the parks
and recck committee i'll second that you got a motion and second seeing no discussion you want to start us off yes kyle yes yes yes yes yes yes all right 70 i'd
like to nominate Mr ryan Holloway to the Harbor Water M Waterways Board all right second motion got a second see no further discussion call the vote yes pick that sorry I thought we were yes
for him to start yes all right 70 fantastic uh ordinance 54LC mobile vending uh looking over it talking to different people um wanted to look at having staff uh city manager and attorney bring back an update um so I'm
going to make a motion to update the LDC to allow mobile vending in the rightway at the first meeting in second meeting in May all right i have a motion do I hear a second i can sorry all right
sorry the motion is to update the LDC to allow uh mobile bending in the rights of way currently it's not allowed in the city all right good to go there um next last thing is our um vision session
strategic summary i won't bore us all too long i know we're all ready to go watch some some sort of basketball game uh we we have these i think you're all familiar with it um this the vision session me personally I was not too thrilled with some of the things that we did and didn't do there um it is what it
is we're gonna I'm gonna work on that maybe with Mr um Larry in the future just some ideas but what I would like to ask you all if you are acceptable is I believe we as a council need to update this um if we want to use this type of
method even if we don't want to use this I believe that we need to tell Larry and staff what some of our our objectives are um some of us that are new most recently as well as some of us that have been on here for multiple years um we
need to update these because we've accomplished them which is great thankfully staff and other people have helped us accomplish these uh not only for us though but also staff and Larry needs to update their objectives again they've already been accomplished so uh
what I would like to ask for all of us and for them is that the second meeting in May since you won't be at the first is to bring back two or three items that each of us would like to have a council priority or an objective um and it's my
personal opinion that it's okay if it's a long list because if we're trying to do something in the next four years for your term or 5 years or whatever it's it should stay on there um I don't think we should vote that's just my opinion but I'm asking if you all at the second
meeting in May and we could put this back under my name if we need to would bring a list if you want of what's an objective for you all that's acceptable yeah I like it a lot i mean to your point we have six of the 13 finished right on the finish line if not
completed okay well put that under my name if you want or you could put it under yours if you want i'll be the legislative sponsor i'd like to definitely look at that and then Jim yep yeah i'm more I'm sorry i'm more than willing to attend a workshop in May to
to discuss this i don't want us to spend you know an hour in a city council meeting where we make decisions and we add to you know the the beauty of things like this is we agree on it these are council decisions or council directions
or we approve this not you know Rodney's got his two projects and Sy's got her two projects and Dewey has three projects and I have a project and you know we just throw them all up there and there's no uh there's no priority there's no order there's no guidance
it's just like you know I told people when I was running that I'm going to get something paved or I'm going to get the My favorite one was always the um water cover or the sewer covers on 98
and I I swear I listened like every other city council meeting when are we going to get that dip on 98 fixed and it's like it is a state highway people you know we can't do it we can't do it but it's like every other me that the city staff was getting hammered about
that that those I I I would love for us to come together and say "Okay here's our top 10 projects you know and we can put little stickies." I hear what you're saying i don't disagree with you but I guess maybe I'm not stating it clearly but um for me it wasn't going to be an item for discussion really to have long
just talk at that meeting you know because I I do believe if seven of us have two objectives as individuals who are con who are here for our constituents which hopefully our individual priorities align with our our
constituents i think we should we can go right down the list and we just have 14 of them how then you prioritize that is is is the functions of our government and how we work after that we have a budget process we have multiple workshops for those budgets we we put
funding in the budget for projects that we want to do and that staff wants to do so my intentions is not to have a discussion on all these objectives it's just for each one of us to list it out there um I don't want to have a a workshop we did we had a vision session that was our workshop and and you know
we didn't really talk about any of that so um I'm going to do that the second meeting of May uh I hope that you know I hope we can do something because it's not fair to the staff to have nothing right now in my opinion so but it's all good
june sure uh well my only concern is is I just want to give Yeah yeah is is the budget process honestly but I mean is that She won't be here that's right yeah yeah yeah that's fine i mean sure June's fine because I think we should all hopefully be here um
I mean worst case scenario since we may or may not have a lot of interest in this idea you can just send them in still and we would potentially add them in there but uh we need to do something rather than just sitting up here talking about the same thing for 5 years and never getting anything done or 10 years
or 20 years for however long that's been so thanks a lot Mr mayor all right all right so I got a a new one and an old one the new one is uh this really was something that I was working a lot last year when I was on the EC Rider uh
which is the county's public transportation board um they did their study and one of the biggest things that came out of it for our area was this microtransit uh a lot of different cities across the state of Florida I use it all the time whether it's a downtown downtown Orlando or getting to the beach
of any of the beach communities that are fairly similar to ours u and really what kind of sparked this to um bring this back from the grave from a year ago was kind of us talking about two or four parking spots at the beach and how valuable they were when there's ways to
get more families and more people to the places they want to go beaches and business and so this whole concept is for an RFP in the Crystal Beach area it is if you guys have not used these kind of services it would be a all-in-one
subcontractor it's a lot like Uber you It's a ride hauling uh application to where you say you want to ride i'm at this short-term rental i'm at this Henderson Beach Resort and I'm trying to go to the beach i'm trying to go to uh
Crab Trap or anything and it is just like that is just ridership on demand and it can integrate either if we would like to take it uh I've talked to them and there's a lot of different advertising opportunities for uh raising
funds there is um businesses paying monthly subscriptions if we want to go that route so it's a free ride to their businesses and then as well as TDC and uh government is the other bucket that can fund this um as well as fairs for
people riding it if we wanted to do a dollar or two for the riding fair um so I I just really think this is a lowhanging fruit that we could do a very small trial run on a lot of these businesses do a 6 12 month window of
just try it out and see if it works uh I would absolutely recommend that we keep these south of 98 never to cross 98 and it's really just about the locals in the short-term rental um guest whether it's a hotel or a house getting them from
their place to the business or the beach without ever touching a car or if they're a couple more than a couple blocks away they don't have to walk it um so with that I was just seeing if you if there was any appetite for us to uh direct staff to write an RFP to come back to us in that time while we're
writing it I was going to reach out to the county i had a meeting with them today to see if they were interested in either working with us do we want it or do we want to work with them and put it under their EC rider they would have some skin in the game because having riders on their program allows them to
get state dollars and so having these very micro transit is the same as someone getting on our bus and going to Crest View as a one for one so we can keep it inhouse with this third party we could work with the county at the end of the day i was just hoping to get your
guys' support on drafting a RFP so we can at least see on paper what we would be going out for um so any questions or comments no I think it's a great idea and I'll move to have city manager uh have staff draft an RFP for this amazing idea and I'll second that i was going to
make the motion too so all right any other questions on that just so I'm not flying in the dark comments concerns awesome all right so well are we going to ask EC Ryder to run this program or So that's what I was kind of hoping to get your
guys' direction on would we prefer to keep this in-house because there is uh income revenue models where if we do a fair we split it 50-50 with them and we could make some money or do we give it off and make it a free system that the county puts a little bit of skin in the
game to make it a free fair and so I think those are kind of our two I would just say if we have no money for this that we budgeted this year we do a fair program and that way we stay out of it as far as the dollars or if the county would like to put some money in put
under EC Riders they could potentially subsidize that fair and now it's a free ride yeah i'm I'm more than willing to let EC Rider do it because I will tell you every one of those rental houses comes with a golf cart yeah and they don't need to pay somebody to take them
to the beach they all have a golf cart that they ride continuously through the neighborhood yeah all night long you know cuz it's fun yeah uh and to the beach and so I I'm not interested in spending money or getting money because
I just I'm not sure that the demand and I'm pretty sure the demand is not there to be honest with you okay because of all the LSU yeah because of the availability of LSV so uh I I would say do it through EC writer and if it's profitable great for them then they get
more writership and they get their numbers up okay so with that any other discussions i agree with Mr bagby so do I okay good all right so I'll call the vote yes all right uh Kevin yes yes yes yes
yes yes yes all right thank you on that 70 so moved mr mayor can I just ask for clarity on exactly what you're asking okay so yeah with with that direction I would say let's let me know if I'm wrong here uh draft an RFP in conjunction with EC
Rider at the county so basically I'm assuming whether hand it off to them or an interlocal agreement so we have a little bit of skin in the game of the operations of the dos and don'ts of probably timing and everything uh but I'm assuming an RFP for interlocal with
the county for a microtransit unit okay just so we're not going out onto the market looking for someone to provide a service on so our we will work with the county to see if there's a cooperative effort that works and if so we have the
motion to draft an RFP okay okay all right cool all right and then the second one um so I just want to bring this back up i just kind of want to shoot another bite at the apple here i I I don't think where we left off last time is as
accurate as it as we left it as far as the incidences versus the fatality and the severity of these crashes as we saw from Kimberly Horn the majority of them are happening over at Stallman but they're fender benders and the more I
reach out and talk to people about this intersection over here uh by Rooms to Go uh there's been a lot of people that have either first person uh testimony or have watched it and so I'm just pleading with you guys again to see if there's any appetite fdot's going to be repaving
Danny Wor Way in late fall and they reached out to me independently with their studies asking if if we had a resolution of support to add on this closing of this lane or a modification of this lane alto together anything we
do it would come to a public workshop so f would create a workshop and then all of our input would be there as to that final completely take it out or modify that median um I think it's very in parallel with everything in 98 that they
have recommended going on as well yes um I agree with you mayor and I thought that when this came up T DOT was um that FDOT was talking about several different bays being closed off and I thought that we were looking at when they were going to help sort of structure 98 and I was
waiting for that to come back to us i don't think any of us disagree that we shouldn't do something about that crossing in fact if they're going to do one sooner rather than later I would venture to guess everybody here would like to see that one completely closed off that you cannot just shoot across
there um any input everybody else yeah to that uh so that is the once we failed the feasibility for the six lane for the West Destin uh corridor of 98 we're basically down to the alternative four lane which I think there's like 45
or 47 um non-intersection or intersections that aren't signalized that they recommend closing and it's really about stopping the left hand out is the the main problem of safety and concern and traffic flow so yes and this could be a
side cart to start now later on and I'm going to be talking to director Tim Smith tomorrow to see with the TPO and the priority that we're in for the 98 CIS network can we can we push this forward with Stallman and everything else going on so Councilman Bagby any words of wisdom yeah so I I did talk to
Tim last week briefly while he was on his vacation uh but he was good enough he probably thought it was something else I was calling about uh and then I've also talked with uh John Whittington and Ryan Adams from FDOT and
um a couple of Well first of all I want to I want to get some facts established because I know there's been a lot of concern in the media and in the community so I'm gonna ask uh Jason had had this been
installed two weeks ago before the accident would anything have changed in that accident that accident was speed related so it it So I I just wanted to put that because there's a lot
of people oh y'all should have done this this would have saved a life it would not have saved her life i agree 100% and and so well yeah I know you know but a lot of folks are very emotional about this uh there were a couple of options
and the county uh Scott Berman was reviewing the R2 project which is the resurfacing of Danny Warfl to the bridge uh and so he knew that this cuz I asked him you know this is the 10th most dangerous at least the sheriff's office
tells us this is 10th most dangerous intersection in the city how did we pick the 10th and he said well it's just it's in the project and the project has the contract's already been let project's probably going to start in late August early September uh if we make this part
of the project it can be incorporated as a change order and the the state will pick up the 100,000 if we don't get and and the reason I tell you that well I'll tell you that in a second if we don't incorporate it in the resurfacing project it won't get done because it is
about a $100,000 project it's a standalone on a state highway and FDOT's not going to mobilize everybody that would be required to do anything to that intersection absent it not being a you
know million-doll project that they're already working on incorporated it in uh what they all tell me is we need a proclamation from the city and we would need it would really help if we got a
proclamation from the county so I said "Okay well that's good." Uh they need it now because as y'all most of you understand the there's a 30-day notice because they have to have a public hearing so you got to give a 30-day notice
then you got to have the public hearing or the public meeting not a hearing public meeting then you get an answer period which is 30 days also which puts us into somewhere into probably June July uh first week of July on a contract
that's already been let that they then have to negotiate a change order to do something uh having said all that I will make a motion that we direct staff to draft that proclamation to close that
intersection nice okay uh second that and that we empower the mayor to sign that proclamation and send it to the county and that we reach out to Scott i already talked to Scott today and said "Hey can you start drafting up the
proclamation for the county?" and Larry and I are having lunch with Drew Palmer on Wednesday and so we will ask our uh county commissioner to get that approved and by the county and
get it to FDOT as soon as possible awesome all right I got a motion and second Councilman mr bagby oh I'm sorry right do you mean proclamation or resolution resolution resolution i'm sorry resolution all right councilman Dustin yeah and I we're all in favor of doing
whatever we can to make those intersections safer uh you know simple solution would be right turn only mhm close it to left turns um and I was going to reiterate the fact that uh Region's Way on the south side is in is
a municipal street on the north side is a county street so we do need to coordinate with them and uh you know I'll vote for the resolution because we do want to do whatever we can to make it safer mhm awesome thank you for that um and my main point was Ryan as well and
they have the um I'm going to call it land agreement from the north side of all those people so everything's ready there uh we were just the last ones to it um all right so I won't muddy that up i got the motion in a second i will call the vote uh Councilman Schmidt yes yes
no no yes yes yes yes yes all right 61 so moved thank you for that and then my last little caveat to that is with everyone up here is that something that we would like to make a stance on and I'm not really going to ask for anything
just more food for thought as we leave to move forward with some version of that four-lane alternative uh feasibility from FDOT for 98 when it comes to closing other lanes like this um we're getting a little bit more into business territory over on the west side
of town um but just food for thought as as we move forward to try to create safety and traffic calming uh with traffic congestion relief how do we feel about using this as a method for multiple others moving forward um I
don't want to speak on behalf of the council even when I'm just talking to Tim and all them but just kind of curious where we're all at so uh Councilman Braden yeah I'd love to see them do something with that turn lane going on to Airport Road if they put some those white balls or something so once you're in that lane you got to stay
in lane cuz there's they dart through the intersection stopping traffic wants to turn right um sheriff's department make plenty of money down there writing tickets people darting out of that turn lane i would love to see the city do something with requesting those um in
the on that lane i've asked I've asked F dot myself several times for those delineators haven't been yeah I'll make that a motion i'll second it all right i got a motion in a second uh any further discussion on that i'm trying yeah I got
you council Bagby then Don well you want to Oh you still Oh sorry yeah mine mine comments not on his motion because I'll I'll support that motion but I had some some other stuff to Okay anything else on that motion yes sir uh his motion if
I'm correct is to do something about the right turn on the airport is that it correct is that the I'm going to make up your word the billers the right that's a that's a terrible problem so I don't have I don't have any issue with that um but as far as closing other
bays that's going to get very very complicated in the west end of town and a simpler solution that everybody probably would go along with is right turns only out of those intersections that's going to be a compromise that'll stop most of it most and you won't get the hell we're going to get raised about trying to close them for sure and that's
kind of where I wanted to figure out where the temperament was and Okay right turn only is kind of where we're feeling councilman Bagby anything else moving forward well yeah my my issue was on down by the harbor we're going to get Yeah nimiism out the wazoo and I think
um you know when you picture what that area between the bridge and say Benning is going to look like in 5 years everything will be undergrounded hopefully we'll we'll get the signs under control hopefully the billboards
will be gone uh and but the most dangerous thing we're going to have is people doing if if we start closing a bunch of them people doing those U-turns to try to go back to
heck when I go to do have to do a U-turn and I'm like you know I got cars coming out from across me i got three lane you know a couple lanes of traffic coming down this way and some of those people are flying and it's like but they're on my wife's side so it's okay you know got
a lot of insurance on I got insurance on her so no go ahead one other comment and and the beauty of those roads are they're completely within the city we had a terrible intersection at Calhoun because people were going out and going left we fixed that ourselves but DOT of course
has to say yes we're going to go along but we fixed the no the no left turns out of that ourselves and we to the best of my knowledge have not had a accident somebody trying to go left because you're not allowed ever since so that's a that's a solution that at least we can
do that in the short term awesome okay council G i just want clarity on what Councilman Braden's asking for again so you're saying on Highway 98 the right turn into airport road you want to put up those little white that lane they
dart back out of it right so if you've got those white forces them on the airport versus these jackasses cut across three lanes of traffic because they missed the turn so I I don't know i mean I can just imagine what kind of nightmare that's going to generate but if the council
feels like that's okay that's what you want i'll I'll support we put up ballers we can put up piano wire what are we going to put up piano wire i'm all about the piano landmines uh put a concrete barrier that's about that tall yeah but it can't cut across
they did that in Fort Walton and fixed a problem i I think also Mr u Officer Fuldram said something about um getting more notice about that right lane coming up
ahead of time yeah even at the next intersection that's the newer intersection saying it's closing much sooner no I I would like when I asked for when I asked for the lane delineators that's what they did was went back even farther with more notice
farther back they've already done that westbound on 98 councelor Traml there's a sign at 1,8004 and 200 ft oh I know it's there because one of your neighbors asked me to get
that and we added a sign and they still do it that you could put it a mile out and say still this lane is right turn only a mile from here and you're going to have people 50 yards from there jumping back into the lane because they think and just just one other thing
councelor baby I just want to remind the council that when that you engage that right turn lane the area between the right turn lane and the through lane is the bike lane oh yeah great F do DOT technology there one one more caveat is
because we have talked about this multiple times in the past couple years you can legally be in that right lane this is what you taught me I think previously until it's a two lines you can still legally go back over to the
other lane so putting ballards isn't going to necessarily create you know fix the problem but keep that in mind that we we've tried these solutions i think what what hopefully it comes out of it is you get people who will stop in that lane and not turn right but wait for someone
to allow them yeah so yeah no to your point you can't fix stupid but part part of the problem is you're you're going downhill and you're making a right-hand curve so you don't see that until you get on it if they had changed and I told
FD dot this when they before they put that road in if they had started that lane um at the stoplight of restaurant row and city hall there started it there on a hill you can actually see now that this is this is going down so I don't
know what we can do all right appreciate it counc maybe a digital billboard right there okay city attorney Call the question quick things um oh I'm Yes thank you Got We have a motion yes sir call the question thank you sir councilman Braden
start us off yes yes yes yes yes yes yes all right thank you i have it so moved 70 so um a couple meetings back you all had asked us to check with the city's insurance carrier to see if they would pay half of our costs in filing the
appeal in the Destin fishing fleet um city of Destin Bird Harris litigation where we're trying to recoup our attorney's fees and the insurance company did agree to pay half so that was um one good announcement and then the other one is looking for a legislative sponsor possibly to do an
LDC amendment where we would we currently have a 10 foot set rear setback in HDR and we are looking to reduce it to five feet in HDR by town homes only and and it's coming from a
history many years ago before the current staff i don't want anyone to think it was the current staff um but there were permits issued for people that have things like decks and encroachments into the 10-ft setback um and now we have others coming in for
permits wanting to do the same thing and they're getting denied and they're looking at all their neighbors saying "Why did they get to do it?" And hey the city issued that permit in error so we thought one fair way to address it for everybody equally would be to give everybody a five foot instead of 10 foot setback in talking with planning there
was no public safety or other issues so I'll make that I'll be that sponsor to to create that okay thank you then we'll bring it to you in first reading as soon as it's ready awesome all right public comments anyone here yes sir will make it quick
there's a ball game going on what's the score 16 for who houston oh shoot come on Florida come on Florida will Ellison 744 Kelly Street so talking
about uh I have a few things to talk about one regarding uh what Kevin said about the people on the docks and the illegal businesses there whenever I was
code compliance I had trespassing issues uh you know trespassing issue to people so we did it in the past i don't see why we can't do it in the future two the stop sign at Kelly and Spring Lake doesn't work if y'all need to do another speed test or whatever maybe
some speed tables i live right there non-stop they hang off a Main Street hit it like Vin Diesel quarter mile at a time it's terrible wakes up my kid all the time all the neighbors are mad too third
thing Mr schmidt can you reiterate what you were proposing with the mobile vending didn't get a second so it's not going anywhere okay cuz we couldn't really hear what was going on we didn't understand the uh council's response we
couldn't hear anything in the back well he made a There's only one business that's able to have mobile vending in the rightway in the city of Dest so the proposal was to have the option to have mobile vending in the rightway in the
city of Dest currently you cannot cool nobody wants to thank you all so much thank you anyone else public comments all right seeing none I will call this meeting adjourned woo