PANAMA CITY BEACH — The buildup of orneriness over ordinances that the Panama City Beach Council passed the past few years to “clean up” the beach — from declawing Spring Break to regulations on beach hole digging — that had sent meeting decorum out the window culminated in 2017 with new rules aimed at cleaning up the meetings themselves.

With council meetings regularly degenerating into debates back and forth between audience members and council members, and with audience members periodically calling out accusations or attempting to question council members while they discussed city business, the council turned to new policies limiting the final public commenting period at the end of meetings to people who are city residents, own a city business, or who are on the city’s utility system to speak. The first commenting period remained open to all, as long as it pertained to an item on the meeting agenda.

It brought to a head, and was designed to head off, conflicts between regular meeting attendees and some council members.

Some people living outside Panama City Beach had been using the open-public comment section of the meeting — already limited to three minutes per person — to, at times, lambast the council, usually Mayor Mike Thomas and Councilmen Hector Solis and John Reichard and City Manager Mario Gisbert.

Thomas said that’s just not “normal” meeting behavior nor how productive meetings are run, and blamed it on misinformation put out on social media.

“People got together on Facebook, and were giving out incorrect information. It got people excited,” he said.

Some members of the audience, including a faction led by Burnie Thompson, who has a talk show on Facebook and now is running for Beach City Council, didn’t take kindly to Thomas’ agenda or his strong personality. They liked the new rules even less.

The policy resulted in people like Thompson being limited to one opportunity to address the council, and then only if it was about an item on the agenda.

“Our meetings are not places you want to carry your children,” Thomas said in response to what he described as the outlandish behavior of some.

Thomas’ public comment policy was supported by three other council members with Josie Strange being the exception. But the policy was criticized by Barbara Petersen, executive director of the state’s First Amendment Foundation.

“I don’t think they can do it under state law, and I think they are putting themselves up to a constitutional challenge under the First Amendment,” Petersen said. “I think it’s absurd.”

But Thomas and city attorneys pointed out that the City of Cocoa adopted a similar policy that stood up in court.

If, as Thompson and his supporters believed, the ordinance was aimed at limiting his time before the council it was only partially successful — he has since moved into the city and filed to run for the seat being vacated by Josie Strange. The meetings, however, have been less tumultuous.

Code enforcement

In addition, code enforcement remained a focus for the council in 2017. Several city officials campaigned on promises to clean up the city.

“If you live in a neighborhood in a city, I don’t think you have the right to destroy the property rights of your neighbor because of the way you keep your yards, your vehicles, the way you park, things all over the yards,” Thomas in a previous interview.

Thomas suggested many of the laws — spanning issues from rental parking to carport debris to storefront signage.

Councilman Hector Solis, who along with Phil Chester and Thomas joined the council in April 2016, said the cleanup effort is part of the platform on which he and other council members ran to take the city in a new direction.

“It’s a slow process, but it’s a process. I think it’s moving that way,” Solis said.

Among the laws passed were those requiring more parking for rental properties, allowing the city to remove junked automobiles and debris from carports, and forbidding people from turning travel trailers into anchored homes.

The city in 2017 also stepped up its demolition projects for dilapidated structures. And it has been going after code violators more aggressively.

In the process of the cleanup initiative, the city hired a third code enforcement officer.

Also, in October the city issued several notices to rental property owners, which identified regulations placed on public lodging establishments. The notices came on the heels of a dispute the city had with property owner Genese Hatcher — whose water and sewer services were shut off after she failed to comply with safety codes. It was another dispute between Hatcher and the city that she said arose from Solis using his position as a councilman to pick on her and her rental business. In another run-in, Hatcher told the City Council she was stunned and offended when she ran into a planning board member, who in turn gave her a copy of the book “The Joy of Sex.”

New ordinances continued to flourish, though, creating some tension between residents and city officials. In October, the council amended the times at which people were to be considered camping on the beach. Several residents repeatedly voiced their frustrations to the council at meetings.

Recently, the council voted to approve regulations regarding wooden beach chairs. Business owners said the law — which is expected to go into effect in 2020 — will hurt their businesses. Thomas said the rules all are in place to keep the beach clean.

“We are making a lot of rules, but we’ve grown so much,” he said. “When you’re a small town or community, you don’t have problems until you grow. There’s still going to be a lot of confrontations. No one likes change.”

Thomas said a lot of people speak with him about the city’s move to clean up the beach. He said he gets complaints about some laws, but an overwhelming majority of people are in favor of what the council is trying to accomplish.

“New businesses are coming to the Beach,” he said. “These things support what we do, and you can’t apologize for that.”

The good and the bad

This year has given Thomas time to reflect on the decisions he and other city officials made. He said he realized this year that many years ago county and city officials had it wrong when they decided to create building height requirements on the Beach.

“When I was on the County (Commission), I was wrong about the height requirements. The county and city agreed some time ago on a 22- story building height requirement on the Beach. Looking back, most people would agree 22 stories is too high on a beach.”

Thomas said one of the things he is proud the city has accomplished are the steps taken to address the Back Beach Road widening project. The project will expand U.S. 98 from four to six lanes from Mandy Lane to Thomas Drive. Officials have held a community forum to get input from the community, as well as discussed the project with state legislative officials.

He also is proud of the Tourist Development Council’s drive to make Panama City Beach a family-friendly destination through such family-oriented events as “Beach Home for the Holidays.”

“The spring and summer population is more family-friendly,” he said. The TDC has helped with that.”