Flagler Beach City Commissioners passed an ordinance last week that should never have had to come up for a vote.
The measure protects the public’s right to traverse some areas of privately owned beach in the city and mirrors one crafted by Flagler County officials in response to House Bill 631, which was signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott in March.
(READ: Flagler Beach moves to protect public access to beach)
While private property rights should be preserved, the bill signed by Scott protects those individuals at the expense of the wider public and could result in a patchwork quilt of publicly accessible areas on the beach, diminishing free access to one of the county’s greatest resources.
Many Flagler County residents either grew up on the beach or relocated here to enjoy the salt life. Passing a statewide law that restricts public access to certain areas of the beach threatens to divide residents and create enforcement issues for local officials. More significantly, for a coastal county like Flagler that relies on its beaches as a main draw for tourists, privatization of the beach could make tourist development efforts much more difficult in an already competitive market.
If visitors find their ability to enjoy the beach is limited to a smaller area — with the attendant problems of adequate parking and access over the dunes — some will likely look to other areas for their family vacations and getaways. The loss of bed-tax dollars would then limit the county’s ability to market the county as a destination and the loss of sales by restaurants, shops and other attractions would have a deleterious impact on the county’s overall economic health.
It is unfortunate that local government officials have to expend time and energy to create ordinances to preserve public access to the beach. It would be even more unfortunate if local tax dollars were used to repair storm damage to beach areas off limits to the same public that paid those taxes to finance those repairs.
The beach is a precious resource that should be shared and maintained by the community as a whole, without fear or favor from private landowners or entities. State legislators erred in passing HB 63, preferring to act for a handful of wealthy residents at the expense of the public at large.
Flagler Beach and Flagler County officials should be praised for acting so quickly to meet the challenge to public beach access, even if they never should have needed to do so in the first place.