Heading home …

“The airport’s still there, aircraft coming in still wake us up at night. We had a hot-dog pilot in there this weekend, ahving a good old time. Please don’t forget those of us who live adjacent to the airport.”
Probably responding to comments by Destin City Council candidates that moving next to the airport was the homeowners’ choice, she added, “Yes, we made a decision, but the airport is considerably different from what I remember in the sixties and seventies.”

Jim Breitenfeld of the Destin Harbor Association gave a dissenting view on the tiering workshop: After several years of work on the Land Development Code and the tiering system, the council reviews one Tier Three project and then announces it wants to change the rules?
“Development isn’t happening because the rules are in flux,” Breitenfeld said, and that could kill the tax revenues that major, half-million dollar Tier Three developments could bring in.
However, he said, if it will take a workshop to get city staff and the council in agreement on the rules and standards, go for it: “Let’s get a set of rules and see if we can stick with them long enough that people who want to spend a half-million dollars can do so in Destin.”

The council is voting on a proposal to let Destin City Hall workers share in the special benefits the city provides to residents: Discounted use of Joe’s Bayou boat ramps, free access to Henderson Beach State Park.
After some discussion whether the benefits should kick in after 90 days, the council votes to make them immediate upon hiring.

I’m concerned my voice is going again. I’ve been trying to control how much I talk, I may have to exert more control–it’s getting the kind of squeaky, weak quality that foreshadowed disaster last month.
Of course, with Twelfth Night rehearsals, holding it in may be difficult … Send positive thoughts my way.

“There’s not a whole lot of condos selling right now,” Barker said, though he added he wasn’t a real-estate expert. “The probability this thing even comes out of the ground is maybe 50 percent.”
This was part of a discussion on how to finance the parking garages the city wants to build in the Destin harbor.

Councilor Cyron Marler: “Don’t watch the TV. Participate. Show up … that’s how city government gets it done and gets involved, not by sitting in your easy chair and watching and complaining.”

As covered in my Wednesday article, some of the council believe the city needs another look at the Tier Three standards and review processes (Tier Three being the biggest developments, such as Emerald Grande or the 15-story Harbor Reflections condo approved last week).
Tonight, Bagby called for a workshop on the process, as soon as possible after the new council members are seated in March (even though the election is next week, the transition occurs under the old schedule, from when the primaries were in March).
Ted Corcoran, joking: “It’ll be a good opportunity to break them in right, to make them realize it’s not one meeting every other week, it’s every day!”
The motion passes unanimously.
Bagby said his reservations about the way parking is calculated under the new ordinance have persuaded him not to approve anything until the glitch (read my article on-line about Tier Three for more detail) is fixed. City Manager Greg Kisela said, however, that before the workshop is in place, there’ll be two more development hearings involving the same parking issues.

City Manager Greg Kisela says there will be one coming to council probably within two months.

There’s a reason the public sometimes waits until late at night to address the City Council, Mayor Barker says.
In response to a proposal from Councilor Ted Corcoran that the public comment section of the meetings be moved up higher on the agenda, Barker said that he’d spent two terms as a councilor when the agenda led off with audience comments.
“We would spend hours on hours on hours debating issues that had been brought up to city council that evening. They had never been vetted with city staff, they might have been solved easily,” Barker said. “In my estimation we wasted a lot of time.”
After Barker became mayor, he convinced the council to adopt a resolution that moves unscheduled presentations from the audience to the end of the meeting. Citizens who fill out a form in advance get to speak earlier.
As someone who was there when the old system was in place, there’s no question meetings–even though they can still take a long time–move faster than they used to.