No decisions made, just an update on the case.

Tonight’s turnout has a lot of nonregulars here. I’m guessing it’s either for impact fees or Pointe One. We’ll find out (if nothing else, whichever item they all leave after will tell the tale).

Councilor Larry Williges said he expected a short executive session.

If it runs more than another five minutes, the council meeting will start late (though admittedly, 30 minutes would be shorter than many executive sessions I’ve waited outside).

Wait, City Clerk Rey Bailey has gone inside, looks like it might be over after all.

I’m at City Hall, but council is inside conducting an executive session on legal issues (one of the exemptions to the Sunshine Laws). The issue at hand: Former City Clerk Dana Williams’ suit against the city over her firing.

It looks like a short session tonight. Impact fees, which have been thoroughly gone over, and the Pointe One Marina (just an update on where they are in the DEP permit process) are the only items of major controversy that I can see. Then again, just because the impact fees have been discussed at length doesn’t mean the discussion is over. We’ll see.

269 hits on the Destin City Council candidates finance reports.
1400-plus hits on the online interviews with the candidates.
That’s way more hits than we usually get for anything we put online, which means people out in Destin are actually thinking about who should sit in the four open seats.
Good for you, readers!

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.