Destin, 25 years later: First council reviews city

Twenty-five years ago, Destin wasn’t on the map — literally.

“There was Fort Walton Beach, Panama City, no Destin,” Bill Phillips, a member of Destin’s first City Council told The Log. After the city incorporated in 1984, “I had to write a letter to Rand McNally to get them to put Destin on the map ... I told them we were a city, we had to be on the map so people could find us.

“And a lot of people have found us.”

Too many perhaps: Interviewing members of Destin’s original City Council, the biggest regret about the way the city turned out was that it wasn’t able to do a better job controlling growth.

“It’s too dynamic in Destin,” Dewey Destin — one of the first councilors and currently a council member again — said. “There’s too much influence, too much money to be made. I’d like to think the things we did get done to manage growth would not have happened under a county system.”

After Destin voted to incorporate in 1984, 37 candidates filed to run for the seven open council seats, plus two candidates — Jerry Najarian and Bill McIlroy — running for mayor. The original timetable for the election — 45 days after the vote to incorporate — would have put Election Day on Christmas Eve, but the Legislature rescheduled for Jan. 8, 1985.

When the dust cleared, McIlroy had become mayor and Dewey Destin, Richard Duke, Jimmy Vaughn, Danny Woodward, Lloyd Taylor, Theo Shaw and Bill Phillips filled the council seats. Some of them have died since, but Taylor, Vaughn, Phillips and Destin are still around to give their thoughts on the city they shepherded into being.

“On the public works side, we’ve done a lot of things I’m pretty proud of,” Dewey Destin said. “We didn’t have hardly any sidewalks or street lights or parks, a lot of streets weren’t even paved. I’m pretty pleased.”

“We had no street signs, we had a few stop signs, we had no sidewalks, no street lights,” Phillips said. “We thought we were getting shortchanged by Okaloosa County; we didn’t get the money to provide for infrastructure. Our first goal was to get those things done that people wanted done for a long time.”

Vaughn said he had a hard time singling any one accomplishment out because “there’s a multitude of things that make Destin a good place to live. It’s awfully hard to name two or three.”

Vaughn said he’s proud that the city sets term limits for elected officials, and he thinks adding a city manager to Destin staff has been a plus: “I think over the years it’s proven itself to have someone adroit at management.”

Taylor said rampant development has been his biggest disappointment, given that one of the reasons he ran for council was to control growth and building height. He said the city’s tiering system, which allows developers to exceed limits on height and density of development if they provide “significant public benefits” were literally a way to work around the city’s rules.

“I’m not against development,” Taylor said, “but we tried to implement ordinances that would prevent overdevelopment. I don’t think you’ll find many citizens in Destin or Okaloosa County that think Tier Threes are a good idea except for developers and the Chamber of Commerce.”

On the other hand, Taylor said he’s very happy with the city’s recreational facilities, and the hard work the Public Services department puts in maintaining roads, sidewalks and other infrastructure. He’s also pleased the city is still contracting for police services rather than spending more money to create a Destin police department.

Phillips said he’d worked closely with the state government on the city’s old growth plans and development codes, and hasn’t been pleased with some of the developments since, such as Emerald Grande. He said he didn’t think the council he’d been on would have approved.

Still, he said, “it’s up to the current government to make those decisions, not guys that were there 25 years ago. A lot of people are concerned, but you can’t dictate the future according to what you were going to do in the past.”

Phillips added that it’s hard for government to tell a property owner what to do.

“I’m not really disappointed,” he continued. “I think we had a real balanced city council in the original. We had people that were opposed to incorporation, we had four that supported it, so it balanced out. We had some good discussions and you know, our meetings used to go four and five hours and we were meeting every night of the week, except Saturday and Sunday.

“I’m satisfied with the way it went and the way it’s going. We have real good leadership in Destin now.”

“Overall, there’s been a phenomenal success,” Vaughn, who now lives in Gulf Breeze, told The Log. “I’m real proud of Destin; there’s been a lot of negative things from time to time but overall, if you take everything from the past 25 years, you can see there’s been lots of progress.”

His biggest disappointment, he said: Some of Destin’s people.

“It seems like there’s a certain element of people that can’t do nothing but find something negative to say,” Vaughn said. “This bothers me more than anything, a lot of times the negativism is unnecessary.”

But people are also a plus, he said, because the city has “very dedicated people interested in making Destin a good city to live ... I’m proud of Destin, I was there for 45 years, I’ll always have a lot of fond memories and a lot of good friends.”