TDC won't tap reserves for beach restoration

Okaloosa County shouldn’t pay for Destin and Okaloosa Island beach restoration by dipping into the Tourist Development Council’s emergency reserves, TDC members say.

“We should send a message that we’ll work on this as hard as we can,” TDC member Mike Minich said at this week’s meeting. “If we have to ask property owners (for money), it’ll be as painless as possible.”

The TDC’s original plan was to restore all the beaches on Okaloosa Island with a combination of state grants, TDC bed taxes and a Municipal Services Benefit Unit — a special tax assessment — on beachfront property owners. Several owners and condo associations have filed suit against restoration, charging that the MSBU doesn’t conform to state rules; some owners will pay more than their fair share; and some beaches aren’t “critically eroded” enough to need more sand.

Earlier this month, the County Commission removed 1.5 miles of Destin beach — the only stretch the Florida Department of Environmental Protection doesn’t classify as critically eroded — from the project. This week, the commissioners authorized the sale of bonds in a 4-1 vote to pay for restoration, but said that with 1.5 miles less to restore, they might not need the MSBU to pay off the bonds.

Wednesday, TDC Chair Ken Paine said the county wouldn’t know the exact costs until the lawsuits were settled, all the project permits had been approved and they’d received bids from dredging companies. Paine said it would also depend on the terms the county secured on the bonds.

“There’s a lot of costs out there, and a lot of costs are unknown,” County Beach Projects Coordinator Jim Trifilio said. For example, fuel costs for the dredges could raise the projected $4 million-per-mile bill much higher.

Although the smaller stretch of beach in the project means the TDC will have to pay less, the members said Wednesday they should keep the original $10.8 million contribution in the budget until they have a firm price.

The members also said that dipping into the TDC’s reserves, which some commissioners said could eliminate the MSBU, would be a mistake. TDC Executive Director Darrel Jones said that after Hurricane Opal hit in 1995, the TDC’s Welcome Center had been down for six months: “We spent $2.6 million getting this place back up.”

Jones said the TDC also had to use its reserves to rebuild Okaloosa Island’s beach accesses and advertise that the Emerald Coast hadn’t been destroyed. After Hurricane Ivan hit in 2004, the TDC spent $328,000 in added publicity to bring the tourists back.

“When you live in a coastal community, when your industry is dependent on our coastal environment, you need to keep your reserves as large as you can,” Minich said, adding that the commission could always dip into its own reserves.

One of the requirements for a state-backed restoration project is to set an “erosion control line” showing where the owners’ private beach runs out and becomes public beach. Trifilio said surveyors had submitted a proposed ECL to the state this week, and the DEP is working to schedule a public hearing on it.

Trifilio said the dredging couldn’t simply skip every property that objects because a patchwork restoration wouldn’t be stable enough. If only one or two properties opted out, he said, the ECL would still apply to sand that drifted to their beaches from neighboring beach:

Once sand accumulated south of the ECL, it would become public beach.

“DEP has designated them critically eroded,” he added. “As far as we’re concerned, we’re following the rules.”