By D. L. Norris
After a long pause in legislating due to the COVID-19 Pandemic and a primary and general election, the Okaloosa County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) was hard at work on Tuesday, November 17, 2020, passing new legislation. The BOCC has two new members, District 1 Commissioner Paul Mixon and District 5 Commissioner Mel Ponder. The issue at hand was feeding birds on the beach.
The last time the BOCC passed a bird related ordinance was in 2015 with their two residential back yard chicken ordinances, then readdressed that ordinance in 2018 with a fake attempt to pass a residential front yard chicken ordinance. It was a hoax in order to get a valid code complainant to go away so the county would not have to enforce its code on a non-compliant resident. See previous post on this blog titled Okaloosa County Plays a Real Life Game of Chicken, in the November 2019 archives, for the details.
Since Okaloosa County did such a disastrous job of implementing and enforcing its residential backyard chicken ordinance, I was very curious to see how this new BOCC would handle this particular bird related nuisance issue.
In a previous BOCC meeting, a restauranteur who leases county owned land on Okaloosa Island for their restaurant, requested help from the BOCC to alleviate a nuisance situation that was negatively impacting their business. At least one individual, and perhaps a few more, routinely feed the birds near the Okaloosa Island restaurants on leased county property. These birds have become so accustomed to being fed, they now attack restaurant patrons, and their plates of food, looking for free eats. Once a patron’s food is contaminated by birds, the restaurant owner is obligated to replace the food which cuts into their profit margins considerably. Obviously, this is not a sustainable business model and, secondarily, it’s not healthy for wild birds to eat most human food.
According to county staff, “the Florida Wildlife Commission (FWC) was contacted but have been unable to address this particular matter.” The county hopes this ordinance “will allow enforcement of this issue locally with animal control officers or local law enforcement with increasing enforcement for repeat offenders.”
The BOCC spent a good amount of time discussing the draft ordinance as presented and also an alternative draft ordinance. What a difference two new commissioners makes to the deliberation process! This was interesting to note because the ordinance draft was only two pages long; however, much thought was given to the outcome and included a discussion on the enforcement side of the ordinance. It was also a refreshing change to past BOCC actions where thousands of lines of code had been drafted with no thought given to the enforcement requirements, training and costs. In addition, the negative health issues associated with birds was finally discussed by District 2 Commissioner Ketchel who failed to seize the opportunity in 2018 to stop the residential front yard chicken ordinance hoax based on the same bird related health hazards.
The final vote was 4-1 in favor of a draft ordinance but it would only pertain to public beaches and waterfront parks south of Choctawhatchee Bay and prohibited feeding of birds only–no other animals were included. Enforcement of the ordinance would be by county sheriff or FWC. First violation would be verbal warning. Second violation would be $100 fine. Third violation would be $250 fine and a misdemeanor.
The lone dissenting vote was District 3 Commissioner Boyles who appeared to want a more narrow focus on applying an ordinance to just the one or two locations where there was an identified problem already. This very conservative approach from Commissioner Boyles was a welcome change from his more liberal voting record of 2019.
All in all, the new BOCC legislated a conservative ordinance focusing on the health and safety of citizens first, with limited scope and clearly defined enforcement requirements and, secondarily, is for the birds too!
You can contact the author at dlnorris@theparadisepatriot.com