Council works on TDC budget and COP policy
The Fort Myers Beach Town Council discussed a preliminary summary budget for submission to the Lee County Tourist Development Council for fiscal year 2012 during its first agenda item at a recent work session at Town Hall. It reviewed the particulars of a policy issue regarding COP (consumption on premises) during its second agenda item.
During the first item, council went over a list of things that they felt needed attention. Since TDC has been limiting requests for capital project budgets, town staff and council reasoned the need for including relative items under its maintenance and equipment category.
After much discussion regarding the subject, council gave Town Manager Terry Stewart and his staff consensual direction to prioritize certain items from a provided list and make business cases for them. They included beach maintenance vegetation, another chickee hut at Newton Park, murals on mobile rest rooms as well as beach patrol and some Mound House issues.
“I think this exercise today is really good for setting up the beginning of a central focus of how we want to handle the TDC requests,” said Stewart. “We put a whole lot of money into that TDC, and we don’t get a whole lot back from it. So, I think every opportunity we have to ask for money within reason, we should be asking.”
Councilman Alan Mandel pointed out that TDC is “usually more favorable if the community has funded (certain projects) themselves.”
“That’s an important part of the application,” he said.
Both he and Councilman Tom Babcock tried to shorten the list through prioritizing.
Separate discussions on the Mound House and Newton Park are scheduled to be reviewed during a work session on Monday, Dec. 20, according to the town officials.
“Every discussion that we have should have a goal that says when we get done we can write it up on a blue sheet,” said Mayor Larry Kiker. “That way we can have a discussion with the public and let them know what we talked about and give them a chance to get involved. We need to start getting things done.”
Stewart is expected to report on the listed items at the council’s Dec. 6 work session.
On the second agenda item, council reviewed different options on a COP (consumption on premises) license issue presented by FMB Community Development Director Walter Fluegel. Three of the four present council members provided preliminary consensus by choosing option #2, which suggests to reject the Town Local Planning Agency’s interpretation and interpret the COP as a permitted use in the recreation language category.
“We’re talking about a very important community character issue that you are being asked to make an interpretation on what intention of the comprehension plan really is as it relates to COP and recreation,” said Fluegel.
After debating for some time about the options, council decided to take public input on the matter before voting on accepting or rejecting the LPA’s resolution during its next regular meeting on Dec. 6. At that time, council could give town staff further direction on specific policy decisions and implementations for a future meeting.
“What we are really talking about is when this glass crosses the line in the sand, what are the rules?,” asked Fluegel. “How do we want to approach this from a policy perspective?”