City weighs event safety, profitability

By KEVIN RICH
Special to the PRESS

The SPI Convention and Visitors Advisory Board (CVA) discussed event permitting requirements, considered funding for events, as well as heard marketing and post-event reports in its Nov. 30 meeting.

Advisory Board Chair Wally Jones brought forth an agenda item for discussion and possible action regarding the Beach Events Permit Requirements. Jones provided background information on the issue, including that the reason this item was on the agenda was as a result of the mayor asking the Board to come up with a plan back in a May 2016 meeting. Jones stated that he wanted to use the opportunity to open up a discussion with board members as well as with audience members regarding the issue.

“The attachment that we have to this agenda merely serves as an example for what some other community has done – and that would be Panama City Beach, Florida after the problems they had there,” said Jones regarding the sample Permit Requirements document provided. “We took that and  reviewed it, made some edits to it, and merely put it out there saying, ‘Listen, this is something that we feel like that we can work with and edit further and be able to end up with a good product.’”

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