SANTA ROSA BEACH — Some Walton County residents object to their former county administrator authorizing the expenditure of bed tax funds to clean private beaches.
Bob Hudson and Suzanne Harris claim Bob Halfhill not only wasn’t authorized to spend Tourist Development Council dollars, he and Commissioner Sara Comander didn’t have the right to declare a beach “emergency” without public input.
“We can’t get into the mess Okaloosa County got into where we are spending TDC bed tax money to clean private beaches and nobody knows about it until somebody happens to tell it and a public records request is done,” Harris said at Tuesday’s County Commission meeting. “These are the things that need to be done not in the dark, but in the sunshine.”
As Hudson and Harris laid out the situation, Halfhill, who resigned April 3, received a call from the owner of the Whale’s Tail in Miramar Beach to ask the county to clean the beach behind the restaurant.
Hundreds — Comander claimed thousands — of young people had used public access to reach the beach behind the restaurant and left a tremendous amount of trash behind.
County Attorney Mark Davis told Harris and Hudson that Halfhill had consulted him about the problem, which he viewed as “spring break folks using public access and going onto private property.”
Davis said he told Halfhill he had discretion to cover the $500 per-day cost of cleaning the mess “as a health and safety issue.”
But Davis said he was unaware Halfhill used TDC funds rather than general fund money to pay for the cleanup.
“I was not aware it came out of TDC funds,” Davis said. “I had no idea about that.”
Harris, who heads a condominium association and pays bed taxes and for beach cleaning services, warned commissioners that using any county funds to pay for beach cleaning on private property sets a dangerous precedent.
“You’re going to have Sandestin knocking on the door and Rosemary Beach knocking on the door and Seaside coming. You can’t do for one what you don’t do for everybody,” she said.
Hudson, executive director of the Walton County Taxpayers Association, questioned the seemingly convoluted chain of command that resulted in a county administrator, who has no control over the TDC, ordering bed tax funds to be spent to clean private beaches.
“It appears to me that several individuals acted outside of their authority,” he said.
“How can the county administrator pick up the phone and direct the TDC to expend funds when he has no control over the TDC?” Hudson asked.
Hudson also said Comander, by giving consent for Halfhill to spend money to clean private property, had overstepped her bounds.
“If it’s an emergency I think the BCC must declare an emergency at a called BCC meeting,” he said. “No other commissioner was made aware of the action, How does the vice chairman of the BCC act on her own to declare an emergency?”
When asked at the meeting about her role in authorizing the funding, Comander said, “I left the decision to Mr. Halfhill.
“All we did was expedite the (beach services) contract,” she said. “The county attorney waived review of the contract.”
Hudson also brought up that no one on the TDC advisory board knew anything about paying to clean up private beach property.
To rectify the matter, Davis suggested that the County Commission reimburse the TDC for funds spent on the cleaning. Commissioners voted unanimously to do so.
But Wednesday, Gerry Demers, who is acting as interim county administrator, said he and the county finance department were thinking maybe the money spent to clean up behind the Whales Tail and other businesses had come from the correct source.
“The question remaining is should this have been paid for with TDC bed taxes or general funds,” he said. “I’ve got finance people looking into it now. It will be resolved next week.”
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Tom McLaughlin at 850-315-4435 or tmclaughlin@nwfdailynews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomMnwfdn.