Niceville’s City Council met for about two hours at their regular business meeting on October 14. Here are the highlights from the meeting.
Back in September, Niceville was visited by a self-proclaimed First Amendment Auditor. The auditor posted a video on YouTube, which garnered more than 120,000 views.
After the auditor posted the video, City Manager David Deitch says city employees and elected officials received hundreds of threatening messages on their voicemail and in their inboxes.
As an apparent response to the audit, the Niceville City Council unanimously passed a new ordinance 4-0 on Tuesday, which would clearly delineate rules and regulations for accessing city facilities.
The ordinance is a copy-and-paste of Punta Gorda, Florida’s city ordinance. That is by design, says City Manager David Deitch. “It’s been challenged twice in federal court and found to be legal and defensible, so we just cut and paste it.”
The list of rules, which you can read here, is delineated between the police station and all other city facilities.
Law enforcement can criminally enforce a trespass with the ordinance in place. The crime would be a second-degree misdemeanor. Those found guilty could be fined $500 and imprisoned in the county jail for 60 days.
Niceville City Manager David Deitch gave the state-required annual report on the school zone speed cameras that were installed near the end of the last school year on Palm and Partin drives.
Speed cameras, after a police evidence custodian verifies them, issue $100 speeding tickets to people traveling more than 10 miles an hour over the posted speed limit in designated school zones.
Of that $100 ticket – $60 goes to the city. Out of that $60, the city pays the camera vendor $3,400 per month to lease camera equipment, according to City Councilman Doug Tolbert.
Councilman Tolbert asked Deitch what the cost in man-hours was to verify the cars caught speeding. Niceville Deputy Police Chief Brandon Chapin explained that one custodian takes about two hours per day to look through the flagged drivers.
From the roughly 1,000 tickets issued in the six weeks the cameras operated in the summer, Tolbert estimated the cameras broke even for the city.
Deitch acknowledged that the revenue was not as lucrative for the city in the first six weeks of operation, but followed up by revealing more current data. “These numbers will be drastically different, because we are seeing between 1,500 and 1,800 citations per month currently,” the City Manager explained.
“I will say it does change behavior, because every time I drive down those roads, I’m thinking, how fast am I going? What is the speed limit now? I mean, it’s every single time I drive, even when it’s after hours. I’m thinking about it,” said City Councilman Doug Stauffer
The Niceville City Council elected Councilwoman Cathy Alley Mayor Pro Tempore in her absence on Tuesday by a unanimous vote. The Mayor Pro Tempore serves as the Mayor and presides over meetings when the Mayor is absent.
The City Police Department responded to 2409 calls for service in September. That includes:
Finally, Public Works Director Jonathon Laird gave an update on infrastructure projects underway or planned throughout the city:
Pro Communi Bono
St. Francis De Sales, Ora Pro Nobis!
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