[h=1]Imagine Rosemary Sea Water Grove Crest[/h] By TOM McLAUGHLIN | Daily News
Published: Friday, February 20, 2015 at 16:49 PM.
Imagine a city stretching across South Walton, encompassing everything east of Destin and west of Panama City Beach and consolidating 16 unique communities into one municipality.
It could be San Grayton Dune Color Mountain.
Or Rosemary Sea Water Grove Crest.
As absurd as the possible names might sound, so to – to some people – must be the thought that the many enclaves that give South Walton its unique character would willingly be clumped together as a single entity.
But there are those in South Walton unhappy enough with the way county government treats them to be actively exploring incorporation.
And it is quite possible there will be a move at some point to establish a Walton County city, or two, south of Choctawhatchee Bay.
“We need it to be a city. Yeah, your taxes go up, but there would be protections, and voting, a little more say in the decision process,” said Mary Sykes, a newly minted Realtor and employee of Pizza By the Sea in Seagrove Beach.
“This area is growing so fast we need a little more control.”
Not a new sentiment
The idea of incorporating is not entirely new for South Walton.
Lynn Tipton, the League of Cities representative who will present the nuts and bolts of the issue to interested parties Thursday, recalled making a similar presentation about a decade ago.
“I hadn’t heard from anybody since until about a week ago,” she said.
The push to consider incorporation is being spearheaded, again, by the South Walton Community Council, whose leaders say at this juncture they just want to look at the options.
“There’s been lots of discussion about how you do it and why,” said SWCC Vice President Blaine Dargavell. “We want people to have accurate information about incorporation so we can all understand the process and better understand the pros and cons.”
The last time the topic of incorporation came up the powerful Walton County Taxpayers Association opposed the idea.
This time around members have taken a wait and see approach.
“Incorporation would certainly have costs as well as benefits,” WCTA President Don Riley said. “The cost/benefit ratio after all aspects have been carefully explored would, in my mind, be the ultimate deciding factor.”
Hampton Inn jitters
The County Planning Commission’s Jan. 14 vote to allow construction of a Hampton Inn in Seagrove Beach helped spur the latest incorporation discussion.
“Incorporation was not even on my radar screen until a few months ago,” said Susan Lucas of Santa Rosa Beach. “The Hampton Inn led us to understand the challenges this community faces as change comes.”
Meg Nelson, who helped organize the last discussion on incorporation, said there are plenty of issues other than the Hampton Inn that South Walton residents ought to consider when deciding whether they want to take the lead in determining the area’s future.
She cited traffic, parking shortages, beach erosion and development around South Walton’s unique coastal dune lakes as other issues.
“South Walton really feels there’s a lack of county vision,” she said.
City, town or village
There are presently 411 cities, towns or villages — the state gives each moniker equal recognition — in Florida.
The village of Estero, in Lee County, stands only a March 17 vote away from becoming the newest.
Tipton said cities have been formed over the years for any number of reasons.
As an example she offered Weeki Wachee, the “only city of mermaids,” which with five residents is the state’s smallest.
Its handful of Hernando County residents incorporated, in part, so that operators of a mermaid-themed park could control the speed limit on the only road in and out.
“I tell applicants ‘when you’re looking at this, you’re comparing apples and oranges if you’re lucky,’” Tipton said. “But most of the time it’s fruit salad.”
If the South Walton incorporation movement advances past the study phase, it will be incumbent upon the leaders to conduct a thorough feasibility study and establish municipal boundaries.
There are guidelines for that too, Tipton said.
A new Florida city must be “reasonably compact and contiguous,” she said.
“You can’t create holes in the middle of the donut. It can’t be polka dotted” Tipton said. “You can’t hopscotch six miles and pick back up with it.”
The biggest challenge would-be city fathers might face trying to convince residents of 16 established communities to pull together for incorporation.
The “special nature of the community” of South Walton might also work in favor of the SWCC, said the group’s president, Kelley Mossburg, a resident of Water Sound on County Road 30A.
A visionary’s vision
Robert Davis founded Seaside, the most famous of 12 communities situated on coastal County Road 30A, in 1981.
Thirty four years later he envisions a future South Walton divided into two incorporated areas.
One would encompass the 12 30A communities and the other those areas west of the roadway, probably including Sandestin.
“I think it’s inevitable that eventually we will have a municipality down here,” he said.
Davis said he anticipates it will likely take a long time for South Walton incorporation to happen because he expects staunch resistance to the idea of the county’s wealthiest areas governing themselves.
“The county will be less than thrilled with giving up their cash cow,” he said.
Davis said he sees a “real logic” in calling a new South Walton city, town or village Seaside, because of the international brand the community has established.
He conceded, however, that a “city of 30A” would “bring its own brand.”
Davis said he could support incorporation if city planners were willing to create as part of its charter a comprehensive plan that was “not the conventional suburban development code.”
“I think there is a real opportunity, whether we create our own entity or force the county’s hand, to do something that will produce places like Seaside, Watercolor or Rosemary Beach,” he said.
WANT TO GO? Meetings to discuss the incorporation issue with a representative from the Florida League of Cities have been scheduled for 4 and 7 p.m. Thursday at the Seaside Repertory Theater in Seaside.
