The Pensacola Beach Advocates look forward to participating in the SRIA lease workshop on Wednesday June 26th at 3:00 p.m.  Since the "Save Pensacola Beach" group abdicated their supposed efforts to ensure preservation of existing recreation, conservation and public access areas in favor of attempting to prevent any future efforts at obtaining title to ALREADY LEASED properties, the PBA is working on drafting an ordinance that will accomplish preservation of these areas.  We'll be ready to present something at the workshop, and we encourage all of our members to attend!

We believe that before passing any more ordinances, the Board of County Commissioners and the SRIA need to ensure that any proposed ordinance is in line with their stated mission, accomplishes something positive, and is enforceable.  We already have several ordinances specific to Pensacola Beach that are not enforced at all, or are only sporadically enforced.  Adding another just to appease a disruptive group of protesters is not reasonable. 

We are proposing an ordinance that will prevent LEASE or SALE of any UNLEASED properties on Pensacola Beach, and will require a unanimous vote of the Board of County Commissioners to increase the current building cap and/or allow transfer of units from one property to another under the current cap.  This will prevent overdevelopment of the island, preserve public properties and accesses and maintain our community the way that it currently exists, with a well-designed mix of commercial, multi-family and single-family units.

We are also advocating for a more streamlined lease renewal system, especially for leases that are 99-year auto-renewing leases.  Currently, the leaseholder is required to draft the renewal, and then submit and record the document after the SRIA signs off on the renewal.  This process is costly to the leaseholder since it requires them to engage a lawyer familiar with this specific leasehold law and has already resulted in adding even more changes to the myriad types of leases that are on the island. We will propose that the SRIA develop a boilerplate 99-year auto-renewing lease that leaseholders could use for their renewals by simply filling in the blanks.  Renegotiable leases are open to change in language and terms, but a boilerplate for those leases could also be developed.