County commissioners testy over money

Tempers flared in the board room as disagreements in uses of county money came to a head.

At the Board of County Commissioners meeting last week, disagreements over how to best use over $100,000 in funds put aside for local parks, caused heated conversation between commissioners.

Commissioner Carmen McLemore asked the board permission to use $50,000 of the money to finish the Honeyville Park by providing a system of lights to illuminate the park. Although there has been no plan and no bids put out for the job, McLemore asked to put this money aside for this project.

Commissioner Bill Williams disagreed with the plan citing that he has parks in his district with destroyed swing sets and they should find a better way to distribute the money more evenly across the districts. 

"We need to be careful with the way that we spend this," said Williams. "We can't just give out $50,000 without looking at any bids."

With opposition from Commissioners Williams and Warren Yeager, McLemore's motion passed 3-2.

Commissioner McLemore also announced that effective immediately, any commissioners traveling out of county must be approved by the board for reimbursement prior to traveling. The first to be effected by this new guideline was Commissioner Williams who asked for the approval of travel reimbursement for meetings in Tallahassee the following day.

With the objection of McLemore, the motion carried 4-1.

The board reviewed a proposal to bring the Zumba exercise program to the Honeyville Community Center and provide participants with nutritional information and healthy recipes. The proposed request would be to use the building free of charge in order to provide the services free of charge to the public.

Although the building is currently empty, the board voiced their opposition to providing the facility rent-free due to power bills that would accrue, which would be paid by taxes.

"We are not in the Zumba business," said Williams. "This is not a valid use of this building."

The board voted to allow sponsors to come to the board at a later date for review.

Currently, Coastal Fitness, owned by Williams, offers Zumba twice a week for a fee.

Concerns BP may reduce operations just as tar ball sightings begin to escalate on beaches in Gulf County due to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, had county commissioners demanding a guaranteed presence by BP.

The board held a special meeting on the issue the following day.

Concerns surfaced after tar balls began to impact the beaches of Cape San Blas and Indian Pass two weekends ago along with rumors that BP would be downsizing its county operations to a skeleton crew of 10 to 15 people and two to three boats.

"We had 500 to 600 people when we had no impact and now that we are receiving impacts of the oil spill, we need to make sure we have enough people in case we have reports, we can respond," said Yeager.

Elvin Taylor, BP Branch Director said that as of Wednesday they have picked up a total of 45 to 50 pounds of materials around the cape and Indian Pass and said he believes, based on what he has seen, that his rapid response team is capable of catering to the county’s needs without the larger team the county is proposing.

The county is recommending a "level of service" presence for BP in Gulf County for the next six months, correlating with hurricane season. A total of 80 to 100 workers in addition to 10 boats and 10 UTVs are requested to maintain necessary clean-up operations.

"All I'm asking is that BP not leave us without these people," said Commissioner Billy Traylor. "If they do they are not fulfilling the commitment they came here to do."

Taylor said he would take this information from the commissioners back to Unified Command for review.