Late last night the City Council of Panama City Beach voted unanimously on a motion that’s been talked about and threatened for years: to ban all alcohol on the beach during spring break. Starting next year, there will be no booze whatsoever on the beaches of Panama City during the only holiday that brings in revenue to the city.
Putting the kibosh on alcohol both possessed and consumed on the sands of PCB during Spring Break 2016 will be the straw that breaks that dingy city’s back. It’s bad enough that the Redneck Riviera of Florida has hobbled along on life support for years thanks to Spring Break, but now they think that people care about the city enough to go there even when they can’t drink?!?! Enough is enough, dammit. I’m calling for a full strike on Panama City Beach Spring Break 2016. Which is going to be the easiest sell of my life, since the city is a shit hole and its only redeeming quality is that it’s centrally located in the south.
Get ready Myrtle Beach, Daytona, Miami, Charleston, Savannah, South Padre Island, hell even Jacksonville might see a lift in tourism from this foolish move from the PCB City Council.
After years of discussion, months of loud public outcry and a battle of dueling t-shirts, the Panama City Beach City Council unanimously approved a motion Tuesday night to ban alcohol consumption on the beaches during March 2016, the peak of the college spring break season.
The council voted 5-0 in favor of the ban in the closing minutes of a three-hour council meeting that took place at the Arnold High School auditorium rather than the usual city council chambers to accommodate the hundreds of residents who wanted to weigh in on the proposals.
Members of the group Citizens for a New Panama City Beach erupted into applause after the vote was taken. Many of them were wearing matching blue custom t-shirts with the words “Please save our beach” emblazoned over an image of a young boy playing on the beach with an American flag planted next to him in the sand.
The plan Cullen presented, which he said had the support of many of the businesses involved, included measures such as fencing off the beach areas behind popular clubs, forcing patrons to enter from the street side and not the beach, and banning coolers, funnels, and the “beer pong” tables dug into the sand. The group offered to install elevated watch towers along their properties on the beach for law enforcement or security personnel to better observe the crowds.
Supporting the ban, Hector Solis argued that the economic impact of spring break is overblown and that spring breakers spend relatively little per person, compared to families, snowbirds or other visitors. He said the impact to the city was further diminished by the added expenses of additional policing and other city services.
The only point of contention among the council members was how long “spring break” lasts. The council voted 3-2 to define spring break as the month of March only. Council members Josie Strange and Keith Curry wanted to include the end of February and beginning of April as well.
According to the Panama City News Herald newspaper, an ordinance will have to be drafted and voted on twice before the beach alcohol ban is official.
In addition to endorsing the alcohol ban, the council approved on first reading two other spring break ordinances which will prohibit alcohol sales after 2 a.m. and ban drinking alcohol in commercial parking lots during spring break. Those ordinances will be read again and voted on for final approval.
The guys over at TFM decided to take a stance on this, claiming that you only have yourselves to blame, and this was the biggest no-brainer move in Florida’s history….written by a kid from Texas with a knack for sarcasm.
This will cost a lot of people jobs. The economic blowback from this will but MASSIVE. A city that time passed by several decades ago will not be able to weather this economic winter, and the City Council just voted in one-fell-swoop to shut down their little tourist destination forever.
So how’d this happen? A bunch of crotchety ass old people who are nearing the ends of their lives, and are tired of loud noises in the month of March. It’s the same thing in every coastal city in the state of Florida. Elderly people have the money, power, and influence, and they just want to die in peace. They seem to forget that nobody’s going to be around to take care of them when all the jobs have disappeared. Absolute stupidity on the part of the PCB City Council.