JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla. – The Jacksonville Beach City Council voted against a proposed measure that would have put a moratorium on permits for special events and festivals for 120 days.
The motion failed unanimously at a Monday city council meeting. It was the city’s first step to control crowds after two weeks had passed with no arrests announced in the three separate shootings in the bar district.
The FBI announced that it is now offering up to $10,000 for information leading to the conviction of those responsible for the shooting on March 17.
Mayor Christine Hoffman explained how the ordinance made the agenda if the city council opposed it.
“Well, if things come before us, we don’t have a chance to debate it until we’re all together. So because the actions of March 17 just happened in our preliminary discussion at our council meeting on the 18th. You know, this was one of the ideas tossed around,” Hoffman said. “The actions of March 17 was not a permitted event, though. So I think the council recognized that if we put a moratorium on permitted events, that’s going to hinder a lot of good events, events that our citizens love, our visitors love, from 5K walks to charity runs to deck the chairs, things like that. So that would have put a real hindrance on their ability to get permitted, and probably wouldn’t have really solved the issues that we’re attempting to deal with here in our community.”
A day after the shooting, fourteen people packed the March city council meeting to express their frustrations with the shootings. Emotions were high from residents with people demanding that city leaders take action and use all resources to prevent a situation like this from reoccurring.
Jacksonville Beach Police Chief Gene Paul Smith spoke during Monday’s meeting, saying a group of his officers were monitoring the gathering on St. Patrick’s Day, and that between noon and 8 p.m., they only had 18 calls come in.
“18 calls is nothing… total in the city, and we had a group watching them because we had our intel analysts with a computer find the flier which FHP, JSO, and FDLE did not find when they scrubbed their intel,” Smith said.
Smith also emphasized the challenges his department is facing with understaffing issues.
“I am 20 officers down as of today out of 67. So showing force is fine but I have to have some help. I can’t do this with 40 people,” he said.
Hoffman said the next step is for council, staff, and experts to have a discussion at the city’s monthly briefing next Monday.
“If there’s legislation required, we will get a consensus at that meeting and then move forward with crafting the legislation. It may be policy changes, it may be staff deployment changes, whatever it may be, this is an opportunity for us to kind of get around a table, roll up our sleeves and discuss it as a group,” Hoffman said.
The council meeting on April 8 at 5:30 p.m. is open to the public.