ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. — St. Pete Beach hotels and businesses must have all signs or posts on the sand near the water removed by Tuesday night.
City commissioners passed an emergency beach ordinance last week that gave owners seven days to comply.
Officials says those posts and signs pose a safety hazard.
Spectrum Bay News 9 on Monday walked the area where those signs and posts were spotted in the past and did not see any still up.
Resident Dominic Isgro said that a couple of months ago, the Plaza Beach Hotel put rebar posts in the gulf to mark its property line.
He says that the rebar was later replaced by wooden posts.
“There were six-foot lengths of rusted steel rebar and 4×4 wooden posts. So clear safety hazards for the public that, you know, thousands of visitors that use this beach every day,” Isgro said.
Isgro, an attorney, says he brought that to the city’s attention.
Last week, the St. Pete Beach city commission approved an ordinance outlawing signs or posts 50 feet landward of the mean high water line.
“Safety is paramount,” said Commissioner Jon Maldonado. “We have had a rash of signs appearing on the beach. That could be dangerous. Rebar was found in several places, and there has been wooden spikes and things like that. And our concern is that someone’s going to get hurt out there.”
The Plaza Beach Hotel owner, Robert Czyszczon, showed up at that meeting. He told commissioners that he hired a surveyor who measured his property and put the rebar in.
“That property line is not just an imaginary line that he chose out there,” he said at the meeting. “We reached out to the state of Florida, to FDEP. FDEP gave us exact coordinates, latitude, longitude coordinates that are exactly where that rebar went into.”
Czyszczon says that when the city asked him to remove the rebar, he complied and put fluorescent wooden stakes in their place, and those were stolen a few days later.
The hotel owner says he needs to mark his property line to ensure the safety and security of his guests and to manage liability on his private beach.
Czyszczon says the city’s emergency ordinance infringes on his rights.
“The beach area extending to the mean high water line is within my private property boundaries. As such, it should be afforded the same rights and protections as any privately owned backyard,” he said in a statement to Spectrum Bay News 9. “I respectfully question the legal basis upon which the city asserts authority to regulate or restrict lawful use of this privately owned property.”
Isgro says the Plaza Beach Hotel has threatened him with trespass for crossing the markers in the past.
He is pushing the city to enact a customary use ordinance.
“In plain terms, says that when the public has used an area of the beach openly and continuously for generations without interruption, without dispute, that they have a legal right to continue using that beach,” he said.
Czyszczon says he welcomes the public to enjoy his private beach, but access requires buying a $10 beach day pass or renting chairs or cabanas.
The emergency beach ordinance will expire 60 days after the day it was passed.
St. Pete Beach plans to hold a community meeting with the hoteliers and residents to discuss the issue and how to move forward once the emergency ordinance expires.