Until recently, many local restaurant owners said they didn’t know they needed a permit to allow dogs in their outside eating areas.<\/p>\n
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 You see it all the time in Jacksonville: people enjoying a meal outside while their dog relaxes nearby. But until last week, restaurants in the city that allowed dogs on their patios technically weren\u2019t in compliance with state health codes.<\/p>\n
According to Florida regulations, dogs are allowed on restaurant patios, but cities must adopt their own permitting process. Until now, Jacksonville did not have one.<\/p>\n
That gap came to light after a visit from the health department at The Bearded Pig in San Marco.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have dogs out there almost every hour, you can find at least one dog on the patio,\u201d said Chad Munsey, co-founder of The Bearded Pig.<\/p>\n
Munsey said the restaurant had been operating for a decade before learning a permit was required.<\/p>\n
\u201cA guest that was dining here supposedly filed a complaint with the health department stating that we had dogs on our patio and so they came to check it out,\u201d Munsey said. \u201cBy the third time I asked the inspector, I said, \u2018What\u2019s the situation?\u2019 She says, \u2018Well, technically the state of Florida allows dogs on patios but leaves it up to each city to create their own ordinance.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the inspector told him Jacksonville did not have an ordinance in place.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd she said, \u2018Unfortunately, at this point, Jacksonville, the City of Jacksonville, does not have an ordinance, so you\u2019re really illegally having dogs in your patio,\u2019\u201d Munsey said. \u201cAnd I said, \u2018So every restaurant in the city is out of ordinance.\u2019 She said ‘yes.’\u201d<\/p>\n
Munsey and his business partner took the issue to the city council, where members said they were unaware of the problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cSure enough, we had to create some sort of permitting process, and that\u2019s where this legislation comes in,\u201d said City Council Member Raul Arias, who represents District 11.<\/p>\n
Arias, who is also in the restaurant business, said the requirement came as a surprise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been doing this for 18 years, going on 19 years this summer, and this is the first time I heard about this.”<\/p>\n
On Jan. 13, the council unanimously approved a free permit application allowing restaurants to host dogs on outdoor patios. The permit consists of a two-page form that must be submitted to the city\u2019s planning department.<\/p>\n
Restaurants that opt in must post signs at patio entrances warning customers that dogs may be present. Dogs must remain on a leash and are still not allowed inside restaurants unless they are service animals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have a great patio like we do and a lot of restaurants in town have great patios, people want to be able to enjoy it,\u201d Munsey said.<\/p>\n
With the new permit now available, Jacksonville restaurants can continue a practice that many people thought was already allowed.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Until recently, many local restaurant owners said they didn’t know they needed a permit to allow dogs in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-127212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}