Opinion: Thank You, PCB City Councilman Register, for Your Efforts on Behalf of Lullwater Lake

This May will mark the tenth anniversary of my moving to the place I always loved as a child. I have very fond memories of fishing at the county pier and riding the old Honda 50cc minibikes around a dirt track across the street.

Over that time, I have seen very few politicians act in the interest of the local residents who live here year-round. Most of them pay lip service to the local first idea, but once they are in office, they almost always seem to be co-opted by the money interests in town.
 
That is why Councilman Register's actions on Tuesday at the Tourist Development Council meeting stand out as one of the boldest moves by a local elected official I have seen since moving here.

First, let's share a little inside baseball with you that you may or may not already know. So, you can truly understand the boldness of his move.
 
Everyone knows about the recent troubles at the Convention and Visitors Bureau. I don't know who really did what, but I do know this. The most popular elected official in Bay County is Sheriff Tommy Ford, followed closely by Larry Basford, our State Attorney.

I trust them to do their job. This is still America, and no matter how damning the information you are being told is true. You are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. And there are way too many people willing to publicly Tar and Feather everyone that works for the CVB, and I, for one, object.
 
Mr. Lee and Mr. Lee alone is responsible for his actions unless it is proven otherwise in a court of law. Simply put, there are bigger principles here than just the next election, headline, or number of views and clicks.

Now, back to our story, for the past twenty years, the community around Lullwater Lake has been begging our local officials to find the funds to clean it up before all the fish die and it becomes so full of muck. That you could walk across it with a pair of waders on.
 
To their credit, Senator Trumbull and Representative Griffitts were able to secure two grants/funding for three million and a second for six million, respectively. But that final six million was not ultimately awarded because the money was needed after a hurricane hit south of Tampa for recovery efforts.
 
About this time last year, I was going through the Bay County Citizens academy trying to learn all the ins and outs of local government. When the idea came to me that the TDC/Bed Tax should be used to clean up Lullwater Lake.

So, I did what anyone who wants to report on a complex issue like this would or more like should do. I went to the state's website, found the statute that authorizes the establishment of the bed tax and the TDC, and began to read it from cover to cover.
 
Well, guess what I found? Tucked away in a part of the statute no one reads or more like they ignore, because it means not having to return any of the money collected in the people's name to the people, was the following.

125.0104 Tourist development tax; procedure for levying; authorized uses; referendum; enforce
5. To finance beach park facilities, or beach, channel, estuary, or lagoon improvement, maintenance, renourishment, restoration, and erosion control, including construction of beach groins and shoreline protection, enhancement, cleanup, or restoration of inland lakes and rivers to which there is public access as those uses relate to the physical preservation of the beach, shoreline, channel, estuary, lagoon, or inland lake or river. Lullwater Lake impacts those in bold.
 
The statute also states that every waterway/body of water with public access can be maintained using TDT dollars, i.e., lakes like Lullwater qualify not once but twice. 

Now all that was left to do was convince the county attorney this was true, and get three county commissioners to agree, given that they will ultimately have to approve the funding. And then get the TDC to vote to send a recommendation to the county commissioners for final approval. Easy, right? 

Lucky for us at the county level, we have an attorney who will listen to reason, which sounds crazy, but it is true. The same goes for a majority of our county commissioners. I was able to get three of them to give their tentative approval if I could get the TDC to send the recommendation over. 

For the past six months or so, I have been lobbying and writing about how the TDC should step forward and act. Given that the city has already filed for a permit to clean up Lullwater, and if we don't act now, we will have to waste another million dollars plus for a new permit. 

Sadly, this had fallen on deaf ears, given that TDC Chair/Commissioner Pease was not one of the three members to give their tentative approval to my request. 
Enter Councilman Register and his bold move on Tuesday. During the meeting, he requested that the TDC/City attorney confirm all this to be true. And he stated that if it is the TDC should at the very least consider appropriating the funds to clean up Lullwater Lake. 

All that being said, please grant me a moment of liberty. I/we at the BCC will not shy away from calling our elected officials to task when we believe they are not representing the best interests of the local residents. At the same time, we will report when they do the right thing as well. 

Unlike the mainstream media, we will do our homework, and we will give you the rest of the story, to the best of our ability. I/we will have our disagreements with the likes of councilman Register, but they are not personal; they are policy/result-driven. And we will not run around like children calling everyone a criminal because we disagree with them. That is the intellectually lazy way of proving you don't really know what you are talking about. 

Which reminds me of what an elderly gentleman I once knew used to say quite often. Keep talking, son, you'll think of something to say.