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Panama City Beach City Council Meets, Looks to Future
11/12/09 - 10:34 PM

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At Thursday’s Panama City Beach City Council Meeting, council members approved several proposals for the long term improvement of the city.

The council agrees on a plan for the road construction of Highway 79 from Back to Front Beach Road. Officials say that section is one of seven roads to be expanded to four lanes. The council looked at options to replace the triangle intersection of Highway 79 and Front Beach Road.

“The engineers came through with the recommendation to go with the ‘T’ intersection,” says CRA Project Manager Ben Faust.

Pier Park could be home to rides and amusements in the future after zoning changes are made for part of the Simon Properties Development. The council adopted an ordinance rezoing about five and a half acres to allow for a wider range of developments.

Panama City Beach is also making plans to build a new City Hall, which would encompass many different departments, similar to the new Bay County Government building. Panama City Beach City Manager Richard Jackson says the City Hall Complex would serve at the Western Gateway into the city.

“The next step will to be to go ahead and hire someone which we voted to do tonight,” says Panama City Beach Mayor Gayle Oberst, “To come in and talk with department heads and look at arranging buildings on the plot and as we go along we’ll determine which have to have take action on now.”

And the city is also moving forward with the Reuse to Wetlands project which will allow the city to eliminate all treated wastewater effluent discharges to West Bay by the December 31, 2010 deadline.
“We’ve let the contract toinght,” Mayor Oberst says. “It’s a little over 14 million dollars and we will run pipes from the sewer plant across Highway 79 to the Wet Weather Discharge Area.”

The council also discussed further changes to the new Panama City Beach sign ordinance in a workshop this evening. Mayor Oberst tells News 13 the changes are to keep up with technology that has changed since the last version of the ordinance was passed. She says changes to the ordinance should be completed in the next three months.