At the January 18th city council meeting, Council-member Kevin Schmidt requested an update on the status of the livery vessel registrations.

As of February 7th, there are 18 livery companies operating in the City of Destin. Here’s a breakdown of the current standings:

• 6 livery companies have been approved
• 4 livery companies have uploaded documents and are in review
• 7 livery companies have no uploaded all of the required documents
• 1 livery company cannot operate until completion of Development Order and is approved

According to the City of Destin, the 18 businesses collectively have 480 vessels. However, only 255 of the vessels have been registered so far for 2022.

Registration for livery vessel operations in the City of Destin is only open from November 1st until the last day of February each year. According to city documents, the city’s Code Compliance Department sent out renewal letters to businesses on:

• November 1, 2021
• December 8, 2021
• January 18, 2022

The renewal letter states that “to obtain the greatest efficiency in the processing and approval of your application, please register your livery vessel companies in a timely manner and do not wait until the last minute as this can cause a delay in approval of the requested registration.”

• If a delay happens, and the city cannot approve the application before March 1, the livery business may not be allowed to operate for the calendar year 2022.

Here’s the plan if deadline isn’t met 👇

On March 1, 2022, a Notice of Violation will be hand delivered (and mailed) to livery operators who failed to meet the registration application deadline. The business owner will have 24 hours to submit their application.

• City staff will then have up to 5 business days to review the application and advise violator as to the status of their application.
• This means that by March 7, the city should have all of the applications from livery operations.

The Notice of Violation will explain that if information is missing from the application, the business will have “x” day(s) to provide the information to complete the application.

Liveries will not be allowed to operate without a registration. According to the city, if compliance is not met (meaning a complete application has been submitted), a livery operation could lose their status to operate during the moratorium.

The plan passed 7-0.