ST. PETE BEACH — City commissioners unanimously adopted a much-debated beach sign ordinance on second reading June 23, even as the mayor conceded the rules aren’t right yet and opponents warned a lawsuit is likely.
The amendment to the city’s sign ordinance prohibits stakes, poles, posts and other sign structures within 50 feet of the mean high-water line or visible water line along the Gulf. Property owners who want to erect a sign must obtain a permit and submit a deed, title history, insurance and a survey showing the sign’s location.
City Attorney Ralf Brookes reminded commissioners that the vote would codify an emergency ordinance adopted April 28 and set to expire June 27. Without action, he said, the city would lose its 50-foot sign-free zone along the Gulf.
Brookes called the zone a matter of public safety, citing beachgoers who walk at night or play football, catch and Frisbee, or frolic in the waves. “Tonight’s meeting is not about a few signs,” he said. “It is about the proliferation of signs across the entire beach.”
The ordinance drew objections from both sides.
Resident Dominic Isgro told commissioners it does not go far enough. He said it “allows private landowners to interfere with and obstruct lawful public rights of access, intimidate beachgoers and fill our beach with signs.”
Isgro urged the commission to add cones to the restriction and to ban signs anywhere seaward of the coastal construction control line. “Any offending sign should be removed and only allowed to be relocated landward of the coastal control line,” he said. “There should be no more than one sign per lot.”
“These changes are necessary because private property owners have already attempted to use signage to attack our customary use right,” Isgro said. “They want to criminally trespass us, when we’re sitting on a beach towel as we have for decades. We are not abandoning our lawful rights to use this beach.”
Robert Czyszczon, owner of the Plaza Beach Hotel, called the ordinance “absolutely unconstitutional.”
“We have the right as property owners to mark off our property and put up no-trespassing signs, private property signs,” he said. “You all do it at your own homes. You all do it at your own businesses, so we also have that right. That beach is our backyard and we have the right to protect it.”
Czyszczon said the rules would not stop anyone from walking the shoreline. “We just don’t want you parking on the beach and staying on private property,” he said. “You’re allowed to pass through freely.”
He said clear signs are essential for enforcement. “Without signs people don’t understand where the property lines are,” he said. “There has to be a clear marker for the sheriff to enforce.” He warned the ordinance would invite a legal challenge: “There most likely will be a lawsuit.”
Alyssa Gagnon, an attorney, told commissioners the revision did not fix the ordinance’s constitutional problems but made them worse.
“This is not a narrow safety regulation. It is an outright speech ban,” Gagnon said. She said the rules bar private citizens from placing signs, stakes or posts near the water while expressly allowing government signs in the same area. “The government gets to speak but private citizens do not,” she said.
The safety rationale collapses under scrutiny, Gagnon argued. “If one pole holding a no-trespassing sign is such a serious safety hazard that it must be banned, then so are umbrellas, chairs, tents, cabanas and every other common beach item that can obstruct access, injure someone in the dark or become windborne in a storm,” she said.
The permit process only deepens the problem, she added, by forcing owners to submit a deed, title history, insurance and a survey “for a sign to protect their own property.” Gagnon also argued the ordinance conflicts with Florida’s trespass statute, which requires posted notice to enforce trespass. “Florida law tells them posted notice matters, but then they can’t post that notice to get people off their property,” she said.
Commissioner Karen Marriott said the goal was to fix a safety issue without making it worse, though she worried the vote “will make everybody mad.” Still, she said, removing permanently placed signs within 50 feet of the water was “as good as we’re going to get right now.”
Mayor Scott Tate shared her unease. “I feel we don’t have this right yet, but I’m worried about the alternative,” he said. “I fear not moving forward puts us in an extremely untenable position.” He said he wanted to keep working to address property owners’ concerns and give them a way to push back against abusive visitors.
Tate said he disliked the prospect of a cluttered beach. “I’m not a fan of signs on our beach,” he said. “I don’t want to see something long-term where we’re just the beach of signs.” He stressed the commission was not trying to alter customary use. “In fact, it is our explicitly overt assertion that we are not doing that,” he said.
“I don’t love where we are headed, but I’m more fearful that if we don’t do this we end up in a more untenable situation,” Tate said. “It’s the abusers that’s causing all of this, and frankly I rather regulate the abusers.”
“We may not be able to get the right answer here,” he said, “but we got to do something.”