Preserving SE Florida Kiting Access - Meeting Notes 10.11.11

[ricki]

I just heard about a new complaint, a serious one I think from a beach front resident in Delray Beach. These are the folks that may pay over $100,000.00 a year in property taxes. They have influence downtown in short.

This man frequently takes his family to the beach in front of his house. Two days ago, he had his eight grand children there too. A kiter had approached the beach within about 20 ft., tried to turn hard north and wiped out and then downlooped his kite. The kite lines passed within 2 to 3 ft. of his grandson.

When asked the kiter said "he could do whatever he wanted because there were no rules in this area and that he knew what he was doing." This sort of idiotic response is exactly what we don't need to preserve kiting access, believe it. Be polite, be apologetic and try to calm the situation down should you be unlucky enough to have an incident. Do not inflame the situation claiming inane things like non-existant rights to kite or that you know what you are doing, are a pro or other dumb comments. If you were that good the problem never would have happened.

The resident contacted the lifeguards and asked for help in improving safety in the area. The lifeguard said he doesn't have jurisdiction in the unguarded beach. The police do however and if a new ordinance is passed as the resident would like to see happen, the police would be the ones to enforce it. The resident mentioned a 300 ft. offset from bystanders to be written into the ordinance. He likes kiting, enjoys watching it but doesn't want his kids to be at risk. We need to tune up in short.

We don't need this to happen, we are able to avoid this if we try as a community. Blow it off, and it may well come to pass.