Staff Writer

Despite complaints of noise from residents living along the lake, the city of Kissimmee will accept bids from commercial airboat companies who want to run their tours from the city’s downtown lakefront.

Commissioners voted 3-2 in favor of accepting the bids Tuesday after hearing more than an hour of testimony from residents complaining of the intrusive noise as well as airboats business owners arguing for their contribution to the city’s tourism and local business livelihood.

The three commissioners who voted for accepting bids said they weren’t necessarily sold on allowing the commercial airboat operations to launch from the Kissimmee lakefront. Instead, they said they wanted to look at possible compromises.

“I feel, as an elected official, I have a duty to at least explore the options, and looking at … a way to reach some type of compromise,” Commissioner Cheryl Grieb said. “My decision is not made; it could still be ‘no’ at the end of the day.”

The commissioners asked commercial airboat applicants to include a business plan outlining their airboat equipment, vessel operation as well as methods for attracting customers and loading them on and off the airboat. The city will request that the tours meet insurance requirements, and that the proposals will be selected based on the city’s previous experience with the company, the type of airboats it will use, the financial stability of the operator and the company’s noise abatement plan.

Tour boat companies will have 30 days to submit their proposals.

While mostly residents voicing complaints of noise spoke during previous commission meetings, this week many audience members spoke in favor of the airboats and the tourism and local business they bring to the downtown.

Kent Farmer, a manager of Gators Dockside, said the restaurant received patronage specifically from tourists coming from an airboat tour with Big Toho Airboat Rides, one of the companies that operates from Kissimmee’s lakeshore.

“In these tough economic times, it’s nice to know that we can benefit from companies like Big Toho,” Farmer said. “Big trucks, fishing sports, local high school sports, cattle drives, Makinson hardware and airboats: this is what we are. Not big gates, sequestered homes, the voices of few.”

Resident Joe Sprino said the noise affects houses and residents within a mile of the lake.

“The airboat noise reverberates off of the lake and just magnifies out. And it isn’t once in a while, it can be continuous all day long,” he said, complaining that the commissioners had already made up their minds. “You’re more worried about business than you are the people that live here day to day and try to survive in this environment, which is very stressful.”

Commissioners Art Otero and Carlos Irizarry voted against the airboat proposal.

“I’m looking out for those people around the lake. That’s my opinion,” Otero said.

Grieb suggested the city look into to doing a noise study on the lakeshore, similar to the one they recently did to determine noise levels caused by the city’s airport activity, to measure decibel levels of noise caused by airboats. City Manager Mark Durbin said that while an official study would cost a considerable amount and couldn’t be completed in 30 days while the proposals were accepted, city staff could explore the possibility of measuring the noise.

Before motioning to go forward with the bidding process, Mayor Jim Swan made a suggestion to commercial airboaters already operating from the lakefront.

“Get as far away from the homes as you can, and stay away from them because I can tell you right now this commission isn’t going to put up with what the rest of us have been putting up with,” he said, threatening to reverse his vote if the airboaters didn’t “play nice in the sandbox.” “We’re going to be respectful of people and their rights or we won’t be doing it at the lakefront. Anything confusing at all about what I just said?”

Swan said, as a fisherman, he was personally biased against airboaters, but understood that most of airboat activity that aggravated him was the recreation operators, not the “commercial airboats that we’re dealing with today.”

In other business, the City Commission also directed staff to start the process of creating a new Community Redevelopment Agency for the Vine Street corridor. The city has been laying down parameters for the redevelopment of around Kissimmee’s portion of U.S. Highway 192 for the last couple of years. Commissioners agreed that a new CRA was the next step in implementing change for the area.