By Red Tape Florida
Red Tape Florida spends plenty of time calling out local governments that weaponize code enforcement. Some cities treat it as a quiet revenue stream. Others use it as a punitive tool. Many hide the entire process behind opaque notices, magistrate hearings, and a wilting stack of certified letters.
So when a city appears to be doing something different, it’s worth paying attention.
Fort Walton Beach is experimenting with something you rarely see anywhere in Florida: putting its code-enforcement staff directly in front of residents, explaining how the system works, and trying to resolve problems before the fines fly. Last month the city invited the public to a Community Code Enforcement Workshop at its public works complex, promising a full walkthrough of what code enforcement does, how the process works, which violations are most common, and how homeowners can avoid getting entangled in the first place.
That is unusual. Most Florida cities treat this material like it’s proprietary.
The city didn’t just hold a workshop. They also rolled out a new assistance guide aimed at helping property owners “navigate their way back into compliance.” The language they used is practically unheard of in the code-enforcement world: they want the process to be transparent. They want the public to understand how things work. And, most surprising of all, they emphasize working with residents rather than extracting fines from them.
Fort Walton Beach has also begun hosting what it calls Community Code Compliance Sweeps. In a lot of places, a “sweep” means blitzing a neighborhood and writing tickets by the dozen. But here the stated goal is different. The city says it is trying to meet residents where they are, offer guidance, and secure voluntary compliance before citations are even considered. In other words: talk first, ticket later.
Is Fort Walton Beach perfect? Of course not. Nobody knows yet whether this is a true cultural shift or just a bout of helpful messaging wrapped around the same old system. A single workshop is not proof of a transformed bureaucracy. A new pamphlet is not a guarantee that a code officer won’t still reach for the citation pad as the first resort.
But here is why this matters: if Fort Walton Beach is trying to get code enforcement right, then every other city in Florida can too. There is nothing stopping a city like Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Orlando, or Fort Myers from hosting public workshops, providing genuine assistance guides, or tracking how many cases are resolved through cooperation instead of punishment. Transparency is not prohibited by statute. Working with residents is not a radical idea.
At the least, Fort Walton Beach is a model worth studying.
At the most, it’s a shining example to which other Florida localities should aspire.