LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Escambia County Wants Your Perdido Key Beach Stories—Here’s How to Submit Them
After months of debate, the Board of County Commissioners voted 3-2 to begin gathering sworn testimony, photos and documents from beachgoers and property owners to build the evidentiary record for a potential Customary Use ordinance. The deadline to submit is August 28.
If you’ve walked, swum, fished or relaxed on the beaches of Perdido Key—or if you own property there—Escambia County wants to hear from you.
The Escambia County Board of County Commissioners has launched a formal public information drive to gather personal accounts of beach use on Perdido Key. The information collected will help determine whether there is sufficient sworn testimony to support a Customary Use ordinance under Florida Statutes Chapter 163.035—a legal mechanism that can establish the public’s longstanding right to access privately owned dry-sand beach areas.
The deadline to submit is Friday, August 28, 2026. Late submissions will not be considered.
How This Got Started
The commission voted 3-2 in a recent meeting to direct county staff and the county attorney’s office to begin collecting public evidence on customary use of Perdido Key’s dry-sand beaches—a step that had been debated at the commission table for months without any action.
- Commissioner Lumon May put it plainly: “This has probably been discussed 15, 16 times.”
- Commissioner Steven Barry acknowledged that the board had never actually given staff clear direction despite repeated discussion. He argued that even without taking a position on customary use, the issue was significant enough to at least allow citizens to submit what they know.
- Commissioner Mike Kohler framed it as due diligence, not a commitment to an ordinance: “I can tell you as a sailor that came here—it was customary use out there. Everyone walked around out there.”
Commissioners Steve Stroberger and Chair Ashlee Hofberger voted no. Stroberger argued the effort was a waste of time, given a 1978 county loss in a Perdido Key customary-use case and the steep legal hurdles involved.
- “At its core, this debate is not about beach towels, umbrellas or access points,” he said. “It’s about the right of exclusion—the most fundamental attribute of private property ownership.”
County Attorney Alison Rogers made clear that any eventual ordinance will require specific geographic designations and formal legislative findings demonstrating how the area meets all four legal prongs of customary use—ancient, reasonable, uninterrupted, and free from dispute. “What I do not think is going to be defensible is to simply just say customary use is imposed on whatever area,” she told the board.
- The plan calls for 90 days to collect public submissions, followed by 90 additional days for the county attorney’s office to evaluate the evidence and report back to the board. Whether the record will be strong enough to support an ordinance, Rogers said, remains an open question.
How to Submit Your Information
The county has set up an online portal specifically for this process. You can submit your materials at MyEscambia.com/perdidokeybeaches.
If your files are too large for the online portal, you can deliver hard copies or electronic storage devices in person or by mail to:
Timothy Day, Deputy Director, Natural Resources Management
221 Palafox Place
Pensacola, FL 32502
What Types of Documentation Are Accepted
The county is accepting the following materials:
- Sworn affidavit—this is required if you want your personal account to carry legal weight. The affidavit must include the declaration: “Under penalties of perjury, I declare that I have read the foregoing [document] and that the facts stated in it are true.” It must also be notarized.
- Photographs
- Videos
- Documents such as maps, plats, deeds, and surveys
What Your Submission Should Cover
Whether you’re submitting a sworn affidavit or supporting documentation, the county wants your materials to address as many of the following details as possible:
- The type of use or activity (swimming, fishing, sunbathing, volleyball, etc.)
- The specific location of the use or activity on Perdido Key
- The date or dates of the use or activity
- The frequency—how often you engaged in the activity
- The names of any individuals involved
- Whether your use was ever restricted, and if so, how and when
- Whether anyone ever attempted to restrict your use, and the circumstances surrounding that attempt
Important: What NOT to Submit
The county is explicit on this point: do not submit legal conclusions or legal arguments. This process is about gathering factual, personal accounts—not legal briefs. Additionally, duplicate submissions with the same information will not help the evidentiary record and are discouraged.
- Note also that affidavit language must come from the county attorney’s office. Advocacy groups may have circulated draft affidavit templates, but Rogers made clear at the commission meeting that any formal language will need her office’s approval.
Why This Matters
Customary Use is a legal doctrine that recognizes the public’s historical right to use privately owned beach areas when that use has been open, continuous, and customary over time. Florida law under Chapter 163.035 allows county commissions to adopt Customary Use ordinances—but only after establishing a sufficient evidentiary record through public process.
The testimony, photos, and documents submitted by Perdido Key beachgoers and landowners will form the foundation of that record. The BCC cannot move forward with an ordinance without it.
Both beachgoers and beachfront landowners are encouraged to participate. The county wants to hear all perspectives on how these beaches have historically been used.
Submit your materials online at MyEscambia.com/perdidokeybeaches. The deadline is August 28, 2026.
I’m legitimately asking how or why anecdotal evidence matters– just because someone might have used certain property as their own- for fishing, swimming, setting up a beach camp in the past, particularly when PK was not as heavily developed, does that make it legal do have done so, or just mean that they never got caught because the owners were not policing a property 24/7? I’m equating it to the woods we used to frequent behind my childhood home. It clearly didn’t belong to us, but the neighborhood kids treated it as their own– we even built a treehouse in one of the trees. Looking back, I’d never legally claim it was mine, or that I had any right to be there, simply because that’s how it was when I was growing up. As an adult I realized I was trespassing and we just never got caught, until the area was razed and developed into more homes. We never thought we could then play in people’s fenced backyards, just because we once had the opportunity.
Just don’t understand the arguments that people used to fish out there without getting chased away, or one particularly vocal proponent’s assertion that everyone “shared the beach” when she owned a low-density condo in the 80’s- when it was certainly easy to “share” beach space with only a few other owners.
I’m 100% for the mean high-water line, and shore access for all. But I do believe that granting boilerplate customary use will be a hollow victory. I’ve watched the BCC meetings online and heard the anecdotal stories on Customary Use, and I’ve heard little mention of the fact that 60% of Perdido Key– some 1500 acres- is protected land, free from development and perfect for unencumbered gulf-front use by Escambia County residents– if not for the fact that there isn’t adequate parking for access. It stands to reason that people simply don’t travel far down the beach from the existing limited access points to ease beach congestion; they wish to stay near their cars and bathroom access, so this makes the public beach access points (which are pitiful in both size and parking to begin with) and the private properties adjacent to them such pain points when it comes to the Customary Use debate. This is true even for paid-parking on the key, at Johnson’s Beach and Perdido Key State Park– there are acres and acres of uncrowded beachfront, more than nearly every other barrier island in Florida– we just need a way to get to it. THAT’S the issue– not whether those who beat the drum on either side have the right to sit in front of Beach Colony resort, just for the sake of being sanctimonious. Customary use is only punitive to the parcels near the access points, and it DOES NOT, in any way, shape, or form, break beach access wide open for Escambia County residents.
I’m not being glib- I really do just want an answer to the “I understood it to be this way, so that is the way it is…” argument. I just doesn’t seem to hold much legal water to me.
Staff did a *fantastic* job on this portal. Save Our Beaches is so very grateful to the work they put in on informing the public with clear, concise instructions on what will and won’t be pertinent.
While we were immensely grateful for the truly democratic outreach, we were somewhat concerned that the portal might end up being confusing to a public that thought they were “testifying” merely by inputting something, and those willing might have had to go through that process all over again in the event that the commissioners pass a customary use ordinance and the condo owners are able to get everybody together on a suit. (Their lawyers may write up the contracts plot by plot plat by plat, but a judge would most likely require they all go onto a suit together. Which was one reason the Windemere case against the perpetual easement fractured–not all the owners out there are anti-public, pro-suit).
Escambia staff knocked it out of the park with a fair, concise, very workable set a directions. This chance might not ever come again. So if you believe the public has a right to be on that beach in Perdido Key, and you have personal knowledge of the public having unfettered access up to the dune lines, *please* visit the portal and share your input!