GULF SHORES, Ala. — City officials here are talking tough on trash issues after another season of spring break left beaches, particularly in West Beach, a mess for the second straight year.

“When are we going to draw this line in the sand and let the public know we are serious about trash down here?” Councilman Steve Jones asked.

It was Jones turn Monday at a Gulf Shores work session to address the council on any issue he wanted, but trash was already the topic of discussion when it came his turn to talk.

“It’s not just in the beach areas,” Jones said. “We have issues all over town. I’m not opposed to us trying to draft some kind of draconian ordinances that suggest very severe penalties that enable the police department and other enforcement agencies to actually back this up.

“We talk about what we want done and what we’d like done, but until we draft ordinances and create law to really allow us to address this in a big way. We need to let the public know we are not going to tolerate trash down here.”

Mayor Robert Craft said he was in the process of forming a committee of citizens and property management companies to address a way to keep the trashy situation from recurring again next spring break.

“Herb Malone with the CVB, I intend to counsel with him and come up with a recommendation of a strategy we can put in place to help do that without the city having to spend our resources and our personnel or having to get the turtle watch people to clean it up so that the turtles can nest,” Craft said. “I think we can come to some conclusion on that. We need to send a message to the world that if you’re going to come here, you’re going to play by our rules or you’re going to be punished.”

Recently, Share the Beach volunteers involved in preserving turtle nesting areas stepped in to clean up a nasty situation of trash strewn across beaches.

Craft said he’d like to see some new rules put into the business licenses to force the owners to keep the beaches clean.

“We cannot leave our beaches that way for all the public to come and see that way,” he said. “(We’re) trying to come up with some strategy through part of the business license process to hold the business license owner that is renting the property be responsible for cleaning up behind his guests, making them do, keeping the deposit, getting it done.

“We sent out a letter and a memo to the private property owners along the beach there. It’s their guests and their responsibility as property owners to clean up that area. Because we cannot do it. We cannot clean up the beaches throughout the whole city.”

The condos have been keeping up with trash collection on the beaches pretty well, but the beaches at individual rental homes have been a problem, Craft said.

“Most of the condominiums, the property management folks that are renting, the beach service people are cleaning up the beaches,” Craft said. “Riding through there today those looked really good. When you get beyond that and you get into homes and duplexes and the area out west of that it was pretty ugly. Those are the ones we are having the biggest problems with.”

Jones said he favors stiff fines that would pay for the extra cost of enforcement.

“And if it’s a $1,000 fine or a $500 fine, if you make the fine significant to scare people not to do it and the cost is covered by the ordinance and the fines established,” he said. “It doesn’t give me any heart burn a bit about getting really tough and nasty with the people that are treating our town like their backyard. I’m fed up with it and I know everybody else is.”

Jones said his concern is for the people who come for the first time during spring break and see trashed beaches.

“It’s a short window of time,” he said. “I’ve heard stories about people coming and experiencing that for the first time and never come back because of that experience. It’s a 30-day window where it’s really severe and that cost us business of people that may come here for a lifetime or buy property.”

Craft wants to start a new process when owners come in to apply for the next year’s business license.

“If you want that privilege of doing business, you’ve got to do these things,” he said. “We’ll be looking at the business license holders who I’m sure will be looking at their management companies they’ve hired to do it. If we know who that person is, we’ll go directly to him. We’ll try to develop some sort of line of communication with the license holder.”