Security to be tight at Feinberg's Orange Beach meeting

Posted 1/11/11

Security won’t be an issue when Kenneth Feinberg visits Orange Beach on Tuesday.

“We will have metal detectors, no back packs will be allowed, no oversized purses, we ill have significant police presence,” Kennon said, who assured Gulf …

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Security to be tight at Feinberg's Orange Beach meeting

Posted

Security won’t be an issue when Kenneth Feinberg visits Orange Beach on Tuesday.

“We will have metal detectors, no back packs will be allowed, no oversized purses, we ill have significant police presence,” Kennon said, who assured Gulf Coast Newspapers that the meeting would be very business-like.

“It is going to be a business meeting, not a gripe session,” said Kennon.

Things weren’t been good in Louisiana. On Tuesday, hundreds of disgruntled citizens who have been adversely affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill crammed into the Jean Lafitte Civic Center in Lafitte, La., to meet face to face with Feinberg, the government-appointed administer of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility.

At times discussions got heated, and Feinberg faced the music from Louisiana citizens.

This Tuesday, it will happen again, this time in Orange Beach, but Mayor Tony Kennon, as in previous meetings, says the meeting will be handled in an orderly fashion so that it will be productive — starting with the security.

In the wake of the December 15th Panama City school board shooting, followed by the tragedy in Arizona where Jared Lee Loughner shot 20 people at a shopping mall who were waiting to meet Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Kennon said the meeting is not expected to get out of hand, and security will be heightened.

The mutually agreed upon meeting is something that Orange Beach and Gulf Shores officials would like to see more often, and Kennon said that Feinberg is aware of that.

Like previous meetings with Feinberg, Kennon said that the doors would be opened 45 minutes prior to Feinberg’s arrival, with a 15- to 20-minute update on how the program is moving forward, followed by a question and answer period that will be moderated by the mayor.

“We want to have a pre-discussion period to explain how the meeting will go and to lay out the ground rules,” Kennon said.

Presently the meeting time has not been set, but will be held at the Orange Beach Recreation Center gymnasium, located on Canal Road.