Mississippi Black Spring Break is still coming to the Biloxi beach April 11-14, but without permits from the city and county for vendors, extra parking lots or amplified music on the beach.

By a vote of 5-2 — three hours into the tense meeting — the permit for spring break was denied by the council.

Voting to uphold the denial of the permit by the special events committee were George Lawrence, Dixie Newman, Paul Tisdale, Kenny Glavan and David Shoemaker.

Voting against the denial were Felix Gines and Robert Deming III.

Denying the permit for parking on a private lot to accommodate some of the spring breakers is “a black eye on Biloxi,” Maurice Bryant told the council during citizens comments. Some residents asked the council to let spring breakers come to the city while others “begged” the city to do what they could to keep the event away.

Several new ordinances were adopted to manage all special events after one person was shot and killed during last year’s spring break. Five more people were shot and injured in Biloxi, including a Biloxi police officer.

“We’ve made every other event uphold these new ordinances,” said Biloxi Police Chief John Miller.

The beach along South Mississippi is public. “Nobody’s closed the beach. Nobody said anything like that,” Miller said.

He was very pleased the organizers finally came together and met with the city, Miller said.

“But they stopped. They didn’t move forward,” he said. “We denied because it was not sufficient and that is the bottom line.”

Tisdale, councilman for the area where the beach party is held, told the organizers they don’t know where people are going to park, they don’t know how many are going to come, they city can’t hire addition law enforcement officers to help with the event and the organizers can’t find anyone to lease parking for the event.

The ordinance was adopted in October and the deadline to apply for the event was December, he said.

“We’re open to any solution that makes sense,” said Nicholas Brundidge, one of the organizers of the event. But Tisdale countered, saying, “It’s not a city event. It’s your event. It’s your responsibility.”

An estimated 30,000 people attended last year’s event, and the Shular lot can park fewer than 200 cars, Miller said.

“You can’t take 200 parking spaces and put 30,000 cars in and I’m sorry, you can’t do that.”

“I still think we should work with them,” Gines said, asking how the city can help have a safe event for spring breakers coming to Biloxi in two weekends.

Glavan said that unlike Miami Beach and other cities that used curfews to keep spring breakers away, Biloxi adopted laws to work with organizers for safe events.

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