Palm Beach Gardens, FL Hurricane Preparedness: Hurricane Shutters (2026)

Section 86-29, adopted by Ordinance No. 31, 2008 and amended by Ordinance No. 12, 2025, bars using or closing hurricane shutters of any type to cover building or structure openings in Palm Beach Gardens except within the narrow window the section sets out. That window opens once any portion of Palm Beach County falls within the National Hurricane Center's five-day cone of probability for a named tropical storm: from that point, shutters may be deployed up to five days before the Center's forecasted landfall, and they must come down again no more than five days after the storm passes.

Outside that storm window, the section treats shutter use or closure as prohibited outright, and the city council specifically found that closing shutters under any other circumstance constitutes an imminent threat to the health, safety and welfare of the public at large. The section does not restrict installation itself: it expressly states that nothing in it precludes the issuance of building permits for installing hurricane shutter systems, so a homeowner may have shutter hardware permitted and mounted year-round, but may only close the shutters over openings during the five-days-before to five-days-after storm window tied to an actual National Hurricane Center cone of probability covering Palm Beach County.