Toes, Not Heads, Belong in the Sand

The Borough of Belmar's beachfront stretches numerically from the 1st Avenue Beach at Belmar's northern end through its penultimate beach, the 20th Avenue Beach, which is the last "numbered" beach before Belmar's southernmost beach, which is North Boulevard. There are twenty-one separate "entrances to the beach" on the Belmar beachfront.   

For a period of time this past Sunday, overcrowding on Belmar's beaches led to the simultaneous closure of fourteen of Belmar's twenty-one "entrances to the beach".  Methinks that when your "Summer of COVID-19" beach policy does nothing to avert such a situation, it is time to consider revamping or revising said policy.  

I appreciate the fact that Belmar sells daily badges at $9.00 per, which every person fifteen years of age and older must purchase to access the beach, and that the town's coffers need as many of those $9.00 cookies as it can gobble up.  That being said, this past Sunday they permitted the situation on their beaches to get completely out of hand.  

I respectfully disagree with Belmar's Mayor, Mark Walsifer that limiting or eliminating altogether the sale of daily badges on certain days of the week, such as Sunday, would run Belmar afoul of the Public Trust Doctrine.   Apparently, I am not alone in that belief.  This past Sunday, Belmar's neighbor to its north, Avon-by-the-Sea, and its neighbor to the south, Spring Lake, both reduced the number of daily badges they had available to sell, which funneled people turned away from those two towns into Belmar.  

Margaret and I have purchased six Belmar Season Badges, which used to cost $55.00 and now cost $70.00, annually since 2015.  We have enjoyed hours of relaxation in the sun and surf on "our" beach; the 17th Avenue Beach.  Sunday morning, we went up on the beach early with Ryan, Suzanne, and their three littles.  When the Aldrich clan was packing up at about 11:30 am to head home for lunch and for naps, we opted to call it a day.  Our beach was already teeming with people and as we left the beach, there were countless more waiting to get on the beach.  We hung out at home for the rest of the day, which is where I was when I saw the Borough of Belmar IG post at or about 2:00 pm declaring the simultaneous "temporary closure" of 2/3 of Belmar's beachfront.  Permitting a situation to exist that requires that "solution" is not merely reckless, which it is, but stunningly incompetent. 

If the governing body has a plan, then it needs to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new one.  One that at least gives a wink and a nod to public health while concerning itself with the Borough's fiscal health. 

-AK