Sea Bright Council To Offer Beach Tag Refunds

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By Liz Sheehan
SEA BRIGHT – An attempt by some Borough Council members to delay the introduction of metered paid parking for beachgoers until 2017 was defeated at the council’s May 3 meeting.
Council President Jack Keeler asked for a vote to have the council consider amending a proposed ordinance to move ahead with installing the parking system for this beach season. Keeler’s amendment called for the paid parking system to be put in place next year.
Council members Brian Kelly, Charles Rooney III and Marc Leckstein voted against considering Keeler’s amendment while Peggy Bills, John Lamia, Jr. and Keeler voted for it.
Mayor Dina Long broke the tie with her vote not to consider Keeler’s amendment.
“I don’t want to kick the can down the road,” Long said after her vote.
Keeler has said he supports the parking plan but believes the town should spend more time studying it before putting it in place.
But the council approval was unanimous of a resolution concerning the new parking program which authorized refunding the fees of those who bought beach badges and lockers “prior to the Council’s approval of the paid parking system” at its meeting on April 19.
The refunds will be issued for five business days beginning Monday, May 16 through Friday, May 20, the resolution said.
The cost of a season’s beach pass for an adult is $100, which covers Memorial Day to Labor Day. The dollar an hour parking fee being considered for the 99-day beach season could cause a considerable increase in the price of spending time at the beach.
Borough Administrator Joseph Verruni said today it does not have contact information for the badge buyers, but the borough would seek to alert them to refunds through notices on the borough web site, Facebook page and those who signed up on the email list. “We’re going to give it our best shot,” he said.
Long also had the tie-breaking vote on another matter, the ordinance setting the conditions for the parking plan. She first said no, and said she wanted to wait to decide on the issues until after a meeting with business owners and the vendor for the parking system on Wednesday, May 11, so she could hear the concerns and suggestions of the business owners. These would be part of a discussion on that meeting at the council workshop the next morning, before action on the parking plan details is taken, she said.
But Long voted yes when the ordinance was amended to state that the parking fee would be set each year by the council. The vote again was 3-3, with Rooney, Kelly and Leckstein voting for the ordinance and Bills, Keeler and Lamia against it.
“I don’t think we’re going to get it right this year,” Long said, acknowledging the concerns expressed by businesses and residents about the metered parking.
“Bring these concerns to us before the rules are adopted,” she said.
“I personally don’t like it,” Long said regarding metered parking after the meeting in April approving the purchase of a system to install paid parking in the town. She said she avoided going to towns that had such a system. But Long said the residents of the borough were going to be carrying a heavy tax burden to pay to restore the town’s buildings lost in Sandy. The parking fees would be a help with that burden, she said.
At a previous council meeting, Councilman Brian Kelly said the estimated cost to replace the Borough Hall, fire house, police headquarters, library and beach facilities building was $14 million with the town receiving about $7.3 million from Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds and insurance. He said that the costs of the new buildings to the borough would be reduced by the fees from the planned beach parking fees, and cell tower.
He estimated that the borough would gain between $95,000 to $133,000 a year from the paid parking.