Your turn
Towns should provide better beach access

Brian Unger

Guest Column

I have fought and won and fought and lost a number of beach access battles along the northern Monmouth coastline during the past decade. The prevailing direction of social progress leans toward more liberal, more welcoming beach access for all classes of people, all types of users, whether resident or nonresidents, beach club members or nonmembers, or whether traditional swimmers in lifeguarded areas or more nontraditional users like surfers, fishermen, divers, hikers, shell collectors and others. When I read a narrow-minded critique of rather common beach access goals — a critique written from a privileged local viewpoint — I find it quaint and reactionary. Progress proceeds invariably toward more access, more entrances, fewer fences, and less restrictive parking.

The columnist Greg Kelly wrote an intellectually limited, defensive polemic in the Aug. 20 edition of the Atlanticville, defending the status quo in Monmouth Beach’s coast access plan. Long Branch has rightly concluded that one can’t have one’s cake and eat it too. Despite the effects of exclusivity and great wealth along the Elberon coast, the city continues on the path toward equitable access, including opening up parking spaces on what were once “no parking” beach streets, and providing more and better signage and articulation of access points. Many of us in the beach activist community expect the city will continue efforts to open up street ends in Elberon, perhaps even acquiring rights of way, ingresses, or perhaps even a small park near the sand and water.

Greg Kelly’s error is twofold. One, he believes Monmouth Beach has done everything and enough for all time, that the status quo is perfect and unchangeable. Secondly, he assembles only a partial list of relevant facts and proffers them as universal and comprehensive. Yes, Monmouth Beach has done well for beach access; yes, the parking lot at the cultural center is great. But the town still has a small distance to go to earn the highly expensive public funding that is necessary for its own shore maintenance and protection. For example, access to the public access stairs just south of the municipal beach club is difficult. It’s beneficial that these stairs exist for nonmembers, but the signage is not visible from Ocean Avenue and most drivers will not know that parking might be available nearby or even right at the access point.

Secondly, Kelly cleverly leaves out the information that no summer parking is permitted on the beach streets Cottage Road, Central Road and Park Road — all east-west streets that end at the seawall, a structure built with taxpayer funds. A publicly funded access stair exists right along this stretch, but there is no legal summer parking nearby. Monmouth Beach only allows parking in fall, winter and spring until Memorial Day weekend. Suddenly, on the first weekend of summer, it’s illegal to park on these wide streets to enjoy what is essentially a publicly funded shore protection beach. Why? Because a small handful of local residents don’t want beach-goers parking on “their” street in the summer, and their ability to lobby small-town officials trumps the public interest at large.

The borough of Deal has similar, if more egregious, restrictions on summer beach-goers, providing a few thousand all-day beach parking spots for town residents and beach club members, but only a few dozen two-hour parking spaces for out-of-towners. Police officers — at the behest of local residents and officials — have been known to stand by with stop watches and ticket books as one’s tense two hours at the beach comes to an expensive close.

Unlike California and other states, we don’t have a coastal commission setting statewide coastal policy for the good of society as a whole. But society as a whole must fund residential property protection for these same homeowners who lobby small-town functionaries to restrict beach access and parking. We have home rule in New Jersey. Each coast town decides separately how to interpret the public trust doctrine, how to implement local controls on beach access. Monmouth Beach, like Deal, is a town holding back on summer parking near the beach. It’s a transparent and rather quaint formulation. But it’s one that is ultimately doomed to the dustbin of history.

Brian Unger, who lives in the Elberon section of Long Branch, ran for state Senate on the Green Party ticket last November