Public comment on the dune situation is NOT happening at Wednesday’s AUG 2 meeting at 11a. This particular meeting ( at OLD CITY HALL ) is to decide whether or not to initiate legal action. Dan Gottlieb of MCQBP (Margate Citizens Questioning Beach Project) suspects it will be initiated.
Public comment will only be available at the commissioner meeting on Thursday at 4PM and 5PM. You can attend the 11a Wednesday meeting….but no public comment will be taken at that particular meeting.
LISTEN TO PODCAST > ACprimetime Radio Talks DUNE DISASTER AUG 1, 2017
Duneboggle, Frankenbeach. Sad, but both are fairly accurate in what Margate is experiencing.
The Thursday commission meeting in Margate at 4 pm is a place to complain/talk for 3 minutes….. about the current drainage/flooding issue/emergency. According to Gottlieb, we all need to be very careful about what is said for two primary reasons. Gottlieb says:
1. There are several options for addressing the drainage problem and the Army Corps will likely justify the least expensive, quickest and most invasive option i.e. one massive outfall pipe reaching the water replacing 5 that are buried. The administration will naturally opt for the easiest battle victory……similar to the fake $300,000 non-binding limit to fight something that could easily cost 30 times more than that in just one year.
2. There are many more issues that, as predicted are coming to fruition. No one likes or listens to the boy who cried wolf. So if the crowd yells drainage! drainage! drainage!, when the time comes that people finally realize that senior citizen, disabled and stroller family access is severely curtailed, it will likely fall on less attentive ears. Similarly swimmer safety and policing and maintenance will get less attention.
Note, I’m not suggesting that the city’s victims shouldn’t cry about the mugging we just experienced and that the Army Corps hopes we get used to. Rather we should be encouraging the commission to acknowledge they need an exit plan now, in case the repeated mugging becomes too much to take in the future……and to aggressively and doggedly pursue that option.
See you all at City Hall. Please share liberally,
Dan Gottlieb
Vaughan M. Reale is a former Mayor of Margate City and a former Co-Executive Director of MCQBP. Here’s his take on the current situation Margate is facing with the dune & beach project:
I’m a prolific writer, but following insinuations that Margate citizens were ill-informed, stupid and selfish, by some local media outlets, which likely never read the Army Corps’ Beach plan, nor seriously researched the experiences of other communities, I decided to take a break. Now, it’s time to try and help fix/avoid the problems that MCQBP (project critics) were warning people about.
The volunteers opposing the ill-planned project were widely accused of selfishly protecting beach-block views, though none lived remotely close to the beach-block. Our goal was to prevent the problems sighted below and others not listed, some of which can be remedied, but others can’t, so an absolute out is needed in case MCQBP’s predictions continue to be accurate.
Dune advocates claimed we exaggerated the project’s negatives and put people’s homes at risk, neglecting the fact that these vacation homes are mostly owned by multi-millionaire non-residents, who should, as in the past, be personally required to retain the risk of having their beachfront second homes damaged by the ocean. Their willingness to take risk shouldn’t be the responsibility of the few remaining families living in Margate or other taxpayers.
We decried “the project isn’t free” due to the additional expense to police and maintain two beach areas and the necessity to fund 100% of future replenishments in years when congress fails to fund it, maybe to bail out something important like Medicare or Healthcare Reform. We were called alarmist despite that congress hasn’t approved beach funding in the past.
We said with compassion, that it would be difficult for 30% of Margate’s population that is older and/or handicapped; to access the beach due to the lack of a “launching area” similar to what exists in Ventnor and AC. I believe “fear mongers” was the term used. Go see for yourself what is now required to reach the water’s edge, a trek for an able-bodied person.
Our neighboring municipalities called Margate’s citizens selfish and self-centered for wanting to keep our beaches intact, which have, on many occasions been ranked top ten nationally. Instead of ruining beautiful beaches, they could have spent more initially and built bigger bulkheads, like Margate, to protect their beach-block houses…..but that isn’t the money project.
Margate’s project is now 40% complete and the dunes are taller than we projected. The drainage issues appear much worse and handicapped access has been reduced from 20 locations to four. They’ve also bulldozed existing, vibrant, beautiful dunes and destroyed the ecosystem thereupon.
What we’ve yet to see is the increase to the municipal budget to fund additional policing and maintenance of the two separate, front and back beach areas, but that will come as sure as high tide. Nor have we seen the predictable increase in unpredictable roaming rip-tides, spinal injuries and water rescues commonly associated with these projects, which put property and money above safety and quality of life.
I wish we were wrong on the flooding and access, but for fear that my colleagues, all the voters who opposed the dunes and I are right on the other issues as well, Margate’s administration would be wise to obtain the ability/advance legal consent, in writing, from the correct authorities, to alter the dunes if we don’t want to participate in future replenishment, or we can’t afford to. Otherwise, even if we aren’t obligated to replenish, if we can’t manipulate the dunes when the sand in-front erodes, as planned, there will be no beach to sit on; of this I am certain.
Vaughan M. Reale
Former Mayor of Margate City
Former Co-Executive Director of MCQBP