By JOSEPH KELLARD
After three men had drowned in Long Beach within 24 hours two weekends ago, the city imposed a “zero tolerance” policy for swimmers after 6 p.m., giving police the right to ticket anyone caught in the water. After that time, lifeguards go off duty and historically most swimmers have drowned.
“Get rid of this ridiculous law,” Lester told the council.
Lester, who is also a member of the Long Beach Board of Education, said that financially the city should have no problem hiring more lifeguards to cover the additional hour or two. “The cost is minimal,” he said. “…You have it in your power to do it.”
Council President Thomas Sofield Jr. and Lester exchanged heated words regarding the time when one of the three men drowned. Lester repeated that all three had drowned before 7 p.m., while Sofield said that police reported the last died after 7 p.m.
In an effort to show that Long Beach suffers a shortfall in lifeguards, Sofield said that already the city was losing several lifeguards who were heading back to college, and that the city must follow state regulations and man each of its 24 lifeguard posts with two guards. Long Beach has some 140 full- and part-time lifeguards.
City Manager Charles Theofan revealed that, according to accounts he received about the two men who drowned two Fridays ago, a lifeguard did warn them to get out of the water before he came down from his chair for the day. “And they told him, ‘As soon as you leave, we’re going back in,’” Theofan said.
Theofan dismissed the charge that the city maintains its zero tolerance policy toward swimming after lifeguard hours. The policy was imposed in response to the drownings two weeks ago, when a total of eight people had died in waters off beaches from the Hamptons to Long Beach to Coney Island, “when there were historically bad riptides,” he said.
While Lester said he witnessed police on Tuesday, before the council meeting, ticketing people in the ocean after 6 p.m., Theofan said that police are not presently patrolling the beach to get everyone out of the water, but only certain people, such as those who swim while wearing pants, and that people are again permitted to swim after hours at their own risk.
In other business, the council voted unanimously to amend the city’s personnel code to allow city employees to live within a 50-mile radius of Long Beach, but with a preference for hiring given to Long Beach residents.
While some residents praised the new revised ordinance and the council for keeping the city workforce at 90 percent Long Beach residents, resident Mark Jackson argued that it is fundamentally wrong for the city to impose parameters on where people can live and thus deprive Long Beach from getting the “very best person for the job.”
“It’s time that we look at the facts, that we need real professional people to manage our community,” Jackson said.
On the issue of parking, Theofan said the city plans to hire an outside consultant to study parking issues in Long Beach. The city proposes to spend up to $25,000, at a $135 hourly rate over a 12-to-15-month span, to study parking issues starting in the West and later in others areas, including Park Avenue and Broadway. The firm, Parking Consulting Services in Old Bethpage, has considerable experience studying beach communities in New Jersey with similar parking problems as Long Beach, Theofan said.
Jackson questioned why Nassau County couldn’t conduct such a study and thus save the city money. “Let’s take advantage of what they are offering, so that we can get value for our [tax dollars],” Jackson argued.
Theofan countered that to rely on the county to answer the city’s traffic and parking problems will result in “nothing.” He explained that the city shells out more than $5 million in taxes to the county, which pays for its police services, and that traffic is regulated by the county. “We cannot expect … that they’re going to come in here and do the work for us,” Theofan said. “It’s not going to happen.”
Theofan said the private consultant can provide the type of advice about communities like Long Beach, as well as the technology, that is otherwise not readily available to the city. Jackson maintained that the city should still try to work with the county before spending thousands of dollars on a private firm.
Rick Hoffman, president of the West End Neighbors Civic Association, defended the city’s position. “It’s a small price to pay to find a solution to this neighborhood problem,” said Hoffman, who noted that the parking consultant will give a power point presentation at the civic association’s Aug. 27 meeting. One item on the council’s Tuesday agenda was the issue of using eminent domain law to seize commercial property at 1055 West Beach St. — owned by 93-year-old Hildegard Miller, who for decades ran an automobile service station there with her husband — and convert it into a 22-slot municipal parking lot.
`On Tuesday, the city took that item off the agenda, which read that the council’s June 17 hearing on the matter, in which it sought public input, “confirmed the fact that demand for parking in the vicinity of the subject property is critical,” and that the council “finds that use of the subject property as a municipal parking lot will be of great public benefit.”
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
