Life’s a beach: Residents, renters, recreators at Higgins Beach react to changes

SCARBOROUGH — When Hank and Judy Talbert began their 27^th annual week-long pilgrimage to Higgins Beach Monday, they started as they always do, with a drive-by of the shoreline.

Despite the long drive up from Connecticut, they always like to take in the scenery before pulling into their rental cottage. But this year, they noticed right off that something was different. This year, they found the beachside half of Bayview Avenue adorned with 13 newly striped, one-hour parking spots.

“I thought to myself, ‘Well, what is this,” said Judy Talbert, on Monday, adding with a laugh, “I’m an old lady, I don’t like change.”

But change has been the order of the day this season at historic Higgins Beach. Over the winter, town councilors voted to ban on-street parking from the entire community, funneling cars to either the 109-space parking lot on Ocean Avenue, which the town acquired last year from the Vasile family, or the new Bayview Avenue spots. Councilors also recently voted to add the Higgins Beach lot to the list of sites at which residents can park with an unlimited season pass.

The plan, said Town Council Chairwoman Judith Roy, was an attempt to balance the needs of year-round residents, seasonal renters and day-trippers, along with a growing contingent of surfers.

As might be expected, assessments of how well the changes are working are as different as the number of people asked.

“It seems to be going relatively well, at this point,” said Police Chief Robert Moulton. “It’s a difficult situation because there’s obviously different factions that have completely different views on the situation down there, but, knock on wood, we seem to be in a place where everybody seems to be getting at least part of their needs met.”

A DIFFERENT DAY

On the other hand, stakeholders on both sides of the issue feel shortchanged by the changes.

In an email Tuesday, Janice Parente, chairwoman of the surfing group Surfrider Maine, complained that with improvements to the Vasile lot, along with the removal of on-street parking, “the number of parking spots has been diminished by almost 50 percent.”

Vin Bombaci, a 50-year resident of Higgins Beach, said the result has been a rush by surfers to fill the one-hour spots on Bayview Avenue, next to the beach. As he has at many public meetings over the past year, Bombaci complained about public urination and streetside clothing changes, allegedly conducted by surfers. That’s continued unabated, Bombaci said. However, the addition of parking spaces on Bayview means that a walkway there, though painted off from the car lots, is “virtually no more,” thanks to commotion in and about the vehicles.

“So, you’ve got people walking in the street, which wasn’t really the intention at all,” said Bombaci.

Many Higgins watchers say the net result of the Bayview parking spots has been an explosion of beachside activity.

“It’s a shame really, it takes away the simplicity of the place,” said Piper Shores resident Ann Billings, who walks her dog, Duncan, daily down Higgins Beach.

Others agree, including two women who have rented seasonally a Bayview apartment for 17 years. They declined to give their names to avoid appearing negative, said one, which meant keeping their landlady out of flak range, clarified the other.

The pair doesn’t fault surfers, who, they say, are “very, very discreet” about getting in and out of wetsuit sans a bathhouse (one was planned at the parking lot, but councilors cut it during this year’s budgeting process).

“It’s actually rather entertaining,” said one of the women. “I mean, they’re really cute guys. They’re all athletes and in very nice shape.”

Still, what was, for decades, a comparatively serene setting had been busted up this year by constant coming and going in the one-hour spot, including jockeying positions and erasing chalk marks to outwit the site’s one patrol officer.

“It’s a constant game of, how do you beat the house,” said one of the women.

“It used to be you just looked at the ocean,” said the other. “Now, you’ve got all this commotion between you and that ocean. It’s constant coming and going, in-out, in-out, in-out, people slamming their doors and locking their cars. It’s like, oh, my God. Not peaceful, for me.”

“I like it the old way, when you didn’t have to look out for so much traffic,” said Judy Talbert.

“That use to be one of the nice things about coming here,” said Hank Talbert. “Because there wasn’t a lot of parking down by the beach, it was never very crowded.”

It’s still not terribly sardine-like, but that may be because the real season doesn’t start until next week. Reserve Officer Ted Gagnon said Monday that he handed out five parking tickets that day as of 4 p.m.

“A little above average,” he said, of the volume.

To date, his all-time high has been nine tickets written in a single day.

According to one year-round resident of 17 years, who asked that her name not be revealed because she lives “right at ground zero,” even that minimal amount of ticket giving has had consequences. She tells of teenagers and young adults letting fly with a string of obscenities upon discovery of Gagnon’s gifts tucked under a windshield wiper. On at least one occasion, she says, small children were subject to the verbal torrent.

“It gets so you to think, this just isn’t the same place it used to be,” she said.

COUNCIL DEALS

Town Manager Tom Hall takes some responsibility for those changes. Although he has in his office parking studies for the beach going back 20 years, and although some recent changes are a natural progression of improvements to roads, drainage and seawalls begun immediately prior to his tenure, the most recent spate of debates began when Hall did, three years ago.

“Naive in my infancy here, I said, ‘Why don’t we align the parking restrictions on Higgins with our other beaches, so everyone understands it,’” he explains. “I brought that forward to the ordinance committee and was nearly decapitated.”

Still, the attempt to ease parking restrictions – Higgins has a seasonal ban 45 days longer than other town beaches – brought long-simmering animosities to the surface.

“All the interest groups came out,” said Hall. “The surfers want as much access as possible and the residents, they want to live in it as much as possible, so it was a situation that was ready-made for a good, rich discussion.”

Ultimately, the ordinance committee decided to form an ad-hic parking committee, just as Hall was arranging purchase of the Vasile lot, along with a 10-acre conservation parcel off Munsey Road, for $1.27 million, using a Land for Maine’s Future grant.

As recently as last week, the Town Council continued to grab at the little squigglers in the can of worms it inadvertently opened. A “cottage” on the Vasile lot will eventually come down, but not until 2013, at the soonest. Therefore, the council voted 6-1 to approve a deal brokered between Hall and the owners of the Higgins Beach Inn, which sits across Ocean Avenue from the parking lot. The inn will manage and rent the cottage through April 30, 2013, paying the first $7,200 it takes in to the town. After keeping the next $7,200, the inn with share any additional revenue with the town, 50-50.

Only Councilor Jessica Holbrook opposed the deal, “on principle.”

"When I first read this, I kind of choked on my coffee," she said, referring to the contract. "I'm no real estate agent, but what amounts to $600 a month? I think that's a steal."

In a separate deal, the inn will get exclusive use of a fenced-off lot beside the cottage, big enough for “about eight or nine cars,” in return for managing the gate of the larger town-owned parking lot, a service it had previously provided for the Vasiles. The two-year lease says one spot must be reserved for town use, and another for cottage guests, while the remainder will be for employees of the inn.

Finally, the council split on a license allowing the inn to reserve use of a 14-lot strip of parking spots on Greenwood Avenue for its guests. According to Hall, the deal simply codifies what the inn has been doing for “decades,” except that now it must pay $5,000 per year for the privilege of reserving the spots for its own use from May 15 to Sept. 15 of each year.

The Town Council split 4-3 on that deal, based largely on a belief that although the inn has historically used those spots, there is a public need for the public property.

"All of these parking spaces belong to the public," said Councilor Karen D’Andrea. "I think that's something we need to protect. We've taken away too many public spots and I think that's wrong."

"If we're going to make it exclusively for the inn, it seems $5,000 per year isn't nearly enough, not for exclusive rights in the high point of summer,” agreed Councilor Carol Rancourt.

Holbrook, D’Andrea and Rancourt all voted against the plan.

Still, despite the great beach ballyhoo, most players in the game are still in wait-and-see posture. What’s been observed already this season is just a preview of coming attractions for what can be expected beginning next week, when the  summer season really kicks in.

But even then, the debate will go on, at least according to Moulton, who began his policing career on the Higgins Beach foot beat in 1977.

“I can tell you, the issues are all the same,” he said. “They’re maybe a little bit more pronounced now, I think, because a lot of the cottages have been turned into year-round homes, so there’s a little bit of a different expectation. But there’s always been a push-pull on parking down there.”