Tag Archives: Connecticut beach access

Legislative Alert: New Bill Would Impact Beach Fees

Posted on February 16, 2023 | 28 comments

Connecticut’s 2023 legislative session has begun. Several proposed bills would impact Westport.

At the committee level — where they are now — residents can comment in person at hearings, or via Zoom.

However, once a bill is voted out of committee, only written testimony is permitted.

Danielle Dobin wants to make sure Westporters know about one proposed bill in particular. She chairs our Planning & Zoning Commission. But — writing as a private citizen — she says:

Tomorrow (Friday, February 17), the Planning & Development Committee will discuss HB 6650: “An Act Concerning Public Access to Coastal Resources.”

In a nutshell, this proposal would limit the fees a municipality can charge for town-owned beach parking to not more than twice the fees charged to residents. Click here for the full text of the bill.

Last summer in Westport, residents were charged $50 for a seasonal beach pass; non-residents paid $775 (or $375, for Westonites). The Parks & Recreation Commission met last night, to discuss lowering the out-of-town, non-Weston fee to $545.

If the state legislature bill is adopted, the fee for non-residents would be capped at $100 for the season — or not more than two times whatever residents pay, if Westport changes that fee.

Beach stickers are cheaper for Westporters than non-residents. (Photo/Mark Marcus)

If the bill is adopted by the legislature, there are obvious implications regarding both revenue and parking access for residents.

At the same time, our beaches will be more accessible to people who can’t afford to park there now.

As a state, how do we strike the right balance between ensuring access for residents whose tax dollars pay for significant investment to maintain and improve our coastal resources, while ensuring that people who lack the resources for a $775 annual pass or costly day pass can still go to the beach with their families?

While in Westport, the train station provides free parking that’s walkable to Compo on the weekend, many other towns in the state lack this infrastructure.

Please consider sharing your thoughts with the legislature. But do so quickly. You must register to testify by 3 p.m. today (Thursday, February 16) in order to provide verbal testimony either via zoom or in-person. Submitting written testimony as soon as possible is also recommended.

Click here for a guide to signing up to testify. Click here for the “Bulletin” referred to in the link above; then scroll down to view the Planning & Development Committee meeting on Friday, February 17 in order to register.

(Keeping up with state politics is no day at the beach. Please click here to help “06880” continue our work.)

Lots may fill more quickly with lower daily fees. (Photo/Matt Murray)

 

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Posted in Beach, Politics

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Jim Crow And Compo

Posted on May 29, 2018 | 51 comments

With the hubbub of a holiday weekend, you may have missed  the NewYork Times opinion piece, “The North’s Jim Crow.”

It’s by Andrew W. Kahrl, an associate professor of history and African-American studies at the University of Virginia. He recently wrote a book about Ned Coll, the 1960s and ’70s activist who sought access to Connecticut’s shoreline for all.

Citing 2 recent examples — the Starbucks manager who called the police when 2 black men asked to use the restroom while waiting for a friend, and the woman who called police to report a black family grilling at a picnic — Kahrl says that “the selective enforcement of minor ordinances … performs the same work today that segregation laws did in the past.”

Take public beaches, for example. He notes that while Southern officials “literally drew color lines in the sands,” towns in the Northeast “devised elaborate, and ostensibly colorblind, procedures for determining who could access public shores, and what they could bring and do inside, and then proceeded to enforce them for black and brown people only.”

In 1975, members of Ned Coll’s Revitalization Corps demonstrated in Old Saybrook, for access to the beach. (Photo courtesy of Bob Adelman)

Kahrl zeroes in on “wealthy, all-white towns along the Connecticut Gold Coast, where blacks were effectively excluded from living by racist housing policies.”

He says, “While nearby urban black populations swelled and the demand for access to public places of recreation spiked, towns like Greenwich, Westport and Fairfield restricted their beaches to residents. It was obvious whom these laws were meant to exclude.”

This winter — in response to last summer’s crowds, who came from throughout Connecticut and nearby New York, and sometimes filled the parking lot to capacity — Westport restricted the number of daily passes (sold to anyone without a season sticker).

Yet I don’t know that Westport ever “restricted (our) beaches to residents.” That’s a pretty strong charge for Professor Kahrl to make, and for the New York Times to print.

If any “06880” readers have recollections of Westport’s beach policies in the 1960s and ’70s, click “Comments” below.

(For the full New York Times opinion piece, click here. Hat tip: Fred Cantor)

51 Comments

Posted in Beach, History, Looking back, People

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