The New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office’s marine unit will soon start docking its vessel in Wrightsville Beach, which the town’s police chief Dan House said “is a huge benefit to the town.”
The Wrightsville Beach Board of Aldermen voted March 10 to allow the sheriff’s office to use the town’s dock space recently vacated by the Wilmington Fire Department. The town and the city of Wilmington entered into an agreement several years ago to build and maintain the dock, located at Wrightsville Beach’s public works facility off of Parmale, but the Wilmington Fire Department is retiring its vessel.
House said there’s plenty of room at the dock for both the town’s vessel and the sheriff’s office vessel, so the town will only gain from the added security.
“They’re always going to be here, which means they’ll be patrolling the waters around our town,” he said.
Next step approved in multi-use path project
The board voted to spend $11,500 to hire a landscape architect to create a conceptual design for a proposed multi-use path around the northeastern perimeter of Wrightsville Beach Park. The design will be part of the town’s application for a parks and recreation grant to help fund the project.
In the past, parks and recreation grants have helped fund major projects like the events stage in Wrightsville Beach Park, and the town is currently compiling a list of projects, including the multi-use path, for which it will seek another grant.
In addition to soliciting input from the Harbor Island Garden Club, the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee and the Wrightsville Beach Foundation, the town will invite residents to weigh in during an open house April 18 at 6 p.m.
Church parking lot regulations
For years, churches in Wrightsville Beach have allowed beachgoers to use their parking lots free of charge while accepting donations. But town attorney John Wessell said technically, that is a commercial activity, so the town can require the churches to hold permits regulating the practice.
Town leaders voted March 10 to draft an ordinance making the churches pay a one-time fee of several hundred dollars to get a conditional use permit that would regulate the use of their lots on holiday weekends. The board will vote on the ordinance during its April meeting.
The rules would only apply on Memorial Day weekend, July Fourth and Labor Day weekend, when parking elsewhere on the beach fills up and the churches put out signage inviting beachgoers to use their lots.
The conditions on the permit will require the churches staff the lot to provide security, which most churches already do, and prohibit them from putting out temporary signage advertising their free parking until 11 a.m.
Representatives from the churches told the board their intention was not to compete with the town’s paid parking program. They were only inviting beachgoers to park when the rest of the island was full, and accepting, not seeking, donations for mission trips.
In past years, Mike Edmonds of Wrightsville Beach Baptist church said, residents near the church complained about the number of cars cramming into the free lot and down the street on busy weekends, but since then, he said “we’ve really improved our trash policing.”
If the churches did not have an organized system of staffing the lots and accepting donations on holiday weekends, he added, “it would be utter chaos.”
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