Apologies

Our state legislators don’t owe beach town officials apologies for being responsible to all the citizens of North Carolina. Beach town politicians and their bureaucracies are on a long list of government-funded, greedy interest groups.

Wilmington StarNews reporter Patrick Gannon writes that state and federal governments will “stop contributing” sand subsidies. After decades of nonresident taxpayers’ enabling beach town officials to avoid local responsibility for their tourism and taxing schemes, the day of reckoning comes. It’s about time. (link)

And it’s not that they didn’t know it was coming, Gannon notes.

But, not to worry; New Hanover County government operatives may bail out Kure Beach with other people’s money they can collect. (Commissioner Rick Catlin, “Beach Commission” advocate, expressed surprise that the state would “stop making their contribution.”) This year’s project on this relatively short stretch of sand will cost $6.6 million. The town’s share is only $1.2 million and county officials may loan these people that money. Still, Mayor Dean Lambeth isn’t “real happy.”

Apparently, he’ll have to use his stash from room-occupancy taxes to cover the other $5.4 million. That seems appropriate. We assume most people renting at beach towns use the beaches more than the rest of us. However, local politicians and their bureaucrats always have pet real estate projects in their pipelines waiting to spend this money.

Although I don’t think our state legislators should apologize for not budgeting coastal sand renourishment, they probably owe beach town residents apologies for banning structures that would stabilize the beaches—thus, reducing the regular and costly process of pumping back storm-eroded sand.

Especially they should apologize to folks at The Riggings, a Kure Beach condo-complex, who aren’t allowed publicly-pumped sand to protect their property and are constantly harassed by the Coastal Resources Commission to remove vital protective sandbags paid for by the owners. By some weird reasoning, sand is good when pumped on shore from the ocean bottom, but bad when it is placed on shore in bags. This injustice is regrettable.