Columnists
Not a Magic Wand
The County has taken its first steps towards shifting some of the cost of operating the Wellington Beach onto the shoulders of visitors. At its committee of the whole meeting on March 11, Council adopted a series of staff recommendations. A confirming by-law must still be passed at a council meeting.
Chief among the recommendations was that access to the beach be free for local residents, who will soon be able to pick up season pass at a municipal facility. Visitors, on the other hand, will pay a $10 per person fee for access on weekends and statutory holidays from mid-May to mid-September, between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. There will be no charge on vehicles.
The beach has a capacity of 350, and about half of that will be reserved for locals, subject to the experience of actual demand. If the beach is at capacity, both visitors and locals will be turned away. There will be no in and out privileges, and a food truck will be allowed in to serve thirsty and hungry stay-putters.
A semi-permanent gate will be installed at the corner of Beach and Main Streets, and a flashing light will indicate to cars seeking to turn off Main Street onto Beach Street when beach parking has reached capacity.
The beach will be staffed by trained tourism ambassadors, and extra security staff will be on duty when beach access charges are in effect.
The Wellington Beach boat launch will be closed during the time that access fees are in effect; boat launchers will therefore have to get in the water early, or look to use the launch on weekdays. Designated boat trailer paid parking will be set aside at the beach.
After an intervention from the local OPP, the staff recommended that the Belleville Street boat ramp be closed, period. Other locations are being scouted out, although not necessarily with the intention of coming up with an alternative site this year.
The changes don’t constitute a magic wand being waved over the problems. Rather, they are likely to create new problems, which will require our tourism ambassadors cum beach monitors to deploy a large dose of common sense.
For instance, how will visitors—say a family of five—who are turned away from the superior facilities at Sandbanks and North Beach, with their $21 a day user fee—react to paying $50 to access to the Wellington Beach? Will they stay, try their luck at Roblin Lake, or just turn around and head home?
Staff are going to have to decide who constitutes a “person” subject to the $10 charge. Does a babe in arms have to pay a fee? Does a three-year-old? And they are going to have to be on their toes when it comes to the allocation of space on the beach. If 175 visitors and 100 residents are logged in, and there are 75 more visitors itching to get in, are the staff supposed to hold those 75 spots in case more residents want to use the beach later in the day? Do they hang on to 25 spots, or 50 spots, or just let the spots fill with visitors?
You will be able to get a resident pass from a County facility without a full scale cross-examination. There is nothing to stop a resident from loaning or renting his or her pass to a visitor. And what happens if a visitor arrives at the beach with a local resident in the car? Can everybody in the car shelter under the resident’s pass? What if the same resident shows up in several cars?
Traffic restrictions in the form of a flashing light and a gate, while they may stop people from turning on to Beach Street, aren’t going to prevent slowdowns on Main Street as cars approach Beach Street. People will inevitably want to stop and disgorge passengers and beach supplies to avoid a longer, fully laden walk to the beach—particularly if the area around Beach and Main is full of no parking signs with hefty fines for violations.
But why don’t we embrace our congestion problem and see it as a revenue source? Why not give 16-year-olds their first summer job, equip them with a County T-shirt, a squeegee and a water bucket, and send them out to work the windshields of the cars lined up to get to the beach, or past Beach and Main? Tell them they can keep half of what they earn. The skills they would pick up in dealing with testy customers would be good training for future work at a winery or restaurant, and help them save to buy a house in the County when they turn 50.
If the project proves successful, it could be expanded to lineups at Sandbanks and North Beach, or any other location in the County where traffic is constantly being slowed. If Doug Ford won’t let us exact an actual toll on vehicles entering and leaving the County, a squeegee toll would be the next best thing.
Nobody pretends Council has waved a magic wand over our beach access problems. Nobody suggests there won’t new ones. But at least the County is trying to address them, rather than hiding its head in the sand— beach sand, in this case.
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