Summer Update from Bryan Lewis
Dear fellow HCTA member:
I hope all of you had a wonderful 4th of July holiday in Harvey Cedars and are enjoying your summer.
Our beach replenishment project is now complete with 300,000 more yards of sand added to the beaches on the north end of town. In addition, the Public Works Department completed pushing sand that had migrated to North Beach back to Harvey Cedars. They are working on the completion of the ramps and dune walkovers and have been delivered the piece of equipment that will allow the maintenance of the dune walkovers three weeks ago. We hope our protection from Nature’s fury is ensured for a long time.
We continue working toward making our Boulevard safer and are in constant dialogue with our Mayor and County Freeholders. Your responses to the survey made clear your opinion and support for this project – with over 70% in favor. The HCTA attended a Freeholders meeting in June, along with members of our community and our Commissioners to support and reiterate the need for a safer BLVD and wider shoulders in Harvey Cedars. This will probably be a long and on-going process, but we feel with member support, Harvey Cedars will see a safer Boulevard. Our Police Chief, Thomas Prieser feels the flashing speed signs are helping to slow down traffic speed and the HCPD is enforcing the traffic rules.
On an additional safety note, you should have received a letter from the Harvey Cedars Office of Emergency Management this week detailing the procedures in the event of an Island evacuation and the LBI Re-Entry Placard (car window tag) for Harvey Cedars. These tags are for property and business owners to re-enter HC to assess damage and secure property after a storm. There is one tag issued per household, which are valid for 4 years. The fee for a replacement tag is $50.00. More information may be found on at www.hcpolice.org.
For those of you who may (luckily) be here for a while and stopped your mail, a note was mailed to all property owners in Harvey Cedars alerting them to a Municipal tax bill due August 1st, 2010. Any payments received after August 10th will be subject to back interest to August 1. If you are like me and only like interest when paid my way, take note. I would hate for anyone to have missed the mailing.
Finally, I would like to plug the Harvey Cedars 23d Annual Arts Festival. This event is organized by HC resident Susan Kramer and sponsored by the HC Activities Committee. It is this Sunday, July 18th at Sunset Park from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Please come out and support the HC Activities Committee and the artists participating in this enjoyable town event.
On behalf of the HCTA Board of Trustees, we hope you continue to enjoy your summer.
Sincerely,
Bryan Lewis, President
Email sent 5/5/2010
Greetings HCTA Members,
Welcome to the start of what hopefully will be a beautiful and fun summer.
Here are few updates on things happening in town and with the HCTA:
The results of the BLVD Safety Survey that was sent out by the Boro came back with an overwhelming response of 3:1 in favor of re-striping the BLVD to the three lane configuaration. Of the 1153 surveys sent out, 774 were returned to the Boro. The Commissioners passed a resolution in support of the new configuration at the Commissioners meeting on April 23, 2010. On Tuesday, May 4 members of the HCTA Board of Trustees met with the Commissioners, Ocean County Administrator, Alan Avery and the County Engineer, Frank Scarantino to move forward on this important safety issue.
The Beach Replenishment is still a work in progress with completion due around mid June. Because of storm damage to the beach on the north end of town, the dredge will shift to the north again to fill in sand. Planting of the dune grass has been halted because of the warmer temperatures but will resume again in the fall as the weather cools. The walkways are currently being installed. They are rail fence, not the old dune fences that where there previously. The Army Corps contends that the sand can move around more freely with this type of fence, thus assisting in the natural build up of the new dunes.
Don’t forget the HCTA’s Second Annual Town Wide Yard Sale! The sale will again be held on May 29th, the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. You can sell all your treasures and still have a couple of days to relax and enjoy beautiful Harvey Cedars. To sign up- please visit our website at Harveycedarstax.org for further information and to down load the registration forms. The cost to participate is $5.00 for Members. This includes advertising done by the HCTA, signs, a flag to mark your location for buyers and listing in our “Treasure Map” distributed to buyers the morning of the sale.
Mark you calenders for our Annual Meeting. It will be held on Saturday, August 28 at the Firehouse. We will update you on what we’ve accomplished during the past year and our plans for the future.
Finally, we actively seek your input and ideas. We are taxpayers like yourself who love Harvey Cedars and volunteer our time to hopefully help make it better place. We have opportunities for you to get involved. If you would like to volunteer your time, please send us an email- the information is on our website. See you in Harvey Cedars!
Sincerely,
Bryan Lewis
President
Email sent 1/19/2010
Dear fellow HCTA members,
Happy New Year- I hope you enjoyed a wonderful Holiday Season with family and friends. Here are a few updates on topics of interest:
LBI Consolidated School District:
Thank you to the HCTA members who attended the Dec 15th LBI Consolidated Board of Education meeting. The HCTA put out an email alert for a strong show of attendance at the request of the LBI Joint Council of Taxpayers, and many of you were able to attend. As always, numbers make us heard and the extent of voter interest obviously made an impression on the Board. It was surprising, yet encouraging to hear the Board of Ed state unequivocally that they are opposed to consolidation of LBI with the Stafford elementary system.
The HCTA encourages continued taxpayers attendance at these Board Meetings. There is still work to be done, including lowering the average pupil cost to the state’s average. LBI Consolidated’s cost is about $21,000 per pupil; the state average cost is close to $11,200 per pupil.
Beach Replenishment:
You may have read in the press or on our website that beachfront owners on 83rd street were awarded $480,000. It is the opinion of the HCTA that this is ridiculously large – implying the homeowner lost almost 20% of the value of their home when the new dune is only about 18 inches higher than the old dune, and received no value from the added safety of the dune, especially given that this house is one of only a few on the island allowed to be rebuilt that far out on the dune after the 1962 storm.
With this particular award, the town anticipated an appeal no matter which way the ruling went. The town filed the appeals paperwork and the court briefs were due on January 6th. Jon Oldham has said, “we’ll appeal and appeal until we can’t appeal any more.” The HCTA hopes that common sense will prevail in the appeals process, and that when the courts see this “impaired” view, the award will be overturned. The HCTA has posted the original article on this particular property, featured in the Press of Atlantic City, on our website home page, http://www.harveycedarstax.org .
Street-end dune walkovers – As we put out on the website, the town is doing their best to make sure that our street ends DO NOT look like Surf City. However, as anybody who has ever done a remodeling job knows, sometimes things have to look a lot worse during the project before the final product is done. Unfortunately that is the case with the street ends. The width of the Army Corp equipment requires that these have to be widened during the project. For the streets where the Army Corps is done, the Borough has already put up dune fencing to bring it back to a width of 8 feet. Additionally, the town will be purchasing a Bobcat so that they can maintain the walkover at a much narrower width than the current equipment they own allows.
Boulevard Safety:
Local politics at their best! It seems that the mayors of Barnegat Light and LBT have convinced the county officials Boulevard Safety model was a bad idea – even though they have never seen the simulations. The HCTA is evaluating how we should proceed and where we can be useful to the Borough in this endeavor. The Mayor has stressed to the Ocean County Freeholders that the situation on the Boulevard is unsafe, and that the status quo will not work, and is trying to get them all together to view the computer model – this is a county road, we need the county on our side. Since LBT and Barnegat light undoubtedly have more voters than Harvey Cedars does, we hope the County officials don’t pander to politics at the expense of another child being hit by a car. But to level the playing field in case politics do rule, please consider having one or more voting members of your household register in Harvey Cedars. There is a link to Ocean County Voting Forms on the HCTA website under the “Links of Interest” Tab. In the meantime the HCTA has asked for an increased police and ticketing presence on the Boulevard.
Upcoming events:
Please mark you calendars for the HCTA Second Annual Town Wide Yard Sale. It will be held on Saturday, May 29, 2010. Registration information will be forthcoming in the spring and will be posted on the HCTA website.
On behalf of the HCTA Trustees, I wish you the best this year.
Sincerely,
Bryan Lewis
President
Email sent 12/2/2009
I hope you had a safe and Happy Thanksgiving. The Holiday season in now upon us in full force! The pumping of sand resumed after the storm, and certainly not a minute too soon. The last Nor’easter took a significant toll on the beaches, especially on the southern end of Town. Erosion was significant enough that a portion of the road on East Atlantic was undermined and crumbled away, and several homes were almost completely undermined. The Town has had their equipment out and is repairing the damage and shoring up the beaches in advance of the replenishment.
The discharge unit for the sand is currently at 79th street. Sand is being pumped from that point heading north, then will proceed south to a point determined by the Army Corp. Then the dredge hook up will be moved south, and the north/south pumping will start again. We understand that this will occur three times to replenish the beaches through out the town.
It is a rather impressive process to watch, and is going on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The dredge is a hoper dredge. It steams out to the collection site, collects the sand, then comes back and connects to a platform with pipe that connects to the discharge and filter unit.
The sand is then pumped from the ship, through the screens and bulldozers push the sand around the beach.
There will be several differences between how the project was conducted in Surf City and how it will be conducted in Harvey Cedars. First, and most important, there is a much finer screen on the discharge unit to ensure that none of the munitions fuses end up on our beaches.
Second, the Mayor and Commissioners feel that the street ends/beach entrances in Surf City look too industrial or commercial, and are not in keeping with our town. They will be working with the Army Corps and the town work crews to make them look much more natural.
The third difference will be the material used on the walkways to and from the beach. In Surf City a material call I5 was used. While this creates a very hard-backed surface making it easy for people to walk, it is also subject to erosion. If you have seen these paths in Surf City, there are small gullies that form from rain run-off. In Harvey Cedars, we will use a material called “infield fill” which is similar to what is used in baseball parks. It forms a fairly hard-packed surface that makes it easy to walk on, but also allows for the water to soak in, not run off so quickly. Therefore we should not see the erosion/gully issues seen in Surf City.
The project is on schedule to be completed in March 2010. Several HCTA members will be taking pictures of the project as it progresses, will post these from time-to-time so you can follow the progress. Please visit our website at harveycedarstax.org for updates and to see storm pictures taken by Brian Devlin and replenishment pictures taken by Bill Clark.
Sincerely,
Bryan Lewis
President, HCTA
Email sent 10/13/2009
Good afternoon HCTA members,
I want to inform you of an upcoming meeting to be held by the Borough concerning the forthcoming Beach Replenishment Project.
This meeting will be held on Tuesday, Oct 20th at 4:30 at Town Hall in the meeting room.
Some of the contractors participating in the Replenishment Project will be there to answer your questions, etc. The DEP, the Army Corps of Engineers and Weeks Marine(dredge) are confirmed attendees at this point.
As always, for information concerning Harvey Cedars taxpayers, please visit the HCTA website at Harveycedarstax.org.
Sincerely,
Bryan Lewis
President- HCTA
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