There Is a Lot at Stake - March 2018

An excellent two hour discussion was organized by the Pine Island POA Board yesterday in a session attended by Commissioners Hanig, Beaumont & White. 

Coastal Science & Engineering (CSE) is the professional engineering firm that has made the measurements of the Pine Island beach littoral profile for the POA.     Attached is their very complete primer on the subject.  On page 30 is a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of hard surface solutions.   There is also some excellent information on the economic tradeoffs of cost of solutions versus the revenue value of the properties being protected.

The Pine Island POA paid CSE $37 thousand to have five miles of beach surveyed for sand elevations from the dune out a quarter mile into the ocean.  COBX has about 25 miles of ocean beach so for less than $200 thousand the same could be done by the County to begin to get a handle on the nature of the beach erosion problem.  For a beach vacation economy like ours the width of the dry beach in summer is key to renter satisfaction, so it is important to obtain even more precise information on this parameter.  Pine Island reported that Pine Island has lost 50 feet of width of their dry "recreational" beach since they began taking measurements.

As you all seemed to agree at your retreat this topic is worthy of a special meeting so that all of you may discuss the situation with the experts and begin to get a handle of what might need to be done, how much it might cost and the options to pay for solutions.  In the meantime, please consider putting a few hundred thousand of the Occupancy Tax (OT) money into a measurement program to give your smart County engineering team the data and the mandate to understand the magnitude of the problem and explore possible solutions.  It would also seem wise to begin to set aside at least a token amount, maybe a million per year from OT, into a seed fund for future action.

Below is a table of information from the County's 2016 Property Tax Records I compiled while working on the Land Use Plan. This indicates the property tax value that is in jeopardy as our beaches become less attractive for vacationer use due to continued narrowing of the dry sand "recreational" beach.

Table: $3 million in residential property value at risk due to beach erosion

As the COBX property tax value declines mainland taxpayers pay more for the same services as happened in 2013.  You are not just protecting absentee owner property values, you are protecting mainland taxpayer from higher tax rates.

Thanks for your hard work helping your fellow citizens,

Ed Cornet