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While Saturday, March 8 was a day when most visitors to Rehoboth Beach were thinking about the chocolate in the convention center, a more pressing, though less delicious, convention was going on in the commissioners’ room downstairs.
The Rehoboth Beach Planning Commission held its first public meeting to discuss its state-mandated review of the city’s comprehensive development plan (CDP). While the crowd attending the meeting was sparse, the commission was able to get a roadmap on how it should approach the revisions and received a presentation regarding traffic management in the city.
Most of the meeting was devoted to a traffic and parking management presentation by Linda Kauffman, who co-authored the city’s parking study unveiled late last year. The main question raised by Kauffman, the commission and the audience was: Who is the main priority: residents or tourists?
“There are some people who would argue that the residents shouldn’t have priority, that in fact our town thrives on the tourist industry and the other 100,000 people that are here beyond that 1,500 [the city’s population], and they should get priority,” Kauffman said. “So I think the first thing, to be honest, is that the city has to come to some determination of who gets the priority spaces.”
Kauffman said the city has options if it decides residents should be the main priority, such as a residential parking permit program. Kauffman said the city is reaching a critical point: Does the city want more visitors or fewer visitors, she asked.
“What is it we are trying to accomplish?” Kauffman asked. “I think if you ask some residents they will say, ‘No more. We don’t want any more people here.’ I think if you ask merchants they are going to want more people here. That’s one of the pieces that a planning process has to determine.”
Chris Weeks, chairman of the Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, said, “I don’t necessarily want more cars in town but I do want more people in town.”
Commissioner Harvey Shulman said the commission’s priority should be the people in town, residents and businesses alike.
“A lot of us, and I’m speaking for the residents, are fine with the large number of tourists, if you want to call them. At some point it becomes intolerable but you accept that because there are slower parts of the year and the business community needs to survive,” Shulman said. “But what we can’t tolerate is an increase in the number of vehicles and, anything that in my view, and we’ll have to hear how this develops, encourages vehicles to come anywhere beyond the bridge is not a good thing.”
Kauffman said many of the ways to deal with the influx of cars would not be politically popular decisions. She said mass transit would not be a very successful mode of transportation unless people have an incentive to use it.
“Where is mass transportation successful? It’s successful in cities where it is almost impossible to drive or they have priced the parking so high that it’s a disincentive to bring your car in,” Kauffman said.
Jim Ellison of Henlopen Avenue said a highly successful business community was critical to preserving the quality of life in Rehoboth, while Cookie Bresnahan, also of Henlopen Avenue, said the residents should be given parking priority.
Kauffman said the parking and traffic issue comes down to finding a balance between tourists, who frequent the local businesses, and residents, who are here year-round.
“Simplistically: we want the people, because they will sustain the businesses, and we don’t want the cars here. That’s very simplistic and how do you have the balance? I don’t believe a town of 1,500, even with part-time residents, can sustain the downtown we have,” she said. “You have some major issues to tackle before you even tackle how you are going to solve the problem.”
“We have a good plan right now,” said Bruce Galloway, a consultant on the plan. “Rehoboth Beach has taken the community input we have garnered over years and years of effort and put it into a plan that says, ‘Here is what we want our town to be like.’ But it doesn’t stop there. It says we are going to develop some goals, we are going to develop some policies and we are going to spell out some specific actions we are going to take.”
Galloway said new state requirements must be addressed in the updated plan. Among these unfunded mandates are an affordable housing plan, a water and wastewater plan, intergovernmental coordination and identification of an economic base and major employers. Other mandates include addressing the city’s total maximum daily load of nitrogen and phosphorus, wellhead protection and keeping traffic moving on Route 1.
Galloway also laid out city priorities for the revisions, which include: updating the charter and city codes, Boardwalk maintenance, managing the health of the city’s lakes, creating a municipal campus, traffic and parking management, school property rezoning, pedestrian safety, rental housing, maintaining commercial vitality and preserving the character of the city.
Finally, Galloway spelled out the areas the planning commission would be focusing on, which includes environmental protection, traffic management, preservation and redevelopment, administration and a plan to map out the city’s walks, paths and parks.
Contact Ryan Mavity at ryanm@capegazette.com
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