Share: 

Lewes wise to tackle encroachments

April 27, 2018

Lewes Mayor and Council - much to their credit - have jumped in to solve age-old property encroachment problems on Lewes Beach.

For decades, the city has looked the other way while property owners and Mother Nature took over public rights-of-way with plantings, hardscaping materials and ever-persistent blowing sand. Cross streets - especially between Cedar Street and Bay Avenue - are now narrow lanes, and public pathways to the public beach over the dunes at the end of those cross streets have likewise narrowed to the point of being hidden.

Restricting public access to the beach via these encroachments may or may not be an unspoken but welcome strategy for keeping a lid on growing crowds who want to use the limited beach. Regardless, it's unfair.

When council members voted recently to eliminate parking on one side of three cross streets, the irony wasn't lost on Councilman Rob Morgan. He noted that Lewes works to be a welcoming community, and everyone knows there are parking issues at certain times of the year, but here was council voting to take parking places away.

Hanging in the air was the sense that those breaking the law with their lane-narrowing encroachments were being rewarded with the elimination of public parking spaces, meaning fewer cars passing in front of their properties.

Mayor and Council took further action at a subsequent meeting to address those ironies. They voted to study the encroachments and eventually eliminate them, so these and other lost parking spaces can be restored.

As thousands more homes are built in Lewes and the surrounding area, demand for access to public beaches, and the predictable rubs that accompany that demand, will only grow.

In the casual days of the past, demand for parking was light so encroachments didn't really matter. Those days are long gone.

This is a proverbial can of worms but Lewes is wise to tackle it now before the problem only worsens.

 

 

  • Editorials are considered and written by Cape Gazette Editorial Board members, including Publisher Chris Rausch, Editor Jen Ellingsworth, News Editor Nick Roth and reporters Ron MacArthur and Chris Flood. 

Subscribe to the CapeGazette.com Daily Newsletter