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Respect the Beach: Swimmers enjoy Speedboat Beach’s famous boulders over Memorial Day weekend. In recent years, graffiti has appeared on the rocks. The NTPUD cleaned it up. |
Comments (7)Unintended Consequences
Removal of the fence at Speedboat Beach raises concerns about safety, but are the claims valid?
By Melissa SiigPublished: June 22, 2010
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After hearing complaints from community members for almost a decade, the California State Lands Commission ruled last October that a metal fence dividing the public trust — an easement between the high and low watermarks maintained by the state for public use — on Speedboat Beach be torn down. When news of the decision came out of Sacramento, cheers of victory could be heard around Lake Tahoe. That is, everywhere except one place — the Lake Vista subdivision in Kings Beach, where Speedboat Beach is located. Residents, who say they are already seeing an increase in the problems that existed before the fence’s removal, are worried because as word about the unfettered beach gets out more people are starting to flock to the area. The majority of public agencies that monitor and maintain the beach and its streets, however, dispute the notion that Speedboat’s overcrowding and security issues are as serious as homeowners make them out to be. With private citizens and public agencies in disagreement over the nature of the problems, can there be a meeting of the minds that satisfies residents’ desire for a safer community and the public’s interest in keeping the beach open to all?
Problems With the Public
The fence, which was erected over 60 years ago by a private property owner and prevented the public from accessing nearly 90 percent of the recreation and scenic area, was torn down in January. Lake Vista residents say they started to get worried this spring when they saw a lot of people showing up to use the beach on warm days. The public portion of Speedboat Beach is only 40 feet wide.
“We were immediately concerned because we already had problems,” said Gary Midkiff of Midkiff & Associates, a planning firm based in Zephyr Cove that is representing several Lake Vista property owners. “There have been substantially more people this spring because of the PR about the fence.”
Over the years, residents have had to deal with drunk people accosting homeowners, thefts from homes and cars, broken glass in the sand, overflowing trash cans, vandalism, trespassing, and graffiti on the beach’s picturesque boulders. Already this year Midkiff said that, despite a posted sign that states alcohol, glass, and dogs are forbidden, there has been a 40-person wedding party on the beach with two kegs and bottles of alcohol and, over Memorial Day weekend, nine dogs on the beach on one day. Sheriff’s deputies were called but did not show up until 5 p.m. after the party had already left.
“No one is enforcing the rules down here,” said Royce Johnson, president of the Brockway Point Homeowners Association, which was formed in the 1980s in response to growing problems in the neighborhood. “People are trashing our neighborhood and we’re not happy about it.”
But the North Tahoe Public Utility District, which maintains Speedboat for Placer County, begs to differ. NTPUD Parks and Facilities Manager Kathy Long said that maintenance crews are at the beach one to two times a day during the summer picking up litter from the beach to the street. Long said the single bear bin is sufficient.
“We’re there every day, and the trash is emptied at least every two to three days,” she said. “It never gets completely full.”
Long said that the district even goes beyond what their contract with the county requires, cleaning up graffiti on the rocks, monitoring the porta-potty, and pruning trees and bushes surrounding the walkway to the beach.
“We do our due diligence with what needs to be taken care of,” Long said.
In terms of keeping the neighborhood safe, the Placer County Sheriff’s Department says it responds to every call, although staffing limitations preclude them from proactively patrolling the beach. Sheriff’s deputies cannot respond to lakefront trespassing calls unless the private property owner has surveyed the location of the high-water mark. According to Lieutenant Alan Carter, none of the Speedboat Beach homeowners have done so.
“In the absence of a boundary, there is not much we can do,” he said.
Carter also believes many of the calls the Sheriff’s Department receives about Speedboat Beach are overblown or unfounded. Nevertheless, the number of incidents at Speedboat Beach increased seven-fold from 2006 to 2009 to a total of 21, the majority of which were theft.
“It hasn’t been that much of a problem area, but it’s definitely on our radar screen,” Carter said.
Too Many Cars, Too Little Street
But the biggest problem may not be the cleanliness of the neighborhood or crime, but the parking situation. The two streets that lead to the beach, Speedboat and Harbor, are narrow roads about 15-feet wide. Although Placer County Department of Public Works put up no-parking signs on one side of each street about 10 years ago and tow-away zone signs around seven years later, on crowded summer days cars can be found parked on both sides of the street, further narrowing the already slim roadway.
“People get there late and park anywhere,” Midkiff said.
This creates a health and safety issue, since emergency vehicles can’t fit down the street if cars are parked on both sides. Last year, a child was seriously injured after jumping off the rocks and, according to Midkiff, fire trucks could not reach the beach in a timely fashion because the road was clogged by cars.
The North Tahoe Fire Protection District, however, disputes this claim. Chief Duane Whitelaw said that Harbor Street was blocked, but it was by either a delivery truck or car temporarily unloading. Emergency vehicles were able to access the beach via Speedboat without incident.
“It was kind of an anomaly,” Whitelaw said. “It was unrelated to the parking issue.”
Whitelaw acknowledges that the neighborhood’s streets are narrow and can get blocked by parked cars. However, he said the fire district, which responds to a large number of medical calls in the area in the summer, has never been impeded by the situation.
“I cannot recall a time where we were physically slowed in getting to an emergency in there,” Whitelaw said. “We are only concerned if the current no-parking regulations are not followed. As long as they are followed, I have no immediate concerns.”
But according to Midkiff and Johnson, the parking ordinance is rarely enforced. Although they say it’s improved in the last few years, with cutbacks at the California Highway Patrol and the Sheriff’s Department, getting law enforcement out to the area to issue tickets is difficult.
DPW, which has the authority to issue tickets, says the parking situation is not as serious as residents say.
“I personally don’t think it’s as big a problem as people make it out to be,” said DPW Deputy Director Peter Kraatz. “They are concerned they will get tenfold people, but there is no evidence of that.”
Kraatz said members of his staff try to get out to the Speedboat Beach streets a couple times a week during the peak season. While DPW has never towed a car — their preference is to first give a ticket as a warning — Kraatz said DPW is putting up additional signage where Harbor narrows to around 10-feet wide due to a large boulder.
“In most cases, we are not seeing illegal parking,” said Kraatz, although he admits that DPW staff are only in the neighborhood during the week. “On weekends, we rely on the Sheriff to go down there.”
The primary responsibility for ticketing falls not the Sheriff’s Department but to the CHP. Unlike the other public agencies, CHP said that the Speedboat Beach parking situation is a big problem.
“It’s probably one of the three most problem areas in the North Tahoe area for parking,” said officer Tony Prisco, noting that the CHP issues tickets for illegal parking on Speedboat and Harbor every weekend in the summer.
Gate It or Ticket?
So what is the solution? Midkiff has proposed a number of answers, such as resident-only parking or gating Speedboat Beach, making it a park for Brockway Point homeowners only.
“It simply isn’t an adequate beach for the public,” he said. “We should make it a community beach and then we won’t have to worry about problems that come with the public.”
However, Placer County Supervisor Jennifer Montgomery, who met with Midkiff this month to discuss the issues at Speedboat, is strongly against these options.
“It’s a public road, it’s a public beach, and it’s a public trust,” she said. “I will not support a two-tiered system for public beaches. It goes against everything I believe in.”
Montgomery said she’s not worried that with the fence gone an onslaught of visitors will descend upon Speedboat this summer.
“I don’t think a lot of tourists know about this beach,” she said. “There are only so many people who can get there. It’s not like it’s an easy beach to find.”
But Johnson says it’s the tourists, not the locals, who are causing the problems. The Cal-Neva Resort already directs guests to Speedboat; most get there on foot. Midkiff and Johnson are concerned that the proposed Boulder Bay development in Crystal Bay will send their guests to Speedboat Beach as well, contributing even more to the overcrowding problems.
Montgomery thinks the best way to resolve the problem is ticketing. She said she has spoken with both DPW and the Sheriff’s Department and asked them to step up enforcement in the neighborhood. But will that be enough?
Johnson can only hope.
“I don’t know how they got away with putting a public park in a private neighborhood,” he said. “There has to be something done before the summer, before a fire or someone has a heart attack.”
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