This was sent by email to the Cape Charles Mirror, highlighting citizen’s concerns about the growth and safety of our town.

Cape Charles offers its unique and wonderful beach to its residents and visitors but parking is limited. Safety and convenience must coexist.
Please consider the following:
1) golf cart parking only along Bay Ave.
2) golf carts park head in
3) no bicycles or vehicles of any kind on median strip along Bay Ave.
4) limit # of food trucks/stands/food carts permitted on Bay Avenue
This will create a second problem; where do the cars then park?
Please review how our sister beach towns have handled this problem: Dedicated parking lots with fees.
Full time CC residents would be exempt and have an annual decal to park for free. Rental properties could issue this decal to renters for one car per home.
Please consider the following for safety on the beach.
1) Personal watercraft is to remain 1000′ from shoreline IAW regulations set by the National Park Service, example Fire Island.
2) Exceptions would be the navigational channels leading to the Town Harbor and the Bay Creek Marina.
Enhances safety, noise reduction, pollution reduction.
Park the cars the same way as on front street
Ditto
In response to safety in this town and parking for golf carts only on Bay Ave. This email writer has got to be kidding! Golf carts have got to be the biggest safety hazard and nuisance in Cape Charles! From underage kids driving to the drunks leaving bars, operators driving on roads that are posted 25 mph and above, and trespassing on private property. Most cart operators believe they are above the rules of the road! I guess the town will start to crack down on these offenses when someone gets seriously hurt.
As for free parking for full time residents…what about the people who own second homes in CC and pay taxes in this town? I guess this writer feels those owners should be double taxed!
There are maybe two or three big weekends a year where parking on Bay Ave is an issue. It doesn’t make any sense to me to make permanent changes to the rules to address an issue that only occurs a couple times a year. If you actually live in town, why do you need to park on Bay Ave anyway? It’s a 15 minute walk from Fig to Bay at a leisurely pace. Get a little exercise and let the out of towners have the parking spot. If people want to pay for parking they can go to Virginia Beach. They will happily take your money. If our concerned citizen is aware of sister beach towns that handle things better, maybe they should consider relocating there and leaving CC to the people who are happy with it as is.
Every discussion in Cape Charles degenerates into comments suggesting that if you don’t like it the way it is, go elsewhere. That is not constructive . The beach goers could show more courtesy; like refraining from parking across handicap ramps and entrances to the beach. There were several incidents of RV’s fully popped up/out, remaining on the beach overnight. The Town is not a RV park, but the word will certainly spread if the Town follows a relaxed attitude on this issue. It should probably start with enforcing the parking regulations uniformly relating to recreational vehicle parking on the streets.
Thank you for this well written reply. Yes, knee jerk ‘love it or leave it’ isn’t constructive. We have the opportunity to be pro-active now and not retroactive later.
Charles is right. I should have left off the last sentence of my post inviting the original poster to love it or leave it. Everything else I said is still true. This is not an issue that requires new rules, certainly not golf cart only parking or paid parking lots. Enforcement of existing laws, already on the books, would suffice.
That said, I don’t have a problem with the town police exercising their discretion on enforcement of the existing rules, as they did this past holiday weekend. We are a tourist town. That is our economy now. I agree that we can’t let Bay Ave turn into an RV park, but if we’re too heavy handed with enforcement, people will go somewhere else. Some residents might prefer that, but in the absence of any other economic driver, we really do need the tourists. I grew up in a tourist town in Florida. Part of the deal is that the locals put up with some inconvenience during the “season” in exchange for all that tourist income that allows the shop owners to close up and live their lives in the off season.
I promise not to suggest that anyone ‘love it or leave it’ in future posts. I have heard that the real estate market is pretty hot right now if anybody was thinking about selling. : )
Thank you for pointing out what constitutes constructive problem solving!
Leave it alone. I frequently use Cape Charles Beach and I have never had a problem parking. Don’t turn this idyllic setting into a place where fees and permits ruin the spontaneous use of the beach. People are attracted to Cape Charles because of its friendly persona and “unplugged” feeling. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
I agree with Barbara Haynes and David Kabler. It ain’t broke, so don’t “fix” it..