By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Pat Walsh sarcastically suggested a novel way to help Sea Isle City’s residents and tourists navigate their way through the deep, powdery beach sand that covers the shoreline “like snow.”
“If we can’t get mobi mats, we’ll need snowshoes,” Walsh said, describing how she sinks into the soft sand while making her way to the beach.
Eileen O’Hare was just as descriptive while explaining the difficulties she has when walking to the beach using the high-sloping pathway that crosses over the dunes at 77th Street.
“We have hills,” O’Hare said in an interview.
Both women, who are senior citizens, appealed to Sea Isle officials at a City Council meeting Tuesday to buy more of the popular mobility mats to make it easier for elderly beachgoers to walk over the sand. They also want the city to level off the sand at the 77th Street pathway to eliminate a steep incline.
In response, Mayor Leonard Desiderio told Walsh and O’Hare that the city plans to purchase more of the mats for the 2023 summer tourism season as part of its strategy to make the beaches more accessible to everyone.
“We are going to work on that,” Desiderio said. “We will have that in place for next year.”
Desiderio said Sea Isle is also planning to have more summer employees available to help senior citizens and other beachgoers who may need assistance to make their way across the sand.
O’Hare, who lives at 76th Street and Pleasure Avenue and uses the beach at 77th Street, told city officials that she had to pay a teenager this summer to help lug her umbrellas, chairs and beach cart out on the sand.
“We do need help there,” she said of senior citizens accessing the beach.
Walsh, a full-time resident of 77th Street, bluntly said that the 77th Street beach “has almost become unacceptable for seniors.”
O’Hare and Walsh, who are friends, occasionally go the beach together at 77th Street. There is already one beach mat on that street, but they want another one added for 2023.
In an interview after the Council meeting, Walsh said she will wait to see if the city actually fulfills Desiderio’s promise to buy more beach mats.
“I’ve heard that before,” she said. “I would like to see action before next summer.”
Earlier this year, City Council approved a $36,798 contract with a private vendor to buy 20 new beach mats. Sea Isle has placed the mats at beach entrances the entire length of the island, yet residents routinely appear before Council to urge the city to buy more and to make sure they are kept clear of slippery sand.
The plastic mats lie on top of the sand, providing an easier transition from the gravel pathways over the dunes to the beaches. They are sometimes referred to as “Mobi- Mats,” short for mobility mats.
Seniors, small children, people with disabilities and families lugging strollers to the beach are all helped by the mats.
The non-slip mats look like bright blue carpet strips from a distance. They don’t extend the entire width across the sand, but make it easier to cross the dunes and head out onto the beach. At the handicap-accessible beaches, the mats average about 70 feet long, city officials say.
Sea Isle has had the beach mats for about 15 years. At first, they were placed at the city’s six handicap-accessible beaches at 32nd Street, 40th Street, John F. Kennedy Boulevard, 44th Street, 63rd Street and 85th Street.
During the summer of 2018, the mats were installed at intervals of about every three blocks between 29th and 91st streets.
As the mats became even more popular with the public, Sea Isle announced plans in 2019 to put them at every one of the lifeguard-protected beaches.
The city then set the goal of having the mats at every beach block between 29th and 92nd streets. Now, the city says it has installed the mats at beach entrances along the entire length of the island – from First Street to 93rd Street.
Council President Mary Tighe has been a major proponent of the mats in recent years, frequently pointing out that they are particularly helpful for senior citizens and disabled people to have access to the beaches.
“I have a mother who didn’t make it to the beach all summer because of that reason,” Tighe said Tuesday of the difficulties for her elderly mother to walk through the thick sand.
