Sea Isle City’s Taxpayers Association: “How’s business this summer”?

Sea Isle City appears to have had a solid summer season, but updated figures on visitor activities present a varying picture. For example, Sea Isle had growth in many areas such as revenues for beach tags +4% and parking meters +3%. On the other hand, we had a decline for residential water meter readings -1% and solid waste tonnage -1%.
Sea Isle City’s Taxpayers Association (SICTA) recently updated our charts tracking many local activities thru September 30th. SICTA believes everyone gains if our community has a wider perspective for Sea Isle’s pulse. Some other interesting observations, in no particular order:
#7 – Summer noise calls to our police increased +16% to 324 calls, resulting in 221 arrests which increased by +42%. Other crime statistics are unavailable as, unlike many towns in our area, Sea Isle does not publish crime statistics or police blotter activity during the year. We encourage our City government to consider doing this.
#6 – Rental permits decreased -6%, even though revenues were up +39% due to a fee increase. This is our fourth consecutive year of decreasing permits, which now total -12% or over 300 permits since 2006. Our housing stock has increased with development during that time, so the decreases could only be attributed to fewer folks renting their homes or some combination of either compliance or enforcement issues.
#5 – Sea Isle’s beachcomber tours led by local volunteers, recorded an increase of +24% in tour participants. This nice increase was partly due to the previous year’s frequent rainouts, but we might have had even more participants this year if the summer heat wave had been milder.
#4 – Unfortunately, turtle road kills were up +17% to 160 terrapins. The 2010 nesting season started early, with nesting terrapins out in full force in time for the Memorial Day weekend traffic. This was offset somewhat by additional fencing up at 1st street and more public awareness due to increased signage on Central Avenue. There was a 90% increase on Sea Isle Blvd, as 45 more terrapins were killed there than in 2009.
#3 – On a year-to-date basis, solid waste tonnage to the MUA landfill was down -1%. Construction and demolition waste was up +1%, although still significantly lower than five years ago. Residential waste decreased consistently, with recycled paper down -5%, recycled cans and bottles down -2% and, non-recycled waste down -2%.
#2 – Water pumped out of City wells decreased -9% or -19 million gallons. However, private meter reading usage decreased only -1%, so there must have been large reductions for the public sector activities (e.g. municipal facilities, water main flushing, leaking pipes, etc.). This rather good, but surprising, result merits further discussion with City government.
#1 – Treated sewerage decreased -1% or -3 million gallons. Since the private meter readings were down by a similar percentage, we have yet to see any implicit reduction for our large infiltration / inflow problem. Sea Isle continues to pay for expensively treating for possibly as much as 200 million gallons in “clean water” that gets into our sewer system annually.
All the detailed charts are available on the SICTA website (www.sicta.org). Take a look if you want a deeper perspective on Sea Isle City’s activities.