The in-season Friday trash pickups started on May 29 and will continue until Sept. 4.
Judging from the number of trashcans we have seen on the roadside on the Thursdays before the past two Fridays, we think word about the increase in pickups may not have reached many Southern Shores residents.
The increase in garbage collections during the summertime accommodates both the increase in the town’s population and an increase in the garbage that the population generates with outdoor activities.
Monday trash pickups will continue as usual, as will Friday recycling pickups. We will give you a heads-up when the two-per-week collections end.
PLANNING BOARD
The Southern Shores Planning Board meeting scheduled for Monday at 5 p.m. in the Pitts Center has been canceled. The next meeting is scheduled July 20. In other Planning Board news:
The Town Council voted unanimously at its June 2 meeting to appoint regular Planning Board member Ed Lawler to another three-year term on the five-member Board, starting July 1.
Mr. Lawler was first appointed to the Board in 2018 to fill the unexpired term of Board member Glenn Wyder after his death. Mr. Wyder had recently been elected chairperson.
Board members’ terms run on the fiscal year, from July 1 to June 30, and are staggered. Mr. Lawler is the only Board member whose term expires in 2026.
The Planning Board elects its chairperson and vice-chairperson at its July meeting each year.
Mayor Pro Tem Matt Neal suggested at the Town Council meeting that a “rotation” of Planning Board members might be desirable to allow other interested residents, who do not apply for a position because of the perception that longtime members hold on to their seats, to serve. He said he has heard from a number of residents who would like to volunteer for the Planning Board.
Mr. Neal also suggested expanding the Planning Board to include more members.
The Town Council also might consider constituting a separate Board of Adjustment, instead of having the Planning Board members serve in this capacity, too. Southern Shores is the only Dare County town that does not have an independent Board of Adjustment.
If you are interested in volunteering for the Board, you are advised to submit an application to Mr. Haskett, who will keep it on file to consider when a vacancy arises. Mr. Haskett makes appointment recommendations to the Town Council based on the applications on file.
Heretofore, the Town has appointed those Board members whose terms are expiring to another three-year term if they wish to continue.
Besides the five Board member seats, there are two alternate positions. Serving as an alternate is a stepping stone to a Board appointment.
Among the objections raised by Town Council members to the placement of pool and mechanical equipment, generators, and small accessory structures five feet closer to side- and rear-yard property lines were unsightliness and noise. The Planning Board raised the same concerns.
The Town Council voted 4-1 at its meeting last Tuesday to reject a five-foot reduction in the minimum side- and rear-yard setbacks in the RS-1 residential district for the placement of pool and mechanical equipment, generators, and 144-square-foot accessory structures.
Mayor Pro Tem Matt Neal, a homebuilder, cast the dissenting vote.
The vote on Zoning Text Amendment 26-04 means setbacks in the primary residential district of Southern Shores remain 15 feet for the side-yard and 25 feet for the rear-yard.
ZTA 26-04 grew out of ZTA 26-01, which was submitted in March by a local general contractor who sought a reduction in the setback minimums so he could use a pool cabana that, as mistakenly constructed, infringed upon a setback by about eight inches.
The Town Council tabled ZTA 26-01 at its May 5 meeting and asked Town staff to prepare two more Zoning Text Amendments to address the factual circumstances raised by the contractor.
One, ZTA 26-03, would allow the Zoning Administrator—Wes Haskett, the Town’s Deputy Managing Editor/Planning Director—to approve up to a 10 percent reduction in “minimum yard requirements” when a good-faith, “honest mistake” by a builder has occurred.
The other, ZTA 26-04, altered ZTA 26-01 by adding generators to the equipment that could be placed five feet closer to a side- or rear-yard property line and reducing the size of allowable accessory structures from 150 square feet to 144 square feet.
The Beacon has extensively covered the language and the action taken by the Planning Board and the Town Council on all three of these ZTAs in recent posts. See The Beacon, 6/1/26, 5/25/26, 5/17/26, and 4/21/26.
All we can say is what a difference one person makes.
The Town Council held public hearings last Tuesday on ZTA 26-03 and ZTA 26-04, but not on ZTA 26-01, which was withdrawn by the contractor.
While Mr. Neal dissented from the majority opinion on ZTA 26-04, he joined the rest of his Council colleagues in approving the “honest-mistake” exception ZTA.
The Beacon will elaborate upon the Town Council’s discussion about the setbacks reduction proposal later in the week when we have more time.
Councilwoman Paula Sherlock, who was absent for the May meeting and is the one person to which we refer, led the opposition to ZTA 26-04, and Councilmen Mark Batenic and Rob Neilson quickly fell in behind her, after being rather noncommittal at the May meeting when ZTA 26-01 was discussed.
In May, it appeared inevitable that some version of the setbacks-reduction ZTA would be enacted, despite the Planning Board’s keen opposition.
Last week, as soon as Ms. Sherlock announced that she was a “no,” the pendulum swung against enactment. TBC.
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ZTA 26-02, EXCEPTIONS TO RECOMBINATION: The Town Council also unanimously approved ZTA 26-02, which excludes from mandatory recombination adjacent lots owned by the same ownership that are subject to development or redevelopment “when there is no proposed increase in the footprint of existing decks and/or stairs.” ZTA 26-02 amends Town Code section 36-132(2).
The primary reason the ordinance on mandatory recombination exists is because most of the land parcels sold and developed on Ocean Boulevard, Skyline Road, and other nearby beach-side roads were 100-foot-wide parcels consisting of two 50-foot-wide lots.
As we said before, Kitty Hawk Land Co. platted land in this manner so that buyers would feel like they were getting “two lots for the price of one.” According to developer and real estate agent David Stick in his memoirs, it was a salesmanship ploy. No buyers treated the parcels as two separate lots for development.
These sales occurred before the Town was incorporated, and the Town Council set minimum dimension standards for lots. The Town’s mandatory minimum lot width is 100 feet. The Town would like these 50-foot-wide lots to be “recombined” into one 100-foot-wide lot, so that the parcel “conforms” to the width requirement.
Recombination, however, is a costly and time-consuming effort, requiring a land survey (costing at least $1500) and preparation of a recombination plat; presentation of the recombination plat to the Town, which charges a fee of at least $100, for its approval; and registration of the recombination plat by the homeowner or his/her agent in the Register of Deeds office, which also charges a fee.
When homeowners are simply seeking building permits so that they can repair or replace decks and/or stairs on homes—many of them rental homes—that do not increase the development footprint, recombination constitutes an onerous burden. With the Town Council’s enactment of ZTA 26-02, that burden no longer exists.
FISCAL YEAR 2026-27 BUDGET: The Town Council also unanimously approved the Town Manager’s Recommended FY 2026-27 budget of $12,981,790. (See The Beacon, 6/1/26, for background.)
No one spoke during the public hearing on the budget.
As we previously observed, the Town will be buying a new fire engine. We now understand why Town Manager Cliff Ogburn wrote in his narrative accompanying the recommended budget that the fire engine will need to be under contract by July 2026, “with $1,255,000 payable in 2029.” (We quoted this remark in our 6/1/26 meeting preview.)
At Tuesday’s meeting, Mr. Ogburn explained that “it takes three years to take possession” of a new fire engine, so the Town plans to order the truck in July and receive it in 2029. The expense for the fire engine will be in the FY 2029-30 budget.
When we elaborate on the Town Council’s discussion about the setbacks ZTA that it defeated, we also will address some aspects of the new budget.
By Ann G. Sjoerdsma, The Southern Shores Beacon, 6/8/26
The seagrass-covered beach at Soundview Park on North Dogwood Trail.
The community seminar about seagrass accumulation on the soundfront scheduled today from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. has been canceled because of the illness of one of the presenters, according to a notice posted on the Town of Southern Shores website.
The event, which was co-sponsored by the towns of Southern Shores and Duck, will likely be rescheduled in early fall. In the meantime, according to the Town’s notice, the towns will work together to develop and share educational resources and to answer residents’ questions on websites and social media.
Please see The Beacon, 5/31/26, for more information.
Public hearings will be held at the Town Council’s meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) at 10 a.m., on the four Zoning Text Amendments that The Beacon reported upon recently and on the Town Manager’s recommended fiscal year 2026-27 budget of $12,981,790.
The meeting will be in the Pitts Center and can be live-streamed on the Town’s You Tube website.
Absent from the meeting agenda is any mention of beach nourishment.
The Town Council has delayed making a commitment to another dredging project in 2027 until after it receives a May update on the condition of the Southern Shores beaches from its coastal engineering consultant. The first nourishment project was performed in 2022-23.
(See The Beacon, 5/25/26 and 5/17/26, for background on the ZTAs, one of which is the original setbacks reduction proposal, ZTA 2026-01, which the Town Council tabled at its May 5 meeting.)
The budget total of $12,981,790 is an increase of $1,185,018 or 10.04 percent over the FY 2025-26 adopted budget. The Town budget is subject to amendment throughout the fiscal year.
Page 26 of Mr. Ogburn’s recommended budget enumerates the proposed expenses, by Town department or service. The five departments or services that have the highest line-item budgets include:
Streets, Bridges, [Beaches,] and Canals: $3,055,124
The Town Manager has added “beaches” to this category this year and included the last year of debt service on the 2022 beach nourishment project: It amounts to $1,119,534. Infrastructure costs are projected at $1.3 million, and a list of streets targeted for reconstruction is included in the report.
Police Department: $2,803,037
Salaries make up 57 percent of the police-department budget. Expenses for holiday and overtime pay, FICA, group health insurance, and the employee retirement account for another 28 percent.
Fire Department: $2,323,908
The Town continues to pay $314,020 annually in debt for the firehouse construction. It will buy a new fire engine in FY 26-27, but we are uncertain how much of the truck’s cost will be paid in this fiscal year. According to the Town Manager’s narrative accompanying the Fire Department budget, the fire engine will need to be under contract by July 2026, “with $1,255,000 payable in 2029.”
Salaries and other employee expenses account for about 46 percent of the department’s budget. The Town added eight full-time Fire Department employees in FY 2025-26 and plans to add four more full-time firefighters in FY 2027-28.
Administration Dept.: $1,860,276
Salaries and other expenses related to employees account for the lion’s share of the Administration Department’s costs.
Sanitation Services: $1,071,503
The major costs within sanitation services are, in descending order of amount:
Landfill tipping fee: $306,687
Recycling collection: $252,810
Residential collection: $226,000
Limb and branch removal: $199,006
BALANCING THE BUDGET: The recommended budget is being balanced with a transfer of $537,000 from the Unassigned Fund Balance, which must maintain $3.5 million for emergency and disaster relief, and $950,000 from the Capital Reserve Fund.
Projected fiscal-year revenues without these transfers are $11,494,783, of which $5,870.904 comes from ad valorem taxes and $3,932,856 from occupancy, sales, and land-transfer taxes.
ALSO ON THE AGENDA TOMORROW . . .
Introduction and ceremonial swearing in of Deputy Fire Chief Jim Davidson.
Presentation about the Door Saver Program, an initiative by the Southern Shores Fire Department to help emergency responders access homes quickly and safely without causing damage by forced entry.
An update on the Mid-Currituck Bridge by Mr. Ogburn, who is expected to encourage residents to write to Governor Stein, North Carolina’s U.S. senators, our U.S. Congress representatives, and other public officials for help in securing funding to build the bridge. A sample letter and addresses of public officials are included in the meeting packet.
By Ann G. Sjoerdsma, The Southern Shores Beacon, 6/1/26
The Southern Shores Beacon 