Beach nourishment is in the forefront of the Town Council’s meeting Tuesday, at 10 a.m., as coastal engineering consultant Ken Willson returns to present the results of the latest Southern Shores beach monitoring and the Council decides whether to contract for pre-construction services for a 2027 renourishment project, which it has yet to approve.
The meeting will be held in the Pitts Center. You may access the meeting agenda and packet of materials here:
Also on the meeting agenda are:
- Town Manager Cliff Ogburn’s presentation of the details of a Bicycle and Pedestrian Planning Grant awarded by the N.C. Dept. of Transportation;
- Continued discussion among Council members of setback reductions for auxiliary structures, as requested by Mayor Pro Tem Matt Neal; and
- Consideration by the Council of term limits for Planning Board members, also requested by Mr. Neal.
BEACH MONITORING
The beach monitoring report by Mr. Willson’s firm, Coastal Protection Engineering (CPE), is not in the meeting packet, for the public to peruse, as is customarily the case. If Mr. Willson does not give the extensive report to the Council until Tuesday, members will not have time to analyze it in any detail.
It is well known that the Outer Banks beaches have their greatest sand volume (accumulation)—a key measurement of a beach’s condition—during the summer months, peaking in July and August. This is because of strong seasonal wind patterns that push sand from the bottom of the ocean onto the beaches.
Last year’s beach monitoring project revealed that the sand volume on the Southern Shores beaches had increased far beyond anyone’s expectations.
“We have more sand on the beach today,” Mr. Willson told the Town Council at its Aug. 5, 2025 meeting, “than we did at the completion” of the beach nourishment project three years ago.
According to Mr. Willson, the “cumulative” naturally gained sand volume on the Southern Shores beaches—discounting any effect from the beach nourishment the Town performed in 2022—“is greater than what we had intended to place there in 2022.”
(See The Beacon, 8/24/25; see also, The Beacon, 12/19/23: “Southern Shores Beaches Gain Nearly 400,000 Cubic Yards in Sand in Past Year—From Natural Accretion, Not Beach Nourishment, Consultant Tells Town Council.”)
CPE moved its usual June monitoring to the springtime this year in order to provide the Council with data before it decides whether to go forward with renourishment next year.
The Council, thus, will not know on Tuesday what the Southern Shores beaches’ peak condition will be this summer. This is an unfortunate disadvantage.
SETBACK REDUCTION CONT.
The Town Council voted 4-1 at its June meeting 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.
Mr. Neal, a homebuilder, cast the dissenting vote.
The Council’s vote on Zoning Text Amendment (ZTA) 26-04 meant that setbacks in the primary residential district of Southern Shores (RS-1) would remain 15 feet for the side-yard and 25 feet for the rear-yard.
The Beacon extensively reported on action taken in the Planning Board and the Town Council on the proposed setback reduction, which was supported by local builders.
(See The Beacon, 6/8/26, for a summary.)
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 eight inches. The contractor ultimately withdrew his application when he learned that the Town Council planned to enact an “honest mistake” exception to setbacks.
The honest mistake exception, drafted as ZTA 26-03 and passed unanimously by the Town Council last month, allows 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.
Town Councilwoman Paula Sherlock led the opposition to ZTA 26-04, recounting for the meeting her own experience in owning a house next to a vintage flat top that was subsequently demolished and replaced by a seven-bedroom, 5,825-square-foot oceanfront “estate” with a swimming pool. (The Beacon obtained the number of bedrooms and house size from Dare County Parcel Data on Dare County-GIS.)
The 15-foot side-yard setback, she said, gave her much-needed protection from noise, outdoor lighting, and equipment and accessory structure encroachment.
Town Councilmen Mark Batenic and Rob Neilson related their own stories about actions taken by their neighbors that increased noise in their home environments and obstructed their properties’ sight lines.
In a statement clearly supported by the two of them, Ms. Sherlock concluded: “You buy a piece of property and you know what the rules are. These are the restrictions and that’s what you have to live with.”
Mr. Neal took a different approach, saying that the setback change was coming “from our homeowners” and that the setbacks that exist now are not necessarily logical or modern.
“Why can’t I have a greenhouse in the rear-yard setback” of my property? he asked.
The Beacon takes issue with Mr. Neal’s observation that the request for reductions came from homeowners, unless he means new homeowners who are building 4,000-square-foot homes with swimming pools.
Historically, the side-yard setback for development on lots in the residential district was 10 feet, a reflection of the reality that beach homes were modest—either flat tops or beach boxes with three or four bedrooms—and did not have back-yard swimming pools.
The Town Council increased the setback to 15 feet after the McMansion movement started in Corolla in the 1990s. The movement toward big-is-better, and the bigger-the-better, started north of us.
“I don’t want the town to look like Nags Head or Kill Devil Hills,” Mr. Batenic said at last month’s Town Council meeting.
It was, in fact, looking like Corolla that the Town Council feared when it mandated 15-foot side setbacks.
The Council also limited the number of bedrooms in a house to seven, a restriction that eventually became illegal when the N.C. General Assembly prohibited it, along with other building restrictions, in 2015. (See The Beacon, 10/11/18; the enabling legislation was Senate Bill 25.)
In January 2016, the Town Council, by a 3-2 vote, capped house size at 6000 square feet, a move that defeated the construction by SAGA of an oceanfront “wedding destination” or “event house” with a ballroom and 25 bedrooms at 64 Ocean Blvd.
Councilwoman Sherlock would have moved if this development had been permitted. It would have destroyed what Mr. Batenic referred to as the “uniqueness” of Southern Shores, in particular, its open space.
Mayor Elizabeth Morey said very little during the discussion of ZTA 26-04. At the May meeting, she seemed inclined to support the local builders’ position that setbacks should be reduced for the limited purposes cited in the ZTA.
Last month, she said only that 15-foot side-yard setbacks should be left “alone,” but that a change to the rear-yard setback might be possible.
According to the Agenda Item Summary in the Meeting Packet for the setbacks discussion: “There was agreement [among Council members] that the matter be revisited in July to explore whether any narrower consensus might exist, particularly regarding rear yard setbacks and smaller auxiliary structures.”
Stay tuned.
BUDGET POSTSCRIPT
In our 6/8/26 report, we indicated that we would like to follow up on some matters pertinent to the recently approved Fiscal Year 2026-27 budget for the Town.
Regretfully, we ran out of time to do so, but we still would like to say here that one of the Council members asked an excellent question of Mr. Ogburn during the budget hearing, to wit: How do the FY 2025-26 expenses of each department compare with the approved FY 2026-27 budgets of each one?
There was a time, before Mayor Morey’s tenure, when public budget meetings were held in the Pitts Center and the Town Council had the opportunity to question the heads of the Town departments—police, fire, public works, administration, planning—about their proposed expenses.
The Town Manager is the Budget Officer and is legally responsible for preparing the budget and capital program, but previous mayors thought it advisable to have open budgetary discussions with the decision-makers before the June budget hearing.
If the Town Council has any input in the budget, it is not clear to us from the Council’s budget hearing.
The answer to the question posed by the Council member should have been known to all Council members because they are responsible for review and oversight of the budget. The proposed budget that Mr. Ogburn published on the Town website contained this information.
The only Town department whose expenses in FY 2026-27 declined from the previous fiscal year is Public Works, Mr. Ogburn replied, and that occurred only because the Town Manager scaled back PW’s request.
By Ann G. Sjoerdsma, The Southern Shores Beacon, 7/5/26
The Southern Shores Beacon 