The Town Council gave Town Manager Cliff Ogburn permission at its meeting last night to cancel the two remaining Sunday left-turn bans at the U.S. Hwy. 158-South Dogwood Trail intersection after he presented traffic-volume data for late June and July that he said suggested the Town is not getting much “bang for the buck” on Sundays.

The Council also authorized Mr. Ogburn to install local-traffic-only barricades on Juniper Trail in Chicahauk and on Ocean Boulevard, at the Duck Road split, bringing the number of such barricades in use during the weekends to 10.

To arrive at his conclusion about Sunday, Mr. Ogburn used Wednesday as a typical day and compared Wednesday traffic-count data with Sunday traffic-count data.

For one Saturday/Sunday and Wednesday period in late June, he reported, 439 more vehicles cut through Wednesday on the residential roads than did on Sunday. In mid-July, only 26 more vehicles cut through on Sunday than did on Wednesday.

In a blog dated Wed., June 23, we wrote: “As of today, you can add Wednesday to the days when summer vacationer traffic cuts through Southern Shores on South Dogwood Trail.”

Was that the Wednesday when the volume of cut-through traffic on Wednesday exceeded the Sunday volume? If so, it was not a typical Wednesday. Beach conditions were poor, and Corolla was holding a two-day Under the Oaks Art Festival.

If it was the following Wednesday, June 30, it marked the beginning of a long July 4 weekend.

To give meaning to statistics that Mr. Ogburn called the “Sunday difference” in his data, context is definitely needed. The weather is always a factor in the traffic load.

We do not support the suspension of the left-turn ban on Sunday, and we expressed our opinion during public comments at the meeting. We also spoke afterward with Mr. Ogburn, who said he would make a “game-time decision.”

The cost of setting up and taking down the barrels blocking the left-turn lane on U.S. 158 is $3900 for the weekend, according to Mr. Ogburn. Please see our commentary at the end of this post for more about the cancellation.

Mr. Ogburn spoke at length last night about the Town’s traffic management this summer, and we asked him after the meeting about the use of gates to prevent cut-through traffic.

We will take up his presentation and his response to our question about gating later in this blog. First, we would like to cover other news.

(You may view the Town Council meeting videotape at (47) Southern Shores Town Council Meeting-August 3, 2021 – YouTube)

MARKETPLACE UPDATE: Planning Director/Deputy Town Manager Wes Haskett reported that Aston Properties, which owns the Marketplace and last month appeared before the Planning Board to discuss preliminary site redevelopment plans that would result in the demolition of a wing of the shopping center and the construction of a 24,000-square-foot Marshalls department store, has not yet filed a revised site plan with the Town.

(See The Beacon, 7/20/21, for background.) 

The Planning Board voiced significant concerns in its July 19 meeting about increased stormwater runoff into the canal behind the Marketplace as a result of the proposed construction and quizzed L. Karen Partee, Aston’s vice president of construction and development, about the company’s use of pervious pavement in the parking lot, which would be reconfigured to add 27 spaces.

Aston’s proposed redevelopment, which also includes the construction of a 6,000-square-foot retail space next to the Marshalls store, would cover at least 10,000 more square feet of ground area.

The Southern Shores Town Code permits a maximum 67 percent lot coverage of a “group development” in the commercial district, provided it dedicates more than 5 percent of the total lot coverage to permeable pavement. If it does not, then the maximum allowable lot coverage is 60 percent. (Code sec. 36-207.)

This ordinance was changed in 2016 at the request of Aston Properties, when it sought, and received, a conditional use permit (CUP) to redevelop the Marketplace with two drive-through businesses.

Five years ago, the Town Council approved a CUP, which the Planning Board unanimously recommended, that allowed Aston to have drive-through lanes at an expanded CVS/pharmacy and at Starbucks—both of which would be relocated.

Aston’s plan was to build a 7,210-square-foot four-tenant building, with a drive-through Starbucks, another restaurant, and two new retail spaces on Hwy. 158 between the Wells Fargo Bank and the main Marketplace entrance, and an expanded 13,225-square-foot CVS with a drive-through at the west end of the shopping center where Starbucks currently is.

The Town Council not only changed the commercial maximum lot coverage ordinance to accommodate Aston—by a 3-2 vote, with former Council members Fred Newberry and Gary McDonald objecting—it allowed drive-through businesses in Southern Shores for the first time.

According to the minutes of a Jan. 5, 2016 Town Council meeting about the three zoning text amendments (ZTAs) Aston sought for its redevelopment, Ms. Partee reportedly stated that “CVS/pharmacy and Starbucks are actively looking for another location if the changes [can]not be accommodated.”

The 2016 redevelopment was also supposed to update the look of the Marketplace and make other changes in order to keep the then-current tenants.

Aston’s CUP expired after two years. In 2018, when we did some research on what happened to the drive-through redevelopment plan, we learned only that a problem subsequently had arisen with the septic system at the Marketplace. We have not had time recently to follow this up.

Mr. Haskett said at last night’s meeting that Aston has “up until the week before the [Planning Board’s Aug. 16] meeting” to file its revised site plan and be scheduled on the Board’s meeting agenda.

Currently on the Board’s Aug. 16 agenda, Mr. Haskett said, is the consideration of “potential requirements” for produce stands in the commercial district and action on proposed Zoning Text Amendment 21-08, which rewrites the Town’s ordinance on signage. (See Code sec. 36-165.)

The Beacon will publish a preview of the Planning Board meeting next week.

BEACH NOURISHMENT UPDATE: Although he spent most of his detailed report to the Town Council on his lead-off topic of traffic management, Mr. Ogburn also announced that the construction documents for the 2022 beach nourishment project are ready, and will be on the Town website sometime today, and that a “pre-bid notice” went out last month.

The Town is holding a mandatory pre-bid meeting with dredging contractors on Aug. 12 and expects to award the construction contract on Sept. 7, he said.

Mr. Ogburn last night displayed an illustration showing that the “landward limit” of the sand fill project will be “all berms,” he said: No oceanfront property owner’s steps or beach walkovers will be affected.

Property owners will be able to see from the construction documents exactly what will occur at their individual properties, he said.

According to the Town Manager, a separate contract will be awarded for the installation of two rows of sand fences on the Town’s beaches from Fourth Avenue to the Southern Shores-Kitty Hawk line.

TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT TO DATE AND GOING FORWARD

Mr. Ogburn was very thorough in reviewing the traffic-mitigation measures that he has taken thus far and how they appear to have affected traffic flow on different cut-through streets, according to the number of vehicles that traveled along them.

The Town Manager effectively used a PowerPoint presentation, which began with photographs of vehicles idling bumper-to-bumper along residential roads. He asked the Town Council and other Southern Shores residents who do not experience daylong weekend congestion to imagine how they would feel if they did.

In addition to placing physical impediments along the South Dogwood-East Dogwood route, Mr. Ogburn said, he has been participating in a program called Partner with Waze for Cities that allows him to edit maps of Southern Shores on the weekends to show anyone who uses the Waze app that the cut-through streets are closed.

The vehicle-count data showed that the left-turn ban combined with local-traffic-only signs and barricades along the cut-through route have helped some of the people some of the time.

The vehicle counts show that residents on Hickory Trail, between East Dogwood and Hillcrest Drive, never get a break, but residents on Hillcrest Drive, Sea Oats Trail, and Wax Myrtle Trail—depending on the block—sometimes do.

Asked by Mayor Tom Bennett whether he thought the local-traffic-only barricades had improved conditions for residents, Mr. Ogburn replied, “It depends on who you ask.”

(The Beacon cited and discussed some of this data in a 7/15/21 blog.)

The Mayor also pointed out that he had not been in favor of the experiment with chains along the East Dogwood Trail median to prevent northbound vacationers from turning left on to Hillcrest Drive, Sea Oats Trail, and Wax Myrtle Trail because of the adverse impact on residents.

Mr. Ogburn said if he were to implement a similar mitigation scheme again, he would prepare better for it, both in terms of alerting residents and in terms of the equipment being used. The chains he used this time were made of plastic, not metal.

The Mayor said he would be in favor of a “combination of measures” to redirect traffic away from the residential roads, provided it had a “minimal effect” on residents.

Mr. Ogburn thoughtfully spoke of “trying to balance the burden” on residents, saying that the traffic, like water, has to go somewhere, when it is blocked. One resident’s decrease in traffic is another resident’s increase. He implicitly encouraged cooperation and understanding among all residents, if the Town is going to continue to “route traffic.”

The Town Manager also emphasized that drivers cannot be ticketed for “going around” the local-traffic-only barricades. People cannot be cited, he said, “simply because they have an out-of-state license plate,” despite what he has heard from discontented residents.

“Locals are getting frustrated by people going around the barricades,” Mr. Ogburn acknowledged.

The intent of the barricades, however, he said, is to deter a percentage of the northbound drivers from using a residential road. The Town knew many would be noncompliant.

Mr. Ogburn presented a proposal by “a citizen” that calls for blocking all travel at the Duck Road intersections of Sea Oats Trail, Eleventh Avenue, Hillcrest Drive, and Hickory Trail, so that everyone driving north on the cut-through route would have to use East Dogwood Trail to reconnect with Hwy. 12.  

The “no-exit” approach, as we call it, would employ “temporary cul de sacs” along Duck Road, Mr. Ogburn explained.

It did not garner any support from the Town Council, whose members offered no other ideas for traffic mitigation, when asked by the Town Manager.

In public comment, a resident of Circle Drive drew attention to the backup of cut-through traffic from the eastside Hickory Trail stop sign on Duck Road to Hickory’s intersection with Ocean Boulevard and then south.

(This backup is caused by northbound vacationers seeking to get around a short section of Duck Road by staying straight on Ocean Boulevard at the cell tower. Hence, the installation of the local-traffic-only barricade there, starting this weekend.)

Lionel Richard of Circle Drive also commented about speeding on this section of Ocean Boulevard, which is used by many pedestrians and has several blind curves. He said it would be “nice to see some police presence” on the road.      

The Beacon applauds Mr. Ogburn’s empathetic approach, his intervention with Waze, his use of local-traffic-only signs and barricades along the cut-through route, and his experiment with chains along the East Dogwood Trail median to prevent northbound vacationers from turning left on to the side streets.  

We also are encouraged that he will lead the Town Council in planning this fall for traffic mitigation measures next summer.

After the meeting, we asked Mr. Ogburn if gating certain streets to restrict access to residents and their guests was an option that he was considering in the future.

The Town Manager said he was concerned about the legality of excluding nonresidents from the Town’s roads, explaining that he had researched the question and had not gleaned a reliable or consistent answer from legal sources. No North Carolina case law exists on the matter as to whether such exclusion would be constitutional.

Mr. Ogburn concluded his traffic report by bringing up the Town’s application to the Dare County Tourism Bureau for a Tourism Impact Grant that would enable it to hire the company, StreetLight Data, to gather more information about the 11,000 vehicles that drive through Southern Shores on a summer weekend.

Principally by using drivers’ smartphones as sensors, StreetLight, he said, can “tell us where the cars are coming from, where they’re going, and how they’re getting there.” (See www.streetlightdata.com.)

A $50,000 grant from the Tourism Bureau, which the Town would not be required to match, would cover an arrangement with StreetLight, as well as other traffic-control expenses, Mr. Ogburn said.

CANCELING LEFT-TURN BAN ON SUNDAY

We based our objection to cancellation of the last two Sunday left-turn bans on our own observations and the testimonials and videotapes of Beacon readers of heavy traffic on Sunday afternoons on South and East Dogwood trails, starting around 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. We agree that Sunday morning cut-through traffic is usually relatively light.

We believe the Town’s vehicle-count data are limited in that they only express the total number of vehicles for the day on a given section of a street; they do not break down the vehicle count by the time of day and, thus, can miss traffic jams. Nor, as we noted above, do they provide context.

We also believe that Wednesday is a poor day of comparison. As Airbnb rentals increase, more northbound vacationers are arriving on Wednesday. That is what we have heard from readers who live on or near Duck Road, and what we have observed.

Finally, we believe it is discouraging when the Town retracts a promise about traffic mitigation upon which residents have relied. The next two Sundays fall on high-season weekends.

We have found in all of our dealings with the Town Manager that he listens to residents’ opinions and carefully deliberates upon his decisions. If he changes his mind about the Sunday turn prohibitions, we will let you know.

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, ©8/4/21

All people who attend the 5:30 p.m. meeting today of the Southern Shores Town Council must wear face masks, regardless of their COVID-19 vaccination status, according to a directive issued by the Town this morning.

As The Beacon reported last week, Dare County is considered a county of “high” transmission of COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In light of an uptick in COVID-19 cases nationwide–many of them of the more contagious Delta variant–the CDC issued on July 27 new guidance in which it advised all people, whether they are vaccinated against COVID-19 or not, to wear face masks in public indoor settings in counties of “high” or “substantial” transmission.

The CDC also has evaluated Currituck County as a county of high transmission.

(See The Beacon, 7/28/21, for background.)

We would advise you to bring an umbrella and raincoat, as well. The weather forecast calls for showers and thunderstorms.

The meeting will be held in the Pitts Center and live-streamed at https://www.youtube.com/ user/TownofSouthernShores. A videotape will be available for viewing on You Tube later.

For a preview of the agenda, see The Beacon, 7/29/21.

THE BEACON, 8/3/21

The Exploratory Committee for a Potential Branch Library in Northern Dare met Friday in Southern Shores to discuss “regrouping” and “moving forward again” with its project, according to committee members, who agreed they had a lot of “momentum” last year before the coronavirus pandemic up-ended both the committee’s and Dare County’s business agendas.

Said committee member Lilias Morrison, who has been the public face and spokesperson for the library, there was a “perceived broad base of support two years ago . . . not so now.

“We’ve lost the momentum that we had,” she added. 

Currently, Ms. Morrison said, the branch library, which would be centrally located in Southern Shores, but serve the Duck-Southern Shores-Kitty Hawk legislative district–District 3–does not “appear to have a majority of Dare County commissioners in favor” of it.

Commissioner Steve House, who lives in Southern Shores, represents District 3, and Commissioner Ervin Bateman, a Kitty Hawk resident, serves at-large. Districts 1 (Roanoke Island/Dare County Mainland) and 2 (Nags Head/Colington/Kill Devil Hills) each have two commissioners, and District 4, which is Hatteras Island, has one.

Early last year, after meeting with commissioners, the library committee had reason to believe that the project would be in Dare County’s fiscal year 2020-21 budget. But then the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the Dare County Board of Commissioners (DCBOC), as well as all Dare beach towns, tightened their fiscal belts.

In anticipation of a loss of revenue because of the pandemic—a loss that actually boomeranged into a banner year of unprecedented sales, occupancy, land-transfer, and other tax revenues—the DCBOC passed an FY 2020-21 General Fund budget of $107 million, with no property tax increase or reduction in services.

This June the DCBOC approved a FY 2021-22 General Fund budget well in excess of $112 million that also had no property tax increase or reduction in services.

We did not pore over the Dare County budget, which is online, item-by-item, but we did note that the allocation for the Dare County library system is about $1.1 million, less than 1 percent of the General Fund expenses.

There currently are three libraries in the system: They are located in Manteo, Kill Devil Hills, and Hatteras.

The Northern Dare library committee last year sought a commitment from DCBOC of $150,000 to $200,000 for refurbishment of a building on Juniper Trail in Southern Shores that TowneBank has agreed to rent for $1/year to house the library, and $150,000 to $200,000 per year for the next five years in operating costs.

At Friday’s meeting, Ms. Morrison spoke of the northern beaches, especially Duck and Southern Shores, as being “under-served” by Dare County’s “life services,” including recreational services.

The so-called “northern” division of the Dare County Parks & Recreation Dept. is in Kill Devil Hills. (There is a county-run dog park in Kitty Hawk, however.) The two other county Parks & Recreation divisions are the Roanoke Island/Mainland Division, which is in Manteo, and the Hatteras Island Division in Buxton.

We support a library or other educational center in Northern Dare that would serve as what committee member Loretta Michael referred to as a “vibrant meeting place and gathering place,” not just “a place to check out books.”

Committee members have a broad vision for the library: Ms. Morrison Friday touted “continuing education and the idea of lifelong learning,” while Town Councilman Jim Conners, who serves as the committee’s advisory member, spoke of research facilities and computer access for people who currently lack it. 

We can envision a library/community center providing meeting space for groups; WiFi, copy, and fax services for the public; preschool and other children’s educational programs; local history displays and collections; continuing studies classes and lectures; as well as a collection of books and other reading materials.

As the towns of Duck, Southern Shores, and Kitty Hawk have grown in population, so has residents’ desire for quality-of-life amenities that are public and closer to home.   

The library committee has done a lot of work in terms of assessing the public interest in a library/community center, bringing the project into focus, and promoting it at the county level, but in many respects it is starting over.

We would like to know what you think. We welcome your comments.

REMEMBER: The Southern Shores Town Council meets Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. in the Pitts Center. For a preview of the meeting, see The Beacon, 7/29/21.

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 8/1/21

Hi, folks:

I’m getting personal messages and emails from residents about today’s cut-thru traffic. For that reason, I am publishing this post so that folks can share their comments with others and document traffic conditions.

After spending my morning writing the update on new COVID-19 cases in Dare County, I hit the street with my dog and saw what I’ve seen throughout the summer when the left-turn ban at U.S. Hwy. 158 and South Dogwood Trail and the local-traffic-only barriers have been in effect, to wit:

The flow of traffic traveling north on South Dogwood Trail and turning right on East Dogwood Trail is steady and constant, albeit of a lower volume than I see when the left turn at U.S. Hwy. 158 is permissible.

The overwhelming majority of northbound drivers do not stop at the stop sign at South Dogwood-East Dogwood, and many pick up speed on East Dogwood as they race across the Dick White Bridge. Some are already speeding when they careen through the stop sign.

The overwhelming majority then turn left on Hickory Trail, despite the local-traffic-only barrier, and even, sometimes, when a vehicle is coming from the opposite direction.

I received reports last weekend of a fender bender at the East Dogwood-Hickory intersection caused by a driver trying to turn left at Hickory Trail into oncoming traffic, then backing up and colliding with the vehicle behind him/her. I saw a narrow aversion of a head-on collision earlier today when a northbound driver turned left into an oncoming car and barely managed to skim past it.

Oncoming traffic on Hickory Trail is not clearly visible to drivers stopped at the eastbound East Dogwood Trail stop sign. I know. I’ve made that turn hundreds of times in the past 23 years, and I always stop and take it slowly. Sometimes oncoming drivers will take both lanes of the road, casually assuming that that they have the road to themselves–or having just given a wide berth to a dog walker.

Please feel free to add to today’s conversation. Enjoy your weekend.

Ann, 7/31/21

In a striking departure from a practice it initiated in mid-May to report new COVID-19 cases on a weekly, rather than a daily basis, the Dare County Dept. of Health and Human Services yesterday reported 103 new COVID-19 cases in just the past three days.

Of those 103, 65 (63 percent) are Dare County residents, and 38 (37 percent) are nonresidents.

These percentages are similar to those derived from the July 20-July 27 new case total of 83 that the DCDHHS reported in its weekly update on Tuesday. Fifty-one, or 61 percent, of Tuesday’s new cases were Dare County residents, and 32, or 39 percent, were nonresidents.   

(See The Beacon, 7/28/21.)

Since Tuesday’s update, another Dare County resident has been hospitalized for the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, according to the DCDHHS COVID-19 dashboard, bringing the total to two persons. A nonresident also has been transferred from Dare County and hospitalized.

On 7/28/21, we reported that, after four consecutive weeks of COVID-19 case increases, Dare County is now in the “high” red category of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s level of community transmission of COVID-19.

According to the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker, Currituck County is also an area of high community transmission of the disease.

Although a genomic sequencing analysis has yet to confirm that the highly contagious and more severe Delta variant of COVID-19 is in Dare County—at least, not as reported—the DCDHHS has long maintained that it is “prevalent.”

“Epidemiological data,” according to the DCDHHS’s July reports, indicate that both the State of North Carolina and Dare County are at the beginning of a “surge” in COVID-19 infections, driven by the Delta variant.

The N.C. Dept. of Health and Human Services reported more than 3,000 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday (3,268) and Friday (3,199), according to The Raleigh News and Observer—higher daily case totals than have been recorded in months.

The NCDHHS updates its COVID-19 metrics dashboard Monday through Friday.   

We reported earlier this week that 51—or 61 percent—of the people who tested positive for COVID-19 in Dare County during the week of July 20-27 were between the ages of 25 and 49; and all but 13 (16 percent) were under the age of 50. Only three were age 65 or older.

Yesterday’s age-data breakdown differs markedly from this analysis, in that only 47 percent—48 of the 103—of the new cases were of people between the ages of 25 and 49, and 26 of them, or 25 percent, were age 50 or older. Nine of the 103 cases were people age 65 or older. Of those, only two were Dare County residents.

The DCDHHS has released a 7 ½-minute video in which DCDHHS Director Sheila Davies talks with local teenagers about the COVID-19 vaccine. See (41) Dare County COVID 19 Update July 28, 2021 – YouTube

CDC RESPONSE TO NATIONWIDE CASE SURGE 

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky yesterday squarely blamed unvaccinated people who have refused to wear face masks for the recent uncontrolled spread of the Delta variant throughout the country, according to The News & Observer.

“Our guidance in May said that fully vaccinated people could take off their masks safely, and that unvaccinated people should continue to wear them,” Dr. Walensky said in a telephone interview with Michael Wilner, the Senior National Security and White House Correspondent for McClatchy, which owns the Raleigh newspaper.

“Unfortunately, that’s not how it played out. Unvaccinated people took off their masks as well. And that’s what led us to where we are today.”

About 80 percent of the counties nationwide that have the most disease, Dr. Walensky told the McClatchy reporter, have less than 40 percent of their residents vaccinated.

With new scientific data suggesting that vaccinated people can spread COVID-19 as easily as those who have not been vaccinated, the CDC last week advised fully vaccinated people to wear masks indoors in public places if they are in a community, such as Dare County, with a high or “substantial” rate of viral transmission.

In light of this change in guidance, Dr. Walensky stressed in her interview with Mr. Wilner that the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines are still working at “90-percent protection against symptomatic disease.”

This means, she said, that “if you know 10 people who’ve been vaccinated, one of them may be a breakthrough case.”

It has long been reported that the breakthrough case would experience milder symptoms than an infected unvaccinated person would.

According to a recent study in “The England Journal of Medicine” cited by Dr. Walensky that was based on Israeli trial data, a number of vaccinated people who experienced breakthrough cases actually had suffered from “long COVID,” which is characterized by symptoms that last for weeks or months and can come and go.

We believe it is safe to say that data about breakthrough cases are still emerging.

The CDC is continuously examining data from clinical trials worldwide, from vaccine manufacturers, and from the United States’ international partners and is likely to change its guidance again as the science evolves.

Dr. Walensky declined to predict in her interview how long Americans will be advised to wear masks going forward.

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 7/31/21

The Southern Shores Exploratory Committee for a Potential Branch Library will meet tomorrow at 5:30 p.m., and the Southern Shores Town Council will meet next Tuesday (Aug. 3) at 5:30 p.m., both meetings to be held in the Pitts Center behind Town Hall.

For the Town Council’s meeting agenda and packet, see https://mccmeetings.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/soshoresnc-pubu/MEET-Packet-20255cafebd346dca48de4d302453af7.pdf.

The Council’s meeting will be live-streamed at https://www.youtube.com/ user/TownofSouthernShores. A videotape will be available for viewing on You Tube after the meeting.

Before the coronavirus pandemic up-ended local government last year, the library exploratory committee had made great strides in organizing and seeking Dare County funding for a branch library in Southern Shores.

According to committee member/spokesperson Lilias Morrison, who updated the Town Council on the status of the venture at its June meeting, TowneBank’s offer to rent for $1.00/year a building that it owns on Juniper Trail to house the library still stands.

The committee will be assessing the library project at tomorrow’s meeting, which is open to all members of the public.

As for the Town Council, its regular August meeting is usually light on business, and next Tuesday’s session is no exception. Most noteworthy on the agenda is Town Attorney Cliff Ogburn’s report, which will include updates on:

• the cut-through traffic and mitigation efforts;
• the 2022 beach nourishment project;
• an application for a Building Resilient Infrastructures and Communities (BRIC) grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); and
• an application for a future tourism impact grant from the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau.

We are particularly pleased that the Town Manager will be discussing a possible BRIC grant application. We support all hazard-mitigation efforts that shift some of the financial burden for disaster-risk reduction and shoreline management away from local taxpayers and that promote partnerships within and among local communities.

BRIC is a new FEMA pre-disaster hazard mitigation program. We first heard about it from mayoral candidate Rod McCaughey, who informed us that the Town of Duck had received a $1.8 million BRIC grant.

According to the FEMA website, as of today, Duck’s “living shoreline and N.C. 12 resiliency” project was “selected for further review.” The grant, which is reportedly for $1,849,197.37, has not been awarded yet, according to FEMA’s online update.

Duck’s resiliency project was described in the spring/summer 2021 issue of the town’s newsletter, “Duck Tales,” as “infrastructure improvements in a quarter-mile stretch of Duck Road adjoining the Currituck Sound in the northern section of Duck Village.”

The “main components” of the project, according to “Duck Tales,” include a “living shoreline (marsh restoration/shoreline stabilization), sidewalk/bike lanes, and elevation of Duck Road (with associated stormwater management improvements) in that area.”

For more about the BRIC grants, see https://www.fema.gov/grants/mitigation/building-resilient-infrastructure-communities.

QUICK ACTION TO PREVENT POSSIBLE SUBDIVISION TREND

The Town Council also will hold a public hearing on a Town Code Amendment (TCA) that aspires to put the finishing touches on quick action taken by the Council to prevent the possibility of allowing through subdivision the creation of a new buildable lot that does not have frontage on a public street.

At its June 1 meeting, the Town Council conditionally approved a preliminary subdivision plat submitted by the homeowners at 279 Hillcrest Drive to subdivide their single large lot into two lots, the second of which would be behind the first, and would not front on a public or private street. 

Town Code sec. 36-95, which pertains to lot access, allows a lot to be developed provided it has 30 feet of frontage on a public road, private street, or an easement. (The wording of this zoning ordinance is phrased in the negative and is not easy to understand.)

According to this ordinance, therefore, the homeowners at 279 Hillcrest Drive could subdivide their property in a back-to-front fashion, rather than side-to-side, if they created 30 feet of easement frontage for the back end of the property, which is currently inaccessible by road.

In addition to conditionally approving the homeowners’ preliminary plat in June, the Town Council asked the Planning Board to recommend a Town Code Amendment that would eliminate the possibility of subdividing property in such a manner as to create lots that only front on easements.

In its first attempt at amending the Code, the Planning Board sought to eliminate the word “easement” from a reference in sec. 36-95 to frontage on “a public right-of-way or a private street or easement.” It did this through Zoning Text Amendment 21-07, which it unanimously recommended to the Town Council.

The Town Council took no action on ZTA 21-07 at its July meeting, however, because, after further review, it was determined that the ZTA would “render existing lots with frontage on an easement nonconforming,” according to Planning Director/Deputy Town Manager Wes Haskett’s report for next Tuesday’s meeting. 

In place of ZTA 21-07, the Planning Board came back with TCA 21-06, which will be the subject of the Council’s hearing on Tuesday. This amendment changes general requirements within the Town’s subdivision ordinance, so that all new lots created by subdivision must front upon a public road. Neither private roads nor access easements are acceptable.

TCA 21-06 also clarifies that proposed roads in subdivisions that are “obviously in alignment with existing roads shall be given the same name” and that no new road name can duplicate an existing name or be phonetically similar to an existing name.

While The Beacon applauds the Planning Board and the Town Council for acting quickly to “nip in the bud” a possible subdivision trend toward creating buildable lots that only front on easements, we are not comfortable with leaving the lot-access ordinance, sec. 36-95, as it is. We would clean it up.

PUBLIC COMMENT

There will be two public-comment periods during the Town Council meeting during which each speaker may speak for three minutes.

The first period occurs after the staff reports and before the Council takes up “old” and “new” business, and the second occurs after all business has been concluded, shortly before adjournment.

The Town Council is no longer accepting emailed or mailed public comments, only comments presented in person.

To speak, you must sign up on a comment sheet in the back of the meeting room before Mayor Tom Bennett calls the meeting to order.

There are times when the Mayor will allow people to speak even though they have not signed up in advance, but it is always a good idea to arrive early and get your name on the comments sheet to be certain of your opportunity. 

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 7/29/21

The number of new COVID-19 cases last week in Dare County increased by 54 percent over the previous week, as the Dare County Dept. of Health and Human Services yesterday reported 83 new cases, 32 of them—or 39 percent—nonresidents.

The DCDHHS also reported a positivity rate of 13 percent for the week of July 20-27, up from 12.1 percent during the previous week.

(See The Beacon, 7/21/21 and 7/14/21, for previous reports.)

After four consecutive weeks of COVID-19 case increases, Dare County is now in the “high” red category of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s level of community transmission of the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Also yesterday, the CDC advised all vaccinated individuals in an area of “substantial” or “high” transmission of COVID-19 to wear a mask indoors in public areas in order to “maximize protection from the Delta variant and prevent possibly spreading it to others.”

Although the Delta variant of the virus has not been determined by genomic sequencing to be infecting people in Dare County, the DCDHHS considers it to be “prevalent” here.

According to the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker, both Dare and Currituck counties are areas of high community transmission of COVID-19.

(See the CDC’s COVID tracker to ascertain the level of community transmission in any county in the country: CDC COVID Data Tracker. Counties reporting sufficient data are rated as high, substantial, moderate, or low in transmission level.)

The DCDHHS broke down the COVID-19 data for July 20-27 as follows:

*Sixty-three of the 83 cases (76 percent) were symptomatic;

*Forty-eight (58 percent) acquired the virus by direct contact with unvaccinated people who tested positive for COVID-19;

*Twenty-six (31 percent) did not know how they acquired the virus;

*Twenty-two (27 percent) were breakthrough cases (five had the J&J vaccine; 11 had Moderna; and six had Pfizer-BioNTech)

The DCDHHS said in its report that since the week of April 12, there have been 50 identified breakthrough cases in Dare County—about 10 percent of the total number (481) of positive cases—most of whom had mild symptoms or were asymptomatic, and none of whom was hospitalized.

The 10 percent figure is substantially higher than the estimated 1 percent of breakthrough cases among the total number of positive COVID-19 cases nationwide, as reported by the CDC.

According to data posted yesterday on the DCDHHS’s dashboard, 51—or 61 percent—of the people who tested positive for COVID-19 locally during the week of July 20-27 were between the ages of 25 and 49. All but 13 were under the age of 50. Only three were age 65 or older.

The DCDHHS continues to stress that epidemiological evidence indicates that both the State of North Carolina and Dare County are at the beginning of a “surge” in COVID-19 infections.

Besides getting vaccinated, the DCDHHS advises people to protect themselves by limiting “prolonged direct contact with unvaccinated individuals who do not live in your household, wearing a mask when in large crowds, especially indoors, and washing your hands frequently with soap and water or using hand sanitizer.”

It also echoes the CDC’s advice, saying that “given the high level of community transmission in Dare County, . . . vaccinated individuals may also want to wear a mask when they are gathered among unvaccinated individuals or in an environment where vaccination status is unknown.”

Dare currently has 59 active cases of COVID-19 infection, according to the DCDHHS. One person is hospitalized with what the health department describes as “complications” of the disease.

For the full DCDHHS weekly report, see DCDHHS COVID-19 Update #105 | Tuesday, July 27, 2021 | Coronavirus | Dare County, NC (darenc.com).

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, ©7/28/21

We are receiving emails from readers that the cut-through traffic on the residential roads today is nightmarish, despite the left-turn ban at U.S. 158 and South Dogwood Trail and the “local-traffic-only” barriers at entrances to Hickory Trail, Hillcrest Drive, Sea Oats Trail, and Wax Myrtle Trail.

Please feel free to post your observations and comments about the traffic here, so that we may preserve a real-time record of the road conditions.

We welcome comments from people who live along the South Dogwood cut-through route, as well as people who live in Chicahauk, Sea Crest Village, and those who live in the “low-traffic area” of Ocean Boulevard, which is the stretch of road between the cell tower and Hickory Trail.

Heck, we would like to hear from everyone. How’s your Saturday going?

Thank you!

THE BEACON, 7/24/21

Dear Southern Shores Beacon Readers:

Last Saturday I reported upon my candidacy for the Southern Shores Town Council, along with my two opponents’, in a blog post that led with the news of former SSCA President Rod McCaughey filing for Mayor. I promised in that post to issue a statement this week. This is that statement.

(See The Beacon, 7/17/21.)

I started The Beacon in April 2018 because I did not believe people who live and work, and otherwise have an interest, in Southern Shores were being adequately informed by the then-Town Council or the then-Town Hall. I believed the information flow between the Town government and the public was insufficient, and that transparency in government action was often lacking.

I also strongly believed, and still do, that the public deserves a press watchdog to ensure accountability by local government officials in both their decision-making and behavior and in the processes by which these officials govern.

While I would like all voters to be informed about this year’s Town Council race, I have a strong bias in favor of one candidate. I cannot be truly objective in evaluating the candidates, nor do I wish to use The Beacon as a political tool for myself. It exists because of me, but it also has its own identity.

For these reasons, I will not be covering the Town Council election in The Beacon.

You will be able to learn about my candidacy and me through a campaign website, gatherings at which you may meet me and ask questions that are important to you, a public debate with my opponents (assuming a COVID-19 resurgence does not force its cancellation), and other communications.

My opponents will similarly manage their campaigns as they see fit. I will not run a negative campaign and seek to discredit them or their candidacies. Anyone who runs for public office in order to represent the interests of a constituency is to be commended.

I do anticipate, however, reporting in The Beacon, whenever possible, upon events involving the two mayoral candidates, Mr. McCaughey and Mayor Pro Tem Elizabeth Morey, and making an endorsement of one of the candidates. I also aspire to sending each a questionnaire from The Beacon to solicit his/her viewpoints.

We have many issues to address in Southern Shores as the town continues to grow and change and our quality of life is sometimes challenged. I will not politick about them here, but I hope you will join me in conversations elsewhere during the three months leading up to Nov. 2.

Thank you very much. 

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, ©7/23/21

Dare County today reported a 35-percent increase in new COVID-19 cases for the past week over the previous week’s new-case total—from 40 cases to 54 cases—marking the third consecutive week that the number of people who tested positive locally for the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus has increased.

The percentage of people who tested positive for COVID-19 among the total tests administered during the week of July 13-20—the so-called positivity rate—also increased, rising to 12.1 percent from the previous week’s 11.3 percent.

(See The Beacon, 7/14/21.)

Dare County residents accounted for 47, or 87 percent, of the 54 new cases, and seven nonresidents accounted for the remaining 13 percent, according to an online update posted today by the Dare County Dept. of Health and Human Services, which also announced two County-sponsored “back-to-school” vaccination clinics next week for persons age 12 and older.

The County will administer the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which has been approved for use in adolescents and requires two doses, the second one of which is given three weeks after the first.

“Epidemiological data,” the DCDHHS said in today’s update, indicate that both the State of North Carolina and Dare County are “at the beginning of another surge in COVID-19 infections.” The DCDHHS did not elaborate further on this data, however.

The Delta variant of the virus, which is “significantly more contagious” than other variants and is marked by the onset of different symptoms, “is believed to be prevalent in Dare County,” the DCDHHS said, although prevalence has not yet confirmed. (See The Beacon, 7/14/21.)

In last week’s update, the health department said that the results of genomic sequencing of local virus samples sent to the State for analysis had not yet been received. The DCDHHS did not report any sequencing results today.

Of the 54 new COVID-19 cases, according to the DCDHHS, 80 percent were symptomatic; 94 percent acquired the virus by direct contact with people who were not vaccinated and tested positive for COVID-19; and 17 percent were “breakthrough cases,” meaning they acquired the virus despite being vaccinated against it.

Of the nine breakthrough cases, three people received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine; three received the Moderna vaccine; and three received the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.    

So far, 28 breakthrough cases have been reported in Dare County since “the onset of providing vaccinations,” the DCDHHS said in its update.

As was true of the previous week’s 40 new COVID-19 cases, this week’s 54 cases run the gamut in age—from the 17-and-under age group to the 65-and-older age group—although the majority (37 of 54) were under age 50.

Eight people age 17-and-under, all residents, tested positive for COVID-19, as did four Dare residents who are age 65-and-older.

The DCDHHS continues to promote vaccinations to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and reports that 60 percent of Dare’s population was fully vaccinated as of July 18. It reported the same figure last week: Fewer than 100 more locals became fully vaccinated during the week of July 12-18.

The DCDHHS will offer two back-to-school vaccination clinics this month, the first on Thursday, July 29, from 2:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in Buxton, and the second in Nags Head from 2:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

To register for an appointment at one of the clinics and for more information, see COVID-19 Vaccine | Dare County, NC (darenc.com)

You may access the DCDHHS’s update here: DCDHHS COVID-19 Update #104 | Tuesday, July 20, 2021 | Coronavirus | Dare County, NC (darenc.com)

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 7/20/21