SCARBOROUGH – The Scarborough Town Council last week put off a decision on whether to extend off-season street parking at Higgins Beach after some residents complained about how surfers behave at the beach.

The council is considering allowing street parking for six more weeks, including the last two weeks of September and all of May. But at their Jan. 20 meeting, councilors were met by residents worried that the proposed parking rules could make worse the problems they said they’ve seen at the beach.

However, Janice Parente, a representative from a local surfing group, said the bad behavior comes from just a few surfers. The remaining surfers who treat the beach with respect should not be punished for the actions of a few, she said.

No parking is allowed on the streets of Higgins Beach in the summer, but street parking currently is permitted from Oct. 1 to April 1. The was considering extending off-season street parking to run from Sept. 15 to May 1, to make parking regulations at Higgins Beach consistent with other town beaches.

At the meeting, residents provided councilors with photographs of surfers disrobing in public view, and said they and other visitors create parking problems at the beach, according to Bill Donovan, a beach resident.

Donovan said that on a day with good surf, about 100 vehicles are lined up on streets along the beach during the course of the day. “That’s the kind of interest that the beach draws from the surfing community,” he said.

He said some beach visitors park overnight and some strip down to the buff to change when putting on or taking off their wetsuits.

Residents presented the council with a petition signed by about 70 neighbors asking the council not to extend the off-season dates during which street parking is allowed, Donovan said

The council ended up delaying a decision on the off-season parking proposal, Town Manager Tom Hall said. He said councilors decided to wait to have the discussion about off-season parking until later in the spring, when the town hopes to acquire a private parking lot at the beach and turn it into public parking.

However, the delay dismayed Parente, chairwoman of the board of the Surfrider Foundation Northern New England Chapter, and surfers and other beach visitors who support the increased beach access the lengthened off-season street parking would provide.

Parente said this week that most surfers are law-abiding and that the council let “off-topic, anti-surfer sentiment” influence a policy decision about parking at the beach.

Parente said it was not fair to penalize all beach goers for the actions of a few. She said that if some surfers are disobeying traffic regulations or breaking other laws, the answer is better law enforcement, not decreased public access.

“The surf community is made up of hard-working, tax-paying, enviro(nmentally)-conscious, law-abiding citizens,” Parente said. “Like any other group we have that small 1 percent minority that need further consideration.”

She said the council’s decision to table the off-season parking proposal ends up “persecuting the general beach-using community for the acts of a very small minority.”

However, Donovan praised the council’s decision and said he hopes it will lead to regulations in which public access is reconciled “with an atmosphere in the neighborhood that’s respectful.”

He said residents support the town’s planned purchase of the private parking lot, and hope that bathrooms and changing rooms can be installed to accommodate the public.

Parente said her group also supports the parking lot plan and is, in fact, trying to raise $100,000 to help with providing bathrooms and other amenities. However, she said, “at the same time we don’t want to see any net loss of on-street parking,” which often is closer to the beach than the parking lot.

The council did end up approving one parking change at Higgins that both residents and beach visitors agreed with.

It voted to ban parking at any time on a two-block stretch of Bayview Avenue between Houghton and Pearl streets.

Because of the recent addition of a sidewalk, that section of the street has narrowed so much that emergency vehicles can’t get through if cars are parked there, town officials said.

Parente said her group supported that parking change for public safety reasons, but hoped the loss of that on-street parking would be made up for by the extension of off-season parking at the beach.

Copy the Story Link