Ocean Boulevard – IOP’s only Sacred Street

At the November 13, 2014 City Council meeting a motion was made to open up Ocean Blvd to visitor parking.  Currently no parking is permitted on any part of Ocean Blvd, a remnant from years past when there were no houses on the ocean side of the street and the side of the road was very sandy making it easy for cars to get stuck.  Thus the state made the road off limits to parking in the right-of-way.

Fast forward and we now have the road entirely built out with homes.  There are 148 homes on Ocean Blvd and 54 of them (36.5%) have rental licenses.  While the streets next to Ocean Blvd, most of which are inhabited by long term residents, have historically been jammed with daytripper’s cars, Ocean Blvd sat there empty because of a statute that no longer makes any sense and could be changed by city council.

Coucilmembers Bergwerf, Buckhannon, Carroll, Ward and Mayor Cronin voted to keep Ocean off-limits to beach parking. 

They say this will decrease the number of cars on the island!  Yeah, sure.  These cars will just move to some other residential area and park in the right of way, as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow.  The next time you are out and about, ride or walk down Ocean Blvd and you will note abundant parking with a lot of grass and not much sand in sight!  Then, contact one of the above councilmembers and ask them, “Just what were you thinking?”  It seems to this writer that everyone on the island should be treated the same.  No special privileges should be extended to certain out of town owners who have built massive rental homes in the the most prime locations.