City reviews cleanup, police calls post-Fourth

The amount of trash and garbage left on the beaches after the Fourth of July was less this year than in recent years when the holiday fell on the weekend or when there was a ban on beach fires.

In a report to the Ocean Shores City Council on Monday, the official tally was about 15 tons of material and debris taken off the beaches.

Calls for Ocean Shores Police responses also were down this year.

“The Fourth of July weekend, it actually went pretty well,” Police Chief Neccie Logan said. “We had all of our officers out there.”

There were 345 calls for service; of those, there were 21 fireworks complaints in the city or on the beach, 109 were traffic stops that were initiated by the officers this year over the four-day holiday period, with July 4 being on a Tuesday. There ware six boating calls or complaints on the inland waterways, 30 code violations and four arrests.

On the holiday itself, from midnight to midnight, there were 98 calls for service, as opposed to 100 calls in 2016.

“This year, out of the 98, we had 43 traffic stops, where last year we only had 27, so we were a lot busier, call-load wise, last year,” Logan said. “I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that it was on a Tuesday.”

“Hopefully, we will have next few years along the same line,” Logan said.

Next year, the Fourth of July falls on a Wednesday, and then on a Thursday for 2019.

Mayor Crystal Dingler thanked Lillian and Gordon Broadbent for organizing the annual effort to cleanup the beaches by handing out garbage bags with a number of volunteers at the main beach approaches over the Fourth.

“Our folks were out there and my understanding was the beach was pretty well cleaned up by noon or 1 p.m. (on July 5), so that’s great,” Dingler said.

In previous years, as much as 21 tons of garbage was taken off the Ocean Shores beaches, and Dingler said the amount appeared to be lessened this year because much of the fireworks debris could be burned with fires allowed on the beaches.

“People did burn a lot of their paper trash,” Dingler said.

From a business perspective, the Fourth of July was as robust as ever.

“The Fourth of July in my mind is what Ocean Shores is all about,” said Councilman Jon Martin, who manages the local McDonald’s and owns Martin-Bruni Liquors with his wife Kim.

He noted the city recently hosted the state Grange convention at the Ocean Shores Convention Center on top of a busy Sand & Sawdust event weekend that brought thousands of visitors to town.

Martin said he went back in his business records and pulled out cumulative numbers over that seven-day period around the Fourth.

“We waited on more people and brought in more revenue than we ever have, and a significant amount over that seven-day period,” Martin said.

“I can just see the vision of where we can go when you have multiple things going on,” he added. “The forgotten people are the people working in service and in our hotels.”