CAPTION - Beach Committee Chairman chats with Jamey and Lisa Ellis as he does volunteer parking lot patrol duty at Cherry & Webb Beach in last Thursday’s heat. He’s empowered to hand out parking tickets to vehicles without passes and had already written several that day. The Ellises said it was a “perfect” beach day. They only go on weekdays now — “Weekends, forget it.” No place to park.

WEST PORT — It's an issue every summer but this year parking spaces at Westport’s Cherry & Webb Beach have been especially hard to find.

It’s a situation that is trying the patience of beach-goers, beach neighbors and town employees alike.

“It’s really frustrating to load up the car and go to the beach on a beautiful day and then find that all the spaces are taken by 10:30 in the morning,” said a caller to the newspaper who asked not to be named. “Your sticker doesn’t do you any good … We all know that people who don’t live in Westport have stickers … which takes spaces away from the rest of us … And why aren’t more tickets being written?”

Bearing the brunt of some of that anger are Town Clerk Marlene Sampson as well as members of the town’s Beach Committee.

They addressed the Board of Selectmen last week to discuss the problems.

Ms. Sampson said her office has handed out 3,100 beach passes so far, a number that keeps growing and is a tiny fraction of the fewer than 150 spots at two small lots by Cherry & Webb Beach.

Complaints are also coming from people who live near the town’s beaches who say that parking lot spillover is landing on their narrow lanes. Some are even parking with wheels on private yards or partially blocking driveways; confrontations over these situations have been reported. There is also concern that emergency vehicles could have trouble navigating these roads which can be tight even without parked cars.

Beach Committee Chairman Tim St. Michel was out in the heat Thursday sporting an orange “Volunteer” vest. He said he is empowered to hand out $50 tickets to cars without beach passes and had already done so a couple times that day.

“And there goes one now,” he said, pointing to a minivan that had departed swiftly while he was distracted.

He is well aware of the aggravation. “I sympathize with these people completely. They look forward to going to this beautiful beach with their families and get upset when the lots fill up so fast on nice days.”

Jamey and Lisa Ellis were headed home after “a perfect beach day.” The Westport residents said they only bother trying to go on weekdays now.

“Weekends — forget it. On nice days you have to get here by 8:30 a.m.,” Mr. Ellis said. “It’s not worth the trouble.”

Mr. St. Michel said he began checking the lots regularly earlier this beach season as the complaints began to pour in.

He doesn’t like ticketing people but said it’s the only way to protect spaces for people with passes.

“It gets pretty crazy in here on weekends,” he said. He encounters plenty of drivers trying to park without passes, “and most of them have a story.”

Their parents live here, they used to live here, their permit is at home … “Some girls drove in and I told them, ‘You don’t have a beach pass.’ They said, ‘It’s okay — we go to UMass Dartmouth.”

“We really need more parking but there is no place to put it here.”. One idea they’ve discussed that may have merit, he said, is establishing a satellite lot with some sort of shuttle.

Also new this summer is a security camera that provides an excellent view of the parking lot, he added.

Town beach passes are supposed to be for Westport residents only, a system that is enforced at the clerk’s office by requiring applicants to show their car registration and latest Westport real estate tax bill.

Ms. Samson told selectmen that some people believe that having a beach pass assures holders of parking spaces, which is not the case. Several have taken out their anger on Ms. Samson’s staff and on individual members of the Beach Committee.

Mr. St. Michel and fellow Beach Committee member Sean Leach said pressure for town beach permits and parking spaces may have risen recently in part because state-owned Horseneck Beach raised prices this season both for day passes and for season’s passes.

As part of a state-wide increase in admission prices to state parks, Horseneck’s season pass price jumped $30 to $60 for Massachusetts residents; non-residents pay $85.

Day passes at Horseback rose from $8 to $13 for Massachusetts residents. For the first time, non-residents pay a higher rate — $15.

The state said it needs the added revenue “to address critical staffing and infrastructure needs” in its parks system.

Westport residents pay $30 for a season’s beach pass, $15 for those age 65 and older.

Mr. Leach and Mr. St. Michel agreed that some non-residents seem to have found ways around the proof of residency requirements. One such method may be that people who are members of a local trust but live elsewhere are using that trust’s Westport address.

They and several selectmen said ways need to be found to assure that passes only go to those who are supposed to have them. Perhaps applicants should have to show a driver’s license and registration with a Westport address and that their names be on the town census. Another suggestion was that residents who do not live in Westport year-round should pay a higher fee for a beach pass.

Board Vice Chairman R. Michael Sullivan asked that the Beach Committee come up with several  such possibilities for selectmen to consider and also to offer any ideas on how to increase parking capacity.

An annual issue

The parking issue also arose late last summer (and several years before).

Residents complained then that people were parking in beach and landing lots without parking passes. These places included Cherry & Webb Beach, Beach Avenue, and the Hix Bridge boat ramp lot.

A volunteer used to monitor parking at the Cherry & Webb Beach lot but he had stopped doing so and word apparently got out that nobody was checking.

Several on the board asked why police couldn't check the lot more often, saying that uniformed officers have more of an impact than a volunteer. But Mr. Vieira and board Vice Chairman Richard Spirlet said police have more pressing business than checking cars for parking permits.

Police said they do hand out some tickets but don’t have the manpower to do such work all summer long.