Home Care In Lavallette, NJ

“The calendar says winter, but the gods of spring are out,” Seinfeld character Cosmo Kramer once announced to his friends before an early-season round of golf.

The feeling is undoubtedly familiar to Shore residents and officials, who often spend much of the winter season preparing infrastructure and readying facilities to welcome the hundreds of thousands of visitors who will begin coming on a weekly basis in another 110 days for Memorial Day weekend. To that end, Lavallette officials are beginning the process of repairing some beach entrances, ordering park benches and reviewing beach badge sales policies.

Badges the Easy Way? Well, Not So Easy…

A pandemic-era idea that has continued on over the course of the last several seasons has been a central location for the sale of daily beach badges in Lavallette. Regardless of where someone may want to sunbathe or swim on a given day, badges have been sold at a shack at Chandler Field. Last year, the borough introduced a second seasonal badge, known as a “recreation badge,” that grants holders access to pickleball courts and tennis courts, the demand for which has spiked in recent years. Prior to the introduction of the recreation badge, court time was being managed by a private group of citizens in pickleball club, to the consternation of some residents who felt an employee would be more suited to accommodate the public.

An ordinance having to do with badge prices were tabled at a council meeting this week, giving the governing body more time to consider options for the upcoming season.

The first ordinance centered on the recreation badges. The badges sold for $50 last year, but the council had been set to consider an ordinance that would raise the fee to $60 in order to match the cost of a seasonal beach badge. Parking sticker prices for the season would rise from $10 to $15.

The same measure would have modified fees for renting borough property, such as the bayfront gazebo, and minor adjustments to credit card fees. In New Jersey, government agencies cannot use taxpayer dollars to pay credit card processing fees, meaning a surcharge of some sort must always been applied.

The ordinance, however, was tabled and will likely be considered at the next meeting.

The discussion on credit cards spurred a separate discussion on whether the policy of a centralized location for badge sales should continue into 2024. While the policy has proven popular with residents and staff – and has also allowed staff to suggest beachgoers try to sit in a certain area of town in order to reduce crowding and better utilize lifeguard coverage – some day-trippers who were not familiar with the policy became upset, at times, over having to leave the beach after finding a parking space in order to buy a badge elsewhere.

The policy caused badge checkers and beach patrol staff to take “abuse” from some visitors, a resident said.

Another resident suggested using “Square” type devices which connect to smartphones held by employees and can instantly take credit card payments wirelessly from any location.

Councilman Michael Stogdill ruled out bringing back cash transactions for beach badges, but indicated he was open to the idea of a mobile, wireless payment system. Such a system, however, would not be set up for the 2024 beach season and would likely be a 2025 project if it were to come to fruition at all.

Seaside Heights, which had been selling badges through a specially-designed smartphone app, is also searching for a new payment system after the service, Viply, shut down. In that town, Borough Administrator Christopher Vaz said there are now vending machines that can print daily wristbands allowing beach access. Seaside Heights, however, likely has more electrical infrastructure along its boardwalk and beach entrance areas than Lavallette, however, which could complicate the implementation of such a system.

Beaches

While in dramatically better condition than those in Ortley Beach, its neighbor to the south, Lavallette’s beach access points have experienced their own damage by the near-constant onslaught of coastal storms this winter, said Councilman Robert Lamb. Many of the borough’s dune crossovers are “inundated” with sand, he said, and must be cleared quickly.

The Public Works Department has already begun the effort, he said, with the removal of sand between Dover and Philadelphia avenues in the southern portion of the borough. After sand is cleared from those entrances, work will shift to the northern end. It is expected that the immediate removal of the sand will take through the end of the week, however crews will likely have to return to the crossovers to get them in top shape for the summer.

Officials also have announced the purchase of “Mobi-Mats” for beach entrances to make the walk over the dune and down to the beach berm (the area where beachgoers set up their chairs and umbrellas) easier. The borough had been considering Mobi-Mats that were 9-feet in width, but ultimately decided on 6.5-foot wide mats in order to keep costs down by about $20,000, and ensure they are easier to clean by Public Works crews. Though the mats increase mobility significantly, on occasion there have been some complaints that a “drop” can form between the end of the mat, where it is anchored into the sand, and the beach itself. Regular maintenance on the smaller mats should be significantly easier with a lighter model, officials said.

Benches

Lavallette officials have long been organizing a project to replace many of the wooden benches that have deteriorated across town in recent years. The governing body on Monday night authorized Van Cleef Engineering to design a bid specification for new benches that would suit the borough.

“We need the benches to be extremely sturdy, heavy, and that comes with a cost,” Councilwoman Joanne Filippone has said, emphasizing the coastal environment and the need to have benches that cannot be taken by a wind gust or moved by tidal flooding.

The borough plans on selling memorials to defray the cost of the benches, which will replace those at the bayfront. As it currently stands, officials have worried that the deteriorating benches near the borough gazebo and some other locations along the bayfront represent a safety hazard, as the wood can be seen rotting or cracking in some locations. Though no policy has been formally passed, officials have discussed guaranteeing those who purchase a memorial on a bench that the plaque would remain for ten years, after which it could be subject to replacement.

Van Cleef was awarded a contract worth $5,950 to design the specifications for the benches – a major factor in the coastal environment – as well as helping to oversee their purchase and delivery.

A spectacular fall sunset worthy of a travel brochure for the Jersey Shore ended a mild day locally, bringing throngs of residents to see the sun set on another week – with a mixed bag of weather predicted for the weekend.

A two-minute video we captured is seen above (note: ad blocking software may interfere with the video player) and still photos can be seen below. All of the scenery was captured at Lavallette’s bayfront and Bayside Park in Brick Township.

Email Terms & Privacy

The forecast for the upcoming busy weekend, which will feature an Italian Festival and Columbus Day Parade in Seaside Heights, a rally in Point Pleasant Beach, and the rescheduled Irish Festival in Seaside Park, looks to be mixed. According to the National Weather Service:

Friday will bring patchy drizzle with a chance of showers before 11 a.m., then a chance of showers, mainly between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. Areas of fog will also be present before 11 a.m. Otherwise, cloudy, with a high near 70 with light winds. Showers and thunderstorms are possible Friday night, plus another round of fog before 3 a.m.

Saturday is forecast to bring showers and possibly a thunderstorm, mainly before 2 p.m., then a chance of showers and thunderstorms for the rest of the afternoon. The high will be 69 degrees and skies will be cloudy. Showers will continue on and off Saturday night.

Sunday’s weather looks best, according to the NWS, with mostly sunny skies, however the cold front that will have brought rain to the area the past two days will lead to a high of just 62 degrees and an overnight low of 49 degrees.

As of Oct. 1, the NWS no longer issues daily surf zone forecasts, however beachgoers should remain aware of rip currents in the Shore area. The Asbury Park Press reported eight rescues from rip currents in Spring Lake on Wednesday.

The general marine forecast warns of dense fog offshore and a small craft advisory for Friday and Saturday. Though the ocean may look calm near shore with light winds, powerful currents and building surf is forecast. According to the NWS, easterly winds 5-10 knots overnight will shift to the west- northwest Saturday morning and increase through the day to 15-20 knots with gusts to 25 knots. Seas will run 4-5 feet Friday night, building to 6-8 feet on Saturday.

Lavallette officials this week began preparing for a project that will improve Chandler Field, best known as the borough’s baseball field located off Baltimore Avenue.

The borough council unanimously awarded a $19,500 contract to Van Cleef Engineering to design and manage the major renovation phase of the project. The current phase, which includes surveying, is underway now. A long-standing plan has called for the borough to partner with the Lavallette school district to complete the project, and Borough Administrator John O. Bennett this week said the district was awaiting approval of a grant before it authorized expenditures.

The project Van Cleef will design includes removing and replacing the infield dirt and clay mix to prevent any ponding of water after rain events, installing covers over new dugouts and constructing fenced-in areas where hitters can practice their swings. Officials had also weighed the construction of a dog run at the park, though this was not included in the resolution awarding the contract to Van Cleef. Another portion of the project will see the outfield re-seeded.

Email Terms & Privacy

Dogs are allowed in the park if they are registered with the “Goose Patrol,” a group of residents who take their dogs for a walk in areas where canines are normally not allowed. The program allowing limited access has been successful in deterring the presence of Canada geese as a result of the scent left behind by the dogs. Occasionally, however, visitors to town have taken the presence of dogs to mean all are allowed despite signage indicating the contrary. Several residents, at a previous council meeting, opposed a formal dog run at the park since they do not believe that is why the program was established.

After Van Cleef designs the project, it will be placed out to bid by the borough council for construction. Officials are hoping the work can be completed before the summer season.

Bennett said the total cost of the project, before grant funding, is estimated to be about $327,000. Both the municipal government and school district have received – or are in line to receive – funding that will pare down the final cost to taxpayers.

Chandler Field is a well-used facility in town. In addition to pickup games and a number of youth leagues that use the diamond, it is also used by a summer college league in which some top prospects with dreams of playing Major League Baseball come to hone their skills each season.

An anticipated court federal court face-off between Verizon and Lavallette’s municipal government over the borough’s denial of six additional “small cell” 5G antenna arrays will be a long slog that has the potential of being decided by a jury, court records said.

Verizon filed suit against the borough Dec. 13, the final day it was eligible to do so, alleging the borough violated the Telecommunications Act of 1996 when it turned down the wireless provider’s request to add an additional tranche of pole-mounted 4G and 5G antennas at various addresses town-wide. The so-called “small cell” nodes are located on top of existing utility poles, and in some cases Verizon had proposed installing new poles where equipment would be hung in order to close gaps in the network’s data and voice coverage due to the company’s woes over frequency spectrum.

Tuesday night, the borough attorney, William Burns, told council members that a hearing before a federal magistrate judge has been scheduled for next week, and in the mean time, the two parties have agreed to a joint plan to manage discovery in the case.

Email Terms & Privacy

“From there, I don’t see anything happening with this for several months,” Burns said.

In an answer to Verizon’s 50-page complaint against Lavallette, embedded below, the borough said it wished to reserve the right to try the case before a jury, which would mark a rare instance in which federal telecommunications law would be decided in that manner. The borough also held that it would reserve its right to move for a dismissal of the suit, though that seems unlikely.

In November 2023, the borough council spent the bulk of a nearly five hour-long meeting debating whether to acquiesce to Verizon’s request to place ever more small cell nodes across town, in what many elected officials and members of the public see as an intrusive, unsightly and unsafe method of delivering wireless service. Verizon is the only major wireless provider to request to install such a network locally, with an engineer from the company explaining that due to the frequencies on which the company’s networks run, high-speed data and sufficient bandwidth for traditional phone calls and text messages are best delivered with a combination of tall-mounted towers and the mesh network of antennas closer to the ground.

Lavallette officials have questioned whether utility poles in the borough, which are prone to leaning due to constant coastal winds, can handle the hundreds of pounds of weight that are added with the addition of a 5G antenna and accompanying “shroud,” plus 4G antennas and an electrical box that powers the system.

Verizon claims its equipment meets all federal standards, cannot be denied based upon aesthetics or as-yet unproven allegations of health hazards, and that the company has a right under federal law to deploy infrastructure with minimal regulation from the borough. The court is being asked to issue an injunction preventing Lavallette from denying its request under the ordinance due to its scope. The company is also seeking reimbursement of its attorneys’ fees and unspecified damages caused by the denial.

Verizon, in its complaint filed in federal district court in Trenton, accuse the borough of having “prohibited and/or effectively prohibited Verizon’s provision of personal wireless services and telecommunications services” in violation of the Telecommunications Act, “illegally based the Denial upon the federally-preempted issue of environmental effects of radio frequency emissions,” and “imposed unreasonable and prohibitive application and code requirements, including unreasonable, excessive, and prohibitive escrow charges and application fees” upon the company.

Lavallette officials have said they feel the borough has been arbitrarily targeted by Verizon, and should not be forced to approve an ever-expanding network of small cell antennas since the company’s network runs on frequency spectrum that is not optimized for 5G coverage.

In its answer, Lavallette posited that the borough code is “in compliance with all constitutional, statutory, and regulatory requirements and obligations” and that Verizon failed to meet a legal standard that requires them to demonstrate that denying the addition of more arrays would “materially inhibit telecommunications services and personal wireless services.”

A sticking point for officials, when asked to vote on the matter, remained the fact that out of all of the wireless providers that exist, only Verizon has submitted proposals for small cell sites, and there was no guarantee that the current 16 would end the seemingly continual proliferation or proposals for new sites. One member of the council implied the company may have even targeted locations near the homes of officials, including the mayor.

Why Lavallette?

As Shorebeat previously reported, the sheer number of antennas already approved and proposed in Lavallette, now up to 16, dwarfs that of nearly every other Jersey Shore town, with exception of Belmar, where 20 new poles had been proposed along the town’s boardwalk. That case also fell into litigation after a denial.

Officials, before the vote on whether to allow the new arrays, gathered statements from municipal administrators from other towns up and down the barrier island, indicating a small number of antennas having been approved and proposed for locations in their towns. Most had two or three, compared to Lavallette’s proposed 16 – which was subject to grow even further with future applications. Mayor Walter LaCicero pressed Verizon officials for an answer as to why Lavallette, as opposed to neighboring communities with arguably more summer visitors, was the subject of so many antenna permit applications. In one case, while showing a chart of wireless activity spikes, the Seaside Heights St. Patrick’s Day Parade was shown as one of the peak dates, kicking off a discussion as to why so much antenna development was centered in Lavallette.

“Density in Ocean Beach is much higher than in Lavallette,” said LaCicero. “There are way more people there than here. I don’t understand why all of this is clustered in Lavallette. Why would it not be spread around?”

Edward Pucell, an attorney representing Verizon, pushed back on the allegation that the company is singling out Lavallette, saying the wireless provider is deploying such networks across the state – especially in the Shore area, where demand for bandwidth skyrockets during the summer months.

“New Jersey has 52 Shore municipalities,” said Purcell. “Of those, 31 have on-air small nodes. In Monmouth, Ocean and Atlantic counties, there are 301 small cells on air. There are a fair amount of these facilities located across the state.”

Verizon is litigating the denial of five of the seven antennas originally proposed in this tranche of installations. One, the company said in court documents, was approved without the borough’s input since it was located along the state’s right-of-way on Route 35, and another application was at least temporarily withdrawn.

The poles were officially proposed to be located at:

“Congress has declared a public need for wireless communication services such as Personal Wireless Services and Telecommunications Services to be deployed without delay to the public,” Verizon’s complaint stated, adding that FCC administrative rules “expressly preempts state or local governments from effectively prohibiting the provision of Telecommunications Services and Personal Wireless Services and from implementing decisions that are not supported by substantial evidence.”

The Christmas rush is on, but in Lavallette, a different type of party was being held Thursday night.

Local residents gathered to celebrate the borough’s 136th anniversary with a party to mark the establishment of what has become one of New Jersey’s most notable beach towns. It was in 1887 that a group of residents decided it was time to break away from Toms River (then, of course, known as Dover Township) and form their own incorporated island community. A referendum was held on Dec. 19 of the same year, and two days later, the incorporation documents were filed with the state.

Email Terms & Privacy

The residents gathered at St. Pio’s parish hall for the celebration, with Christmas caroling and a dinner catered by local staple Lenny’s Italian Grille.

A Grand History

The borough’s history includes a few names that are still familiar to residents today. According to the official published history of the borough, what eventually became “Lavallette” had been a swath of land owned by Michael W. Ortley, for whom the neighboring community of Ortley Beach is named.

Contrary to what is sometimes believed in modern times, inlets on Ocean County’s northern barrier island have not historically opened during strong storms. In fact, they often left them closed. Even Manasquan Inlet became a sand bar for years before it was cut back open when modern equipment allowed. Michael Ortley was best known for his efforts to reopen Cranberry Inlet after a storm closed it up, effectively ending Toms River’s direct link to the Atlantic Ocean. The land above what was the inlet did not have a great deal of use or activity, and it was eventually sold to the Barnegat Land Improvement Company in 1878.

The land needed a name, and the town fathers of the day used the opportunity to honor a naval hero whose son was among the first residents.

Lavallette is named for U. S. Navy Admiral Elie A. F. LaVallette, “who distinguished himself as a young lieutenant aboard Commodore Thomas McDonough’s flagship in the battle of Lake Champlain,” according to the borough’s official history account, and later commanded the U.S.S. Constitution. Of French descent, the admiral legally anglicized his name to “Lavallette” in 1830. His son, A. T. Lavallette, was secretary of the Land Improvement Company.

During World War II, a destroyer the USS La Vallette (DD-448) was also named in honor of the admiral. The destroyer, which was decommissioned after the war, was kept in the navy’s “ghost fleet” until 1976, when it was sold for parts to the Peruvian navy. La Vallette received 10 battle stars for World War II service. A scale model of the ship current sits on display in borough hall.