Wrightsville Beach Board of Aldermen incumbent Ed Miastkowski acknowledged that it is difficult to contact him via telephone or e-mail. To obtain that admission, Miastkowski was approached on Thursday, Sept. 24, following a town meeting, and asked to sit down for an interview after the meeting which had been packed with individuals who represented two sides of a yet-to-be resolved issue that encompasses the South Lumina Avenue traffic pattern between the 500-700 block.
The issue had evolved into an emotional confrontation between both sides, with proponents of change citing what they claim to be safety issues along the one block thoroughfare from Sprunt Street to the Hanover Seaside Club.
At the meeting, the board of aldermen (BOA) tabled the issue, deciding to delve deeper into whether the safety factors need improving in the area in question.
Miastkowski used the public’s division as a platform to say that he often seeks the public’s opinion.
He is likely the longest serving alderman in the history of Wrightsville Beach, first elected in 1993, winning by smooth margins every four years since.
According to the candidate, the support of his right-wing conservative decision-making is slipping away, due to the fact that “all the old people are dying and moving,” he said.
Miastkowski, 68, said that a majority of his support is came from citizens of his generation—people who may view him as a strong representation of what they feel is the former simplicity of life in Wrightsville Beach.
His conservative stance is reflected in how he discussed curbside recycling. While supporting the general proposal of increased recycling and its potential positive affects on the environment, he said the town shouldn’t force it on people.
“I don’t like the government forcing anything on anybody,” he said.
Following the BOA meeting, the candidate made numerous comments regarding his athletic credentials before segueing into a long conversation about local sports.
He is a 1993 inductee of the Lenoire-Rhyne Sports Hall of Fame, and still holds record as one of the university’s leading basketball scorers. He is also an encyclopedia of local sports knowledge.
Without being questioned, Miastkowski addressed a blemish on his alderman record: absenteeism.
It came to light earlier this year that he missed more board meetings in 2008 than all the other aldermen combined since 2005. And in every year since 2005, he has been absent for more meetings than any current board member.
After contending that he never missed a meeting in his first twelve years of office, Miastkowski excused his absences. He cited deaths of friends and family, specifically his wife and sister.
“Certain things are more important than others,” he said. “Friends and family come first.”
Over your 16 years in office, how have you grown and solidified your base of support?
“I think I’ve been losing support because all the old people are dying and moving and that’s where my support comes from: the old beach residents. I don’t know the young people as much … but the older beach residents who’ve lived here a long time is where I get the majority of my support.
Why do you think that is?
“I’ve lived here 32-33 years. I graduated from New Hanover High School in 1960. I played basketball at UNCW for a couple years and people used to come see me play.
I moved to New Hanover County in 1968, except for the years that I went to Lenoire-Rhyne up in Hickory; I’ve lived here that long. My wife is from here, she’s deceased now. We were married 43 years and she’s from Wilmington.
Through school and in those 30 years I’ve got to know a lot of the kids at the beach and their families. I’ve been going to St. Therese’s Church for 40-some years because I lived in Green Meadows before I moved here and that was still my church. I’ve been going to St. Therese’s probably since 1970.
In your time on the Board of Aldermen what do you consider your greatest accomplishments?
“Trying to hold expenses down. Everybody knows I’m cheap. I treat the town money like it’s my money because I feel like it is our money. Each person that lives here—it’s their money—so I try to hold expenses down as best I can the whole time. That’s one constant that I have is spending.
The other constant is people know how I’m going to vote just about every time. I get very few phone calls because they know my philosophy on things as far as building and ordinances and that; and they know it’s hard to change my mind because I’m consistent. The audience doesn’t sway me a whole lot. I’ve voted for my friends; I have voted against my friends. I just try to do what I think is right for the beach. And I’ve lived here like I said, since 1977.”
How are you most involved in the community?
“For a while I was a member of the Lion’s Club and I enjoyed that. It just takes time. It started taking so much time. My wife was bedridden for six or seven years before she passed away and I had to stay with her—either I had to be there or somebody else had to be there. But I help, and just hang out and walk the neighborhoods and talk to people.
I’m not very accessible on the phone because, mainly, people who call are always these people wanting me to change telephone services and things like that. It aggravates me (he laughs). But I hang out in the parks. I’ll come over during the week and sit out there and watch people and they’ll come up and talk to me. I just try to be available on a personal basis, one-to-one, out in public, like just hanging out.
I don’t like to go to a lot of meetings, because I don’t believe the squeaky wheel gets the most grease. I try to hear both sides. Like I talked tonight. I talked to both sides. I went to visit people on both sides of the issue and I heard from one side and I went to visit somebody else and I heard the other side. When issues come up I try to listen to both people. I’ve got friends on both sides of this issue and I probably should’ve voted tonight but a little more information never hurt anybody. I’ll try to solve the problem before we have to do anything drastic.
I try to talk to both sides of the story all the time and I try to explain to them why I can’t vote for them. I’ve had some of my best friends that I’ve had to vote against because I didn’t think it was the right thing to do.
I think people respect that or at least you can sit down and talk to them. They get mad at you, but they understand and they see my point of view. They don’t agree with it, but they know why I do things. I just don’t cut them off. I try to listen to them and then explain I can’t do it or why I can do it. And then I got to tell the other side just the opposite.
What do you regard as the biggest issues facing the town?
“Probably people coming down in the summer. It’s not a problem, but it’s what to do with them when they get here. It’s just, we’re sinking down here. We have more public parking, people assume that we’re not tourist friendly, but if you check the other beaches we have more public access and more public parking than probably any beach in North Carolina.
And I don’t know how to alleviate any more of that problem but traffic and people coming down here is a terrific problem for us in the summer. They just ride around the circles and tie up the beach. I think they don’t assume we’re friendly to tourists but I think we are because we supply all these services. They complain about the parking meters but the parking meters offset the expenses that we provide for the tourists.
(He cited the sometimes more than 200 trashcans on the beach strand) And we empty them on the weekends and that takes our personnel coming in on the weekends to do it. We don’t leave Friday and come back Monday to do them; we’re out there on the weekends.
We have a full-time maintenance guy to handle bathrooms in the summertime. People say, ‘well you don’t clean them.’ But we’ve got a guy works 40 hours a week and his only job in the summer is to maintain—I think we got five or six public restrooms—and that’s his only job. To me those are tourist-friendly type things to do, and people don’t think we do that.
(Public works director Mike Vukelich said there are five public restrooms maintained by a full-time employee at a significant cost to the town.)
The lifeguards cost us over $350,000 a year, (the exact number is $351,257 for this year, according to town manager Bob Simpson) but it’s a service that we provide for the tourists that come down, make them feel like they’re safe or try to be safe as they can. I think the county ought to help us with that, but they don’t. We pony up the money here at Wrightsville Beach to the tune of $350 grand a year.”
How do you propose we deal with all the people?
“That’s been a problem since I’ve been on the board. We’ve had ideas like build parking decks but parking decks aren’t feasible because they’re only going to be used 12 weekends out of the summer. Monday through Friday parking’s not a problem down here, it’s Saturday and Sunday and sometimes on Friday and on holiday weekends and we’ve checked into it. The last time it’s been six or seven years, so I don’t know if I’m up to date, but it would take 35 years to get our money back out of a parking deck because it would never be used except on Saturdays and Sundays during the summer.
(Town manager Bob Simpson agreed. He said recently that Wrightsville Beach took up the possibility of a trolley line and parking deck in 2005, but the town simply doesn’t have the real estate to handle a project of that size. The costs of construction and maintenance would mean little return on the town’s investment.)
One time we had a trolley down here and it didn’t last very long and we used to shuttle them from here, let them park here and shuttle them every 30 minutes, but nobody would use it. We charged, I think it was a quarter, and ran every 30 minutes and people just didn’t want to use it. I don’t know if that would be something feasible now but this parking lot (he points in the direction of Wrightsville Beach park) fills up anyway without the trolley so I don’t know what good a trolley would do now because there’s no where for them go anywhere on that thing.
But we’ve talked about putting a sign out there on Eastwood somewhere saying: no available spots at the beach. But that wouldn’t stop them—they’d come down and look anyway. We’ve thought about a lot of things, it’s just people are going to come. There’s nothing you can do and they’ll just ride around, they will park in people’s yards and everything else. Like I said, we have more public parking than any beach in North Carolina for size and we provide more public accesses.
It’s 12 weekends a year that we have the problem. The other times it’s not that bad—maybe 14 now because the seasons are getting a little longer. They come a little earlier and a little later. There’s just no land to do anything with.”
“There are lots over there behind Lager Heads (on North Lumina Avenue) and people say, ‘why don’t you buy them and put a deck there?’ but the cost would be astronomical to do something like that and again it would only be used on the weekends.”
—Brian Freskos
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