Officials plan to keep Dog Beach open

Is Huntington Beach’s haven for dogs in danger, or is the city just trying to clean up an eyesore? Over the last week, the answer has been in the eye of the beholder.

Angry residents have sent thousands of e-mails to city officials in the last week, demanding the city not shut down Dog Beach. City officials say nobody dreams of closing it, but the head of the Preservation Society of Huntington Dog Beach says recent demands from the city community services department would result in Dog Beach’s end. What’s got the society’s president Martin Senat so indignant is a pair of letters from Community Services Director Jim Engle telling him that his fundraising booth on the bluffs overlooking the beach looks like a garage sale.

A week after the first letter told him to clean up his act, the second said the city was planning to make him move the display down to the beach.

But without staying on the bluffs, the organization can’t do its job, Senat said. It can’t attract the donations it needs from visitors, and it can’t monitor all the dogs entering the beach to keep it safe and clean.

“It would destroy the organization overnight,” he said. “There would be no control. There would be dogs jumping off of trucks into bikes.”

But Councilwoman Debbie Cook called Senat’s complaints “over the top” and said she was blindsided by angry, often misinformed e-mails she received as a result of his group’s call for public support.

“If somebody calls code enforcement, the City Council doesn’t know,” she said. “Our enforcement is response-based; we don’t go out looking to pick fights. People are calling us all sorts of nasty names and accusing us of conspiring to close Dog Beach.”

Senat says there are plenty of vendors who present far more of a nuisance than he does, including some who blast rap music that he finds offensive. He says that shows he was unfairly targeted.

“I feel it’s a beach, it’s not a museum or an art gallery,” he said. “The people who are complaining, you need to know who they are, and they are dog haters.”

Engle said nobody wanted to close Dog Beach or ruin the society that keeps it clean. But the T-shirts on display stretch out far beyond the one table his department approved, and many people have complained, he said.

“All we’re asking is go back to the original concept of having a table or something similar out there so we don’t end up with complaints,” he said.

“They can still raise money to support [the Preservation Society].”

He added that he sent the harsh letter telling Senat to move the booth down to the beach when he didn’t expect the group to cooperate.

After a meeting with Senat last Thursday, he thinks they can work together and doesn’t plan to force the display off the bluffs.

“There were still some questions unanswered, but the bottom line is we could work together and come up with a mutually satisfying solution,” he said.