CITY FOCUS:Call off the beach dogs

Letters are no longer pouring into the inboxes of city officials and council members, and dogs continue to play on Huntington Beach shores under strict supervision. After weeks of controversy, it appears that hard feelings over the future of the city’s Dog Beach may have subsided.

Both the Preservation Society of Dog Beach and city officials are discussing how to address complaints about the society’s fundraising booths, which some had called unsightly. And both sides say some issues were blown out of proportion.

Meetings with city officials have been fruitful, society President Martin Senat said. The most recent one last Thursday gave him a chance to show what he planned to do with his booths in the future, he said. His group will no longer string up so many T-shirts on the bluffs above the beach, instead letting people choose from color swatches and then pick up a shirt at a store off site.

“I showed him some pictures of what we’re going to do to our locations, which we had planned months ago,” he said. “We reduced everything, making it tidier.”

Community Services Director Jim Engle said when the meetings began that the goal was to reach a “win-win situation. There’s no desire to close Dog Beach.”

Senat still feels the city community services department didn’t realize he had permits for all his booths. He said that harsh letters from Engle about the state of his booths might have been less demanding otherwise, and his own reaction might have been different.

“I think it was just a pity the way [Engle] did it,” he said. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t get hold of him for three or four days. We have a crisis committee that said they could be arresting people next week if we didn’t act.”

The Dog Beach Website now posts a request to stop sending letters to the city, and Senat said he had moved on but was touched by all the support.

“All is quiet, and we’re planning for the next 100 years of Dog Beach,” he said. “People feel a lot better about it. There’s less animosity.”