Resources, News, and Announcements
From the Mayor’s desk – 5/23/25
Happy Friday!
Memorial weekend is upon us. The wild flowers are looking beautiful in all the lawns and on bird & butterfly trail. A special thanks to the SOBA volunteers for the United States flags all along Ft Velasco & Bluewater Hwy. They always look great and are a wonderful way of honoring the fallen heroes and reminding all the visitors what Memorial Day really stands for in this country. Well done volunteers!
PD:
Ditto from last week’s Friday letter. This weekend the command post will be at Stahlman, but the remainder of the weekend Op Plan remains nearly identical to last weekend’s preparation for Jeep weekend. One note on last weekend. I want to thank and commend our local first responders, the visiting first responders and all the Jeep weekend participants visiting Surfside. The Surfside Beach Jeep weekend was exceptional from my perspective. Fun + Law & Order. Great job by our folks and much appreciation to the tremendously courteous visitors that are welcome back anytime!
As I have communicated in the past, when we have other patrol here on these busy weekends, and those outside agencies will enforce law and ordinance by the book. This includes one way traffic on the beach for all vehicles. You may be stopped and ticketed in a golf cart going the wrong way. Again, take precautions to avoid that if you are travelling by golf cart this weekend.
Another reminder…Beach Drive: Parking on Beach Drive requires a beach pass annual sticker or a daily pass hang tag. If you are parking on Beach Drive without a beach pass, you will receive a citation.
EMS:
Our EMS is please to announce FREE health screening. Our certified EMS professionals will be providing non-emergency wellness checks and health education. Please contact EMS Director, Frank DeMarco at (979) 233-1531 ext. 112 to schedule an appointment for you, a family member or someone you know that might need/want this service. Flyers with more detail are also located at our City Hall PD/EMS Station. Let’s work together to build a healthier Surfside Beach.
Public Works:
The new, replacement vacuum pump for the AIRVAC sewer system is in route and will be up and running very soon. Installation of the second vacuum pump will allow for full operation of all 3 sewer lines once it is running. The bad pump will be removed from the pump house, sent off to be completely rebuilt, and then sent back to us as a spare. Once we receive the rebuild, we will be in a position to quickly swap the spare pump for any failure and maintain operations of the system.
Human Resources:
First and foremost, we had the new Finance Director, Christie Briones start on Monday. Welcome to Surfside Christie! So happy to have you on the team.
Also this week, we had 2 people attending a 2 day Texas Municipal League (TML) Health Benefits conference to fully understand the annual changes to our health benefits program and the financial implications. We have made an effort to send more of our City Hall staff to educational conferences, seminars and virtual learning like this from TML and others from TCEQ, TDEM, and various First Responder agencies. The educational benefits and network building opportunities with other municipalities has been invaluable to Surfside.
Beach & Parks:
Last weekend went great. We made some improvements to entry booth traffic flow to allow those who had previously purchased annual passes skip the line and enter at will. This along with PD patrols encouraging traffic movement on the beach, made a difference in backups on the bridge and in front of Yucca entrance on Bluewater Hwy. We intend to continue this process.
New beach signs are being installed this week. These are the 8” round (telephone pole type) posts that were driven 8-9 feet into the sand. These new poles will display all the priority beach rules and highway driving signage in a uniform fashion. The idea to use rounded poles and drive them deep is to mimic pilings near pedestrian beach that tend to remain in place after surges and large storms. If this test works, then we will be looking to use similar pilings to repair beach walkovers that get tore up with storms.
Other Items of Interest:
The OLIN chlorine release: I had lots of questions about lack of alerts for Surfside and I wanted to follow up with you. When an incident like this occurs, the top priority for a plant/site/business is to evacuate the immediate danger zone on site and then evaluate any potential danger zone off site and alert civic leaders and first responders. We were not alerted because we were not inside the cone, based on the wind direction & speed, plus the volume of chlorine release. So in this case, the lack of contact was a very good thing as we were out of harm’s way.
Ah, the Sargassum: We have been monitoring the influx of sargassum this week and it has been a consistent daily deposit that even continues today. Based on the constant deposits we decided to let it lay as is, as it was collecting regardless of any action to be taken on our part aside from continuous raking. The beach is wider with areas of clear sand in most sections that can be used for tents, chairs, etc. I know that this decision gets wild applause from some and outright disgust from others. As I’ve said before, we will evaluate raking the sargassum, or not, based on many factors and there will be times when we rake it and times when we let it be natural.
Just to let everyone know, Waste Connections will be maintaining their regular Monday trash pick up and Tuesday heavy haul through the holiday weekend. No change.
School is out for most. If you have a child or grandchild celebrating their High School graduation, I hope it is an enjoyable, safe, and memorable experience for all.
Have a great day and I hope to see you around the island this Memorial weekend!
Thanks,
Zach
5/15/25
We'll be closed on Memorial Day, Monday, May 26, 2025.
We'll be back to our normal business hours starting Tuesday, May 27, 2025.
Enjoy the holiday and stay safe!
05/01/2025
SCAM ALERT: Beware of Fraudulent Emails Posing as City Communications
The Village of Surfside Beach has been made aware of scam emails being sent to residents, falsely claiming to be from official city departments. These emails may request personal information, demand payments, or contain suspicious links.
Please Note:
- The City will never ask for Social Security numbers or bank details via email.
- Official emails from the City will come from addresses ending in @surfsidetx.org
- If you're unsure about the legitimacy of a message, do not click any links or download attachments.
If you receive a suspicious email claiming to be from the City, mark it as spam. When in doubt feel free to call the City first. 979-233-1531
Help us spread the word by sharing this post. Stay alert and stay safe!
— The Village of Surfside Beach
From the Mayor’s desk – 5/16/25
Happy Friday!
It looks like we jumped right into summer weather this week with higher temperatures and plenty of sunshine to be had. Get out and enjoy it…ah, the beach life!
PD:
Final preparation and Op Plans for the Jeep Weekend has been completed. We will have a full force from Surfside including reserves, along with extra patrol from other agencies. The Brazoria County Sherriff has partnered with us and is providing extra patrol vehicles for the beach. Much appreciated! We are trying out a mobile command center station at the Crabbing Pier parking lot, as Stahlman is rented this weekend. All of the local and guest police patrols will be ensuring that all State Laws and City Ordinances are being followed. We want this to be a fun weekend and our PD will strive to ensure that they serve this community well. In the past we have had great Jeep visitors in Surfside and really hope that trend continues as it has been a safe and fun event as experienced on our section of beach. As we all know, “hope” is not a plan, and our plan is to have a heavy presence and enforce laws & ordinances to ensure a safe and fun event.
One word of caution for this weekend. As I have communicated in the past, when we have other patrol here on these busy weekends, those outside agencies will enforce law and ordinance by the book. This includes one way traffic on the beach for all vehicles. You may be stopped and ticketed in a golf cart going the wrong way. Take precautions to avoid that if you are travelling by golf cart this weekend.
Beach Drive: Parking on Beach Drive requires a beach pass annual sticker or a daily pass hang tag. If you are parking on Beach Drive without a beach pass, you will receive a citation.
EMS:
With the storm season coming soon, we need to get citizens who may require assistance to register with 211 so we can have a detailed report on hand to be able to use in case of emergency. Please contact Frank in EMS to complete and register this form before the hurricane season is upon us. Always better to plan ahead, as success loves preparation!
EMS will also be staff for the beach this weekend to serve any incidents that occur immediately.
Human Resources:
The next two major HR initiatives to complete with respect to policy and procedure are Performance Management and Nepotism. Once completed, these policies will be rolled out to all employees through training and sign-offs.
The Performance Management cycle will allow for all employees to hear directly from their supervisor about their work performance on regularly scheduled intervals annually. This will include areas of praise for positive performance, areas for future improvement, and a dialogue between every employee and supervisor on how to improve the department. It is very important for every employee of the Village of Surfside to fully understand their role & responsibilities along with receiving knowledge from feedback on how they are doing to meet or exceed those expectations. I personally will be holding mid-year performance reviews with all the department leaders over the next few weeks.
Nepotism is a potential situation where a conflict of interest could be present due to a family or romantic relationship between two employees, or an employee and an elected or appointed official. We are working with TML to comply with state laws and regulations as we complete our Village of Surfside Beach nepotism policy. We must comply with law on nepotism and will rely on guidance from the experts at the state level, all while managing the fact that Surfside is only made up of roughly 600 folks who work and vote here in this small village.
Beach & Parks:
Toby is launching an effort to make the water accessible wheelchair “MobiChairs” readily available on the beach. The idea is to take the MobiChairs from our storage under City Hall and move them to a beach location in order to allow for easier access. These MobiChairs allow someone in a wheelchair to easily and safely enter the water, and get the most from their Surfside Beach experience. We have multiple MobiChairs in our possession, stored under City Hall, and Toby wants to encourage their use on the beach. The chairs are available for daily use with a $100 refundable deposit. It’s a great idea that we will be testing out this weekend. Spread the word!
Other Items of Interest:
Josh provided an update on some of the commercial projects that are currently in flight at this week’s City Council meeting. To summarize, the restaurant on the corner of Ft Velasco and 332 is now under construction. Over 80 pilings were installed this week to kick it off with a bang, bang, bang! Also, the meat market grocery store next to the new restaurant is pressing forward with inspections and permits from outside agencies. They are still pushing to open before the full on summer season.
Also at this week’s City Council meeting we discussed a few possible changes to ordinances that would impact the beach. Nothing decided, nor passed, but here are the 3 topics that were discussed: 1) RVs prohibited from parking on the beach 2) Large holes dug on beach must be filled in before leaving and 3) Mobile vendors allowed on the beach with proper permits. The action out of the meeting was to draft an ordinance for each of these and discuss/vote next council meeting.
Have a great day and I hope to see you around the island this weekend!
Thanks,
Zach
Notice
This year's levy to fund maintenance and operations expenditures exceeds last year's maintenance and operations tax levy. The following statements must be included in the ordinance, resolution, or order setting this year's tax rate. The statements must be in larger type than the type used in any other portion of the document.
VILLAGE OF SURFSIDE BEACH ADOPTED A TAX RATE THAT WILL RAISE MORE TAXES FOR MAINTENANCE AND OPERATIONS THAN LAST YEAR'S TAX RATE.
THE TAX RATE WILL EFFECTIVELY BE RAISED BY 3.50 PERCENT AND WILL RAISE TAXES FOR
MAINTENANCE AND OPERATIONS ON A $100,000 HOME BY APPROXIMATELY $-1.99.
Notice
Public Works After Hours: 979-248-2085 (Please Text)
Notice
If you need help obtaining a WPI-1 for Windstorm Inspection, feel free to call the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) Angleton Office at 800-248-6032, option 4, then option 3; or you may hire a Texas Certified Windstorm Engineer.