Then the family sweeps the light-blue, 40-foot portable pathway, known as a Mobi-Mat, that Sea Isle installed to make it easier for visitors to get to the waterfront.
"It's almost like welcoming people to your home," Cookson said of the pride she feels when the entrance is ready to greet visitors again the next day.
It's a drill being undertaken by families, service organizations, and other groups at 16 beach entrances on the barrier-island resort this summer. The volunteers are part of Sea Isle's new Beach Path Adoption Program to aid the public works crew in a time of declining municipal budgets, said Vicky Rutledge, a supervisor with the Public Works Department.
"This town is blessed with so many people who take pride in the beach and want to help," Rutledge said. "Now that we need the help because of a hiring freeze, it's the perfect way to keep our beaches in shape."
Officials said they didn't yet know how much the effort would save the municipality.
Volunteers don't do any heavy lifting; raking the beach and emptying trash barrels remain the job of public works employees. But they provide an additional service by looking for breaks in the dunes and fencing and reporting sand loss around the pathway.
Sea Isle created the program after placing the Mobi-Mats at 75 of the town's 94 beach entrances. Treading the scorching sand was painful, and the flexible, plastic runways make access easier for the handicapped and for those who cart their gear in wagons.
Sea Isle's Beach Path Adoption Program is part of a statewide network of antilitter "adopt" projects that put volunteer individuals and groups in charge of tidying beaches, roads, highways, or other public spaces, said Sandy Huber, executive director of the nonprofit New Jersey Clean Communities Council.
