New dog rules eyed for Poplar Beach in Half Moon Bay

“The situation, as it stands now, where people are being abusive when they are asked to leash their dogs, is really untenable,” Councilmember Robert Brownstone said.

Dogs must be on a leash and controlled at the popular public beach, but the policy is not always obeyed by dog owners and visitors, with the area having several incidents of dogs running up to horses and resulting in dangerous situations for all involved. City staff said off-leash dogs are a regular occurrence at the beach, with owners either unaware, or not careful enough, about the city ordinance. Poplar Beach’s ordinances are difficult to enforce because of its topography and many access points from different coastal areas. Councilmember Joaquin Jimenez, who brought the item forward, said a leashed dog had attacked his horse previously.

“I ended up being the one who was attacked, and my horse was attacked, and I want to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Jimenez said.

Willa Chapman, executive director of Sea Horse Ranch, offers guided horseback riding on the coastal equestrian trail and Poplar Beach. She said Sea Horse Ranch users must often ask people to put their dogs back on the leash because they are scaring or harming the horses. However, it often leads to people giving her staff regular verbal abuse. Chapman described one experience when a dog went after her horse’s legs. She favored a partition that separated dogs and horses, allowing everyone to enjoy public land safely.

“There needs to be a solution,” Chapman said. “We’ve never asked for nor expected exclusive use of the beach. That’s not the purpose. The purpose is to keep it safe for everyone. I’m a big believer in multiuse, but with multiuse comes compromise on everyone’s part.”

Options

One option city staff suggested is that roughly 600 feet south of the Poplar Beach parking lot, the city could allow off-leash dogs until Wavecrest Beach to the south. In return, dogs would not be allowed anywhere to the north of the parking lot, which would range up to the Kelly Avenue area, something Jimenez favored.

“It will make it easier to enforce, and it would be safer for the horses, people and dogs,” Jimenez said.

Another option is to keep the current rules allowing only on-leash dogs from the Poplar Beach parking lot area north to Kelly Avenue at Francis Beach while also allowing off-leash dogs south of the parking lot. Vice Mayor Deborah Penrose said it made sense to have spaces for dogs to run off leash and horses to have places where there are no dogs off leash. She suggested having certain times for dogs north of the Poplar Beach parking lot to use the area, like sunrise and sunset.

“If we are looking at the zone from Kelly to Poplar and saying that would be no dogs at all permitted, that seems like a large area,” Penrose said.

The city believes will help is having a designated off-leash dog area along Poplar Beach. Having clear boundaries with signs could help limit conflicts between dogs and horses. Additional enforcement is possible, but the city and Sheriff’s Office lack the resources to enforce leash laws all the time. In the past, the city has funded special patrols on weekends in an attempt to address the issue.

“When you think of the law enforcement needs we have in our community, taking one of our deputies off their normal beat, responding to emergencies to go down to the beach, you are basically asking the deputy to be inaccessible to the community for an hour,” City Manager Matthew Chidester said.

Chidester said the city was not trying to punish people and instead create a safe way for all beach users to be on the beach.