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09/19/2018 08:30 AMOn Sept. 11, the Beach & Recreation Department gave the Board of Selectmen (BOS) an update on the summer season. In short, the news is that department sold a lot of beach passes and that going without lifeguards won’t be a viable model in future years.
At the meeting, Beach & Recreation Director Scot Erskine said his department sold 6,300 beach stickers and 340 daily tags came out of the office at Town Campus. At the beach, 1,466 resident daily passes and 505 non-resident daily passes were sold, according to Erskine. All told, the department brought in about $190,000.
Selectmen were pleased with the numbers, but asked how the system of not having lifeguards at the beaches this year worked out. The town did not have lifeguards this year because not enough qualified individuals applied for the jobs. Rather than be short-staffed and have inconsistent coverage at the beaches, the town opted to go with beach monitors instead of lifeguards and put signs up informing visitors that they were swimming at their own risk.
“We learned that people felt that because there were no lifeguards, there were no rules,” said Erskine. “Swimmies were out, the boogies boards were out, people were going out on the rocks, and not listening when we tried to get someone to come in. We are going to try to make a concerted effort to obtain guards for next year, but the value pool is not there for the waterfront-certified lifeguards.”
Selectman Scott Murphy said he didn’t realize there was a different certification for waterfront and pool lifeguarding.
“There were a number of candidates, but they had just gotten their certification and the certification was for a pool,” said Erskine. “We didn’t have the back up in terms of trained and veteran staff to work with.”
Former selectman and BOS meeting regular Gus Horvath suggested the town take a different approach to getting lifeguards for the summer season. Horvath said he was a water safety instructor years ago and the key may be finding where lifeguards are being trained.
“I don’t know where they train lifeguards today, maybe the YMCA in Branford, but I would suggest that you guys might want to go directly to the source and find out where the training is taking place and get right in at the front end of the process to try to get some,” he said. “You might offer scholarship to the high school kids to go take the course on the basis that they would work with the town over the summer.”
First Selectman Tom Banisch said the town is going to have to take a closer look at all processes for the Beach & Recreation Department during the summer.
“We are actually looking at the whole security issue down at the Surf Club anyway, given the vandalism that we had and other problems, so we are looking at the whole structure of how we deal with issues down there,” he said. “We are going to be doing something with that over the winter.”