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08/04/2021 09:30 AMIn 2021, life has been a beach in Guilford.
Last summer in the relatively early weeks and months of the pandemic, beachgoers and summer-campers in town were subjected to crowded conditions, tight restrictions, and confusion about masking, with staff subjected to outbursts from hot-headed folks trying to get to the water.
Though there has been some occasional issues with crowding, everyday summer recreation and summer camps mostly went off without a hitch this year, with still two weeks still left in the camp season, according to Parks & Recreation Director Rick Maynard. Staffing has not been a problem, and the attitude of visitors has changed for the positive as well, he said, as the town looks toward a winding down of summer.
For approximately the last two weeks of summer leading up to Labor Day, Maynard said the town will only have enough lifeguards to staff one of its two beaches as many young people return to college or start training for fall sports.
But even that isn’t unusual, and Maynard added that the town has managed to keep a stable, reliable staff throughout the summer.
“This year, we’re back to kind of what is normal,” he said.
As people have flocked to the picnic areas and brought their kayaks out to enjoy the mostly mild weather this summer, Guilford’s two beaches—Lake Quonnipaug and Jacobs Beach—have offered the kind of opportunities residents have come to expect, with full-capacity summer camps and mostly low-key weekends, according to Maynard.
“Camps have been amazingly successful,” he said. “We haven’t seen those numbers...It’s been going remarkably well.”
First Selectman Matt Hoey said he had received some complaints about the buses that take kids for Guilford’s travel camp, which has blocked traffic at times. Hoey said he would pass that along to the Parks & Recreation Commission, but didn’t know if there was any easy solution.
One of the issues has been that Guilford still has to use two buses instead of one for that camp in order to space out kids, according to Maynard, meaning the program actually might lose money. He said he reached out to Guilford’s Health Department to see if it might be possible to increase the capacity and use one bus, and also indicated the federal government might reimburse the town for that lost revenue.
Other camps have operated at full or nearly full capacity as well, offering essentially the same experiences as in pre-pandemic years, according to Maynard, though with indoor-mask requirements for sports like basketball or rainy day activities.
For the most part, though, people have been relaxed and beaches have remained accessible, Maynard said, with less of the tension and uncertainty of last year. Just this week, Maynard said he had heard from a resident who simply wanted to express how happy she was with the town and its staff.”
“She said, ‘I am so impressed with the staff we have working at our beaches...I feel like I’m at a resort,’” Maynard said with a laugh.
As towns across the state and along the shoreline have fretted about potential staffing shortages with some people still hesitant to return to work, along with a highly unstable labor market, Maynard said Guilford has managed to hold onto the same counselors and life guards for years.
“We have a lot of returning staff, they come back each year because they like working here,” Maynard said. “We treat them well and they enjoy” the job.
The town is planning to recognize a handful of lifeguards who have been involved in “saves” at the beach—nothing dramatic, Maynard said, mostly jumping into the water to help younger swimmers who might appear to be struggling.
“Parents are very, very thankful that we have guards that are attentive like that,” he said.