The Parks and Recreation Commission will ask Annual Town Meeting in May to pay the salaries of the lifeguards who keep watch over swimmers and sunbathers at the Town Beach during the summer months.
By a unanimous 3-0 vote Monday night, commission members Doug Thornton, Joe Reynolds, and Bob O’Shea voted to ask the Select Board to place an article on the 2019 Annual Town Meeting warrant that would add a “Beach Personnel-Lifeguards” expense line to the town budget and appropriate $28,000 for fiscal 2020, which begins July 1. Commissioner Steve Victorson was absent and one seat on the five-member commission remains vacant following the resignation of Wyona Lynch-McWhite in December.
At present, the town pays the salary of a beach director ($15,034) and appropriates money for other beach expenses, such as maintenance and utilities ($19,361). Beach personnel, however, are paid from the commission’s revolving fund, which is dependent on the fees collected for beach stickers, boat rentals, and classes and is perpetually in deficit at the start of each fiscal year. A review of beach operations done by the town’s auditor last summer recommended that beach safety personnel be paid directly with taxpayer dollars, as is done, the auditor claimed, by other towns. The town would continue to pay beach sticker checkers, instructors, and other nonsafety employees with money in the revolving fund.
In their request to the Select Board, the commissioners wrote that their recommended change “will allow the revolving fund to recover so that it does not run in the red and may lead to improved programs or reduced beach fees in the future.”
