Last year, the 26 municipalities with public ocean beaches expected to collect $25.3 million primarily in beach badge revenue. With ample sunshine last summer, despite a tropical storm at the end of the season, they took in $29.6 million — $4.3 million above their own budgets.
View full sizeSome New Jersey municipalities have been accused of using beach badge fee money to illegally trim local taxes.And they may be illegally using that extra cash to trim local taxes.
Asbury Park used more than a quarter of a million dollars in excess beach money to ease property taxes, a city official said. Manasquan’s beach budget shows $2.4 million in revenue, including surplus, nearly a half million dollars more than expected. Surf City sent unexpected beach money to the borough’s general fund, which pays for all local government services.
Borough officials said it covered only beach expenses.
Ronald Chen, the state’s former public advocate, a now-defunct position that often sued to protect the public’s rights, said towns using beach money for anything but beach costs are breaking the law.
“It can’t be used for the general fund. They can’t do that,” said Chen, vice dean of Rutgers School of Law in Newark. “You can only spend that money for things like maintaining and policing the beaches.”
Last year, the 26 municipalities with public ocean beaches expected to collect $25.3 million primarily in beach badge revenue. With ample sunshine last summer, despite a tropical storm at the end of the season, they took in $29.6 million — $4.3 million above their own budgets.
New Jersey is one of the few states that let towns control the price of beach access. In Hawaii, Florida and many other coastal states, beachgoers generally enjoy the sand and surf for free. Connecticut and Rhode Island are two other states that charge beach fees.
Battles over beach badges occasionally break out in the New Jersey Legislature, but all those efforts have died early deaths, mostly because of cost and opposition from shore lawmakers.
On the beaches Friday, visitors expressed mixed feelings about shelling out cash for a plastic beach badge.
“I get it in a certain sense,” said Russ Fallik, 40, of Edgewater, who was lounging on Avon beach and plans to spend the summer at the shore as he has for years. “But are they really using the money for what they’re saying? That’s the hundred-dollar question.”
He vacationed in Barbados in April with a friend who toted a backpack covered in Spring Lake day beach passes that he purchased over time.
“People in Barbados were like, ‘You mean you pay to get on the beach?’ They were dumbfounded,” Fallik said.
Renee Gross, of Sparta, hovered over her toddler son and older daughter with her husband, Jason, on Avon’s beach.
“That’s Jersey for you — they get you for whatever,” she said.
Local town leaders argue that the beach crowds cost them for services such as police patrols and trash collection, costs that are not reflected in the budgets. Damage from Tropical Storm Irene in August added to the towns’ budgetary burdens.
But beach access advocates like Ralph Coscia say there should be a better accounting of what the towns make and spend. Any windfalls should go toward lowering beach fees, he said.
“Let’s face it: Basically you’re talking about a cash cow,” said Coscia, president of Citizens Right To Access Beaches, a Point Pleasant Beach-based group that fights for access and provides items like free beach wheelchairs. The retired teacher said he does frequent the only publicly owned, but privately run, beach in Point Pleasant Beach.
Deal took in about $225,000 more in beach revenues in 2011 than the $1.3 million it expected. The surplus was plowed back into the borough’s general fund, but it was no windfall, said James F. Rogers, borough clerk and administrator.
“If you ran (the beach) as a business, you’d probably close it down,” he said.
Deal’s 2012 municipal budget shows beach revenue, salaries, wages and other expenses for the beachfront operation, and capital improvements for the beaches, but not items such as insurance, electricity and police that go toward operating the beaches safely, he said.