Beach Budget Blues : Less State Money Results in Fewer Lifeguards Along the Coast

As families and teen-agers swarmed to Ventura County beaches on the first day of the summer swim season Monday, fewer lifeguards were watching the coastline.

State budget cuts have thinned lifeguard staffing at the state-run beaches, leaving parents of young children angry and state officials hopeful that the cuts will not go deeper after the state budget is finalized next month.

“The coverage is not as good as it has been,” said Steve White, chief of lifeguards for the county’s state beaches. “We’re going to provide the best coverage we have with the funds we have.”

As the first weekday without school signaled the start of the summer season, staffing at the county’s state-run beaches rose to 36, two fewer than last year.

These lifeguards will be working shorter hours--36 per week instead of 40, said White. They now must shift their hours to keep the more popular beaches adequately guarded while spending less time guarding the less-frequented beaches, said C. L. Price, state lifeguard supervisor.

“Personally, I think it’s unfortunate that we’re going to provide less service to the public,” he said.

Word of lighter lifeguard coverage upset some mothers who were watching their children play in the surf near the Ventura Pier on Monday.

“I don’t think we’re adequately protected if they’re cutting back on lifeguards,” said Margaret Shoemaker, sunbathing with her sister while her 5-year-old son, Max, shoveled sand at the water’s edge. She forbade Max, who cannot swim, to go wading even though a lifeguard was stationed nearby.

“I think there’s other things they can cut back than protecting people’s lives and safety,” she said.

The cuts come at a time when younger beach-goers need the most protection, said Noelle Way, a Ventura College student visiting the beach with her 6-year-old son, Patrick.

“That’s going to affect the latchkey children, who don’t have their parents to come down to the beach with them,” she said.

Not everyone objected.

Rhonda Stelck said she had no problems with lifeguard staffing at the pier beach, adding, “it seems all right to me.”

To the north of the pier, lifeguard Scott Parrish sprinted down to the waterline with his float in hand to warn a little girl away from part of the beach reserved for surfers.

After the girl toddled over to the swimmers’ area, Parrish walked back up to the steel-and-fiberglass watchtower, and pronounced it a “pretty calm day.”

“It’s the first day, the weather’s nice, the sun’s out, we don’t have that much of a swell,” said Parrish, a student at UC Santa Barbara beginning his second summer as a lifeguard. “We just try to keep the surfers away from the pier and keep the swimmers away from the surfers.”

“Our main job is to educate people” about dangerous activities, said lifeguard Carly Brandon, a San Francisco State student beginning her fourth year as a lifeguard. “Then they don’t do it again.”

Last year, state beach lifeguards in Ventura County gave 21,591 safety warnings to beach-goers, whose numbers were lower than usual because of gloomy weather. “That’s everything from kids throwing sand in each other’s faces to someone going in water that’s not safe and people fishing where people are swimming,” said Price, the state supervisor.

In 1990, which had a sunnier summer, the lifeguards made 28,508 such contacts and 249 rescues, contrasted with 1991’s 85 rescues, Price said. There were no drownings either year along the state beaches, which are strung out along much of the county’s coastline.

The city of Port Hueneme employs 15 lifeguards to watch its one-mile beach from mid-June to Labor Day, and the county government uses 18 to 20 lifeguards for its beaches at Silver Strand and Hollywood-by-the-Sea. Officials said they will not be affected by the state cuts.

White said the state government may cut funding for lifeguards by another 20% to 60% in the 1992-1993 budget, which is due to be finalized by July 1.

The lifeguard budget for Ventura County’s state-run beaches has already made up for a 20% budget cut in December: “After we spent money during our regular peak use, we basically had very little coverage till this month,” White said.

Although it is not likely, a worst-case 60% cut could leave the state-run beaches by late August without enough money to have the beaches guarded. “People will just be swimming without lifeguards,” he said.