Cities Draw Line in Sand Over Upkeep of Beaches : Budget: Despite county threats to pull lifeguards and cleanup crews, coastal towns say they cannot pay more.

On the wind-swept shores of Hermosa Beach a line has been drawn in the sand: In an unlikely standoff akin to David’s encounter with Goliath, officials in that city of 18,000 have politely, but firmly told Los Angeles County to bug off. And it’s not just Hermosa Beach.

Tiny coastal towns such as Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach and Avalon have told the mighty county that they will not help relieve its budget crisis by picking up more of the costs of maintaining the beaches. What’s more, they seem unimpressed by the county’s threats to pull its lifeguards and cleanup crews unless they ante up.

Although the good officials of Hermosa and other cities undoubtedly cherish their oceanfront perches, they also know something that most of the general public does not: The privilege of capering in the surf under the watchful eye of a lifeguard or lounging on clean, smooth sand comes at a high price--nearly $18 million a year to provide patrols and maintenance crews at some of the world’s most famous and well-used beaches.

Cities such as Hermosa Beach contend that they cannot afford to pay for services that the county has provided for decades at all 22 beaches within its jurisdiction. Likewise, the county, beset by financial problems and demands on services, questions why it should bear sole burden for protecting one of the cornerstones of Southern California’s $7-billion tourist and recreation industry.

The clash over beach financing has peaked just as the summer season gets in full swing. The county has threatened to pull its lifeguards and maintenance crews from the 11 state beaches it services by July 1 and from city-owned beaches such as Hermosa by April 1.

County officials concede they will probably provide services through the summer, even if no agreement is reached before the deadline. But the underlying money problem will probably remain and continue to generate debate.

The issue of who should pay for maintaining the beaches and in what proportion has yielded little critical analysis and even fewer solutions. County officials say they have not been able to come up with a formula that is fair and equitable for all, whether the calculation should be based on the size of the beach, number of visitors or a city’s ability to pay.

The county’s usual solutions to budget problems, such as layoffs, reduced operating hours or new fees, are not easily applied to Southern California’s beaches, which are a natural resource readily accessible to millions of people.

County officials have tried to capitalize on the popularity of the beaches through advertising and marketing deals with modest success. But now they believe that others should share the burden.

“Everyone knows how important the beaches are but no one wants to fund it,” said Ken Johnson, head of the community services section of the county’s Department of Beaches and Harbors. “We’ve got to figure out some way to make this thing work.”

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The waves cresting toward the Hermosa Beach Pier in a sun-dappled twilight evoke images of lone surfers surveying the horizon, of festive picnics laid out on beach towels, of Gidget and Moondoggie hanging 10. Just the sort of location where reality merges with fiction, as it does every week on “Baywatch,” the popular TV show that has filmed on the beach.

The show, which depicts with much glamour the everyday lives of Los Angeles County lifeguards, recently directed its camera to the very problem of beach funding in an episode that ran the same week the county held a very real public hearing on the issue. The fictional lifeguards brought county officials down to the shore to hear the tales of beach-goers they had saved from drowning. The ending is leavened with a bit of reality, said Alicia Smith, an assistant to the producer of the series: Services are maintained and all of the lifeguards get to keep their jobs, but at less pay.

The scenario is pretty tame compared to some of the well-intentioned suggestions that have passed across Dean Smith’s desk. For 13 years, Smith has crunched numbers for the Department of Beaches and Harbors, searching for solutions to a chronic money problem. So far, he has found few answers.

“I can’t remember a year that wasn’t a crisis year,” said Smith, a body-surfing bureaucrat who spent much of his youth hanging out at Manhattan Beach.

Smith recalled the story of one man who, concerned that careless beach-goers were tracking away loads of sand in shoes and on car floorboards, offered to start a foundation. He would sell patches that could be sewed onto jackets or caps, something along the lines of “I Helped Save the Beaches.” The money he raised could be used not only to maintain services, he explained enthusiastically, but to cart sand in from the desert to replenish the beach stock.

Smith had to politely decline the county’s involvement.

Trash collectors have offered to come in and pick up debris for free if they could locate dumpsters at quarter-mile intervals. But county officials have found that beach-goers will not walk more than about 30 yards to deposit trash; much of the garbage would be ditched on the sand, they concluded.

The county has tried to contract out the trash services but that has proved unfeasible as well. The trucks used by the collectors are six-wheel drive and cannot be used on the sand without losing the air in their tires.

“The beach is such an important resource for us all, we’ve got to find some way to make it work,” Smith said. “It’s interesting the way the demographics have changed in a remarkable way. More and more people from inland and the inner city are coming. Maybe this is all part of a political problem. The people we are serving most now, don’t have a political voice.”

About 60 million people visited Los Angeles County’s beaches along Santa Monica Bay last year. Lifeguards made more than 10,000 rescues while reporting only two drownings. Supervisor Deane Dana, who represents coastal communities from Venice to the Palos Verdes Peninsula, has warned that it would be disastrous if the county-run system were dismantled.

The county began consolidating control of lifeguard and maintenance services at state and city-owned beaches in the 1970s, replacing a patchwork system where each beach was patrolled by a separate agency. The special strength of the county operation is said to be its medically trained lifeguards who are an integral part of the region’s emergency network.

On a busy day at the beach lifeguards can be called on to make 200 rescues and as many as 400, said Gary Crum, a second-generation lifeguard who currently is a captain in the South Bay lifeguard headquarters at Hermosa Beach.

“Those are the days that are the most rewarding because we know we have had an impact on the people who were there,” said Crum, whose father Dwight was a captain on South Bay beaches.

Although caught in the middle of the rancorous money debate, the lifeguards can’t help but be pleased at the accolades their services have won from all sides. The Board of Supervisors recently moved to merge the lifeguard operations with the county Fire Department, allowing the lifeguards to tap into a steady source of public safety monies. But the move does not resolve their long-term funding problem.

Some beaches do generate significant revenue, mostly through parking concessions, food stands, marketing deals and film permitting, about $8 million in all. But nearly half of that total is derived from only three beaches, Santa Monica, Will Rogers and Venice. Others like Las Tunas, Topanga, Manhattan and Dan Blocker, barely turn a dime, mainly because they lack parking or good access.

Smith said the county tried raising parking fees from $5 to $7 dollars a few years ago, but attendance dipped so low that the higher fee was quickly dropped. The county has also considered opening restaurants and even RV parks, but local communities and nearby businesses have resisted.

Thought has also been given to using parking lots for money raising activities such as car shows, swap meets, farmer’s markets and the like, if the surrounding communities were willing, said Smith.

The county has had some success in selling ad space on trash cans, sun shelters, tide boards and lifeguard tower signs, although the practice has been criticized as polluting the landscape. Companies have paid licensing fees to dub their products the “official” water, uniform, vehicle and so on of the Los Angeles County Lifeguards. However, the county marketing program generated only about $1.3 million this year.

Some have suggested that, with a potential audience of 60 million people, the county is not getting its money’s worth from advertisers. But again it is not as easy as it sounds, said Smith.

“It’s been a hard sell for some reason,” he said. “What we’ve found is that you have to start small and build. We had a marketing firm in the beginning but they only wanted to make the big deal. But nobody wanted to come in, so we weren’t making any money. Big guys like Coke see their sales coming from television, not from advertising in the sand.”

The idea of a beach industry is relatively new to local officials, and has proven difficult to put into practice.

“Theoretically, the ideal solution would be to match costs to the benefits received but there is no precise way to know what formula to use,” said Gary Galles, an associate professor of economics at ocean-facing Pepperdine University. “In principle there is no reason why the public should not be charged more for these things . . . But the question usually turns on power politics and who has the clout.”

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Right now the clout seems to rest with small beach cities, like Hermosa Beach. When the county threatened to withdraw its services unless reimbursement was forthcoming, officials in the threatened areas dug their heels in the sand. The county and the City of Hermosa Beach have been in a stalemate over the issue since last year.

The county asked Hermosa Beach for $200,000 in cash and other subsidies. The city balked. The county threatened. The city said it had no cash but agreed to participate in some marketing programs and to pick up a small portion of the maintenance tab. The county wanted more. Meanwhile other beach cities closely watched the standoff, determined to hold their ground as well.

“Hermosa Beach was in a way their Stalingrad,” said the city’s mayor, Sam Y. Edgerton, who can speak at length about the fray with equal amounts of indignation and relish. “The county has been on a mission to rattle its sabers as much as possible . . . But we told them, hey, if you don’t like it take your next step.”

Everyone, not just Hermosa Beach residents, enjoys the beaches, Edgerton contends. So it’s unfair to demand reimbursement from beach cities only.

“We already pay a disproportionate share of property taxes to the county,” said Edgerton. “If we ever were to agree to their demands, we’d have to lay off police and fire personnel. To recoup our costs, we’d have to start charging people to use the beach and that’s an abhorrent thought. The issue is whether this is a regional service or a local service that should be considered a luxury and discarded.”

Edgerton suggests that the county should be looking for money from the state, not small cities like his.

But Patricia Megason, deputy director of the state Department of Parks and Recreation, said California does not believe it has any obligation to compensate the county for services at its beaches either. The state owns such beaches as Malibu, Point Dume and Dockweiler. It also owns the beaches at Redondo, Manhattan and Santa Monica but contracts actual operation of the beaches to those cities.

The county has asked the state for $1 million to extend its contract past the July 1 deadline, while it continues negotiating a long-term solution.

“In 1987 we signed a 25-year agreement, which stipulated that the county would operate the beaches and pay for all services,” said Megason. “Now they are in a tough funding situation and they want to change all the rules. Well, the state is in a tough funding situation too.”

The state pays the county nothing for its services, though the cities of Redondo Beach, Santa Monica and Manhattan Beach turn over some parking and concession revenue.

Megason added that the state could take over lifeguard and cleanup operations at its beaches if an agreement cannot be worked out with the county. “We are very experienced in operating beaches in Orange County and San Diego,” she said.

Right now, there seems little disposition among officials to impose more costs on the beach-going public.

Liz Merry, a Sierra Club member who is on that group’s State Coastal Protection Committee, said she believes that more thoughtful analysis must be brought to the issue, but that government should be working to make beaches more accessible, not less.

“If the county did a cost analysis, I think what they would find is that all of these small and large businesses along the coast are direct beneficiaries of people using the beaches. Money from sales . . . could be used to fund services. Coastal communities and businesses need to stop complaining about the costs of living in those areas and start recognizing that there is a direct benefit to being in those areas.”

But people like Patric Lochouarn don’t believe they should bear the burden of financing services. For the last 15 years, he has rented out bikes and skates on Venice Beach.

Things are not so good these days, he says. Many merchants are still trying to recover from the ill effects of the 1992 riots, which took a huge bite out of their business that summer, and rents are high and ever increasing. Businesses in his area are in no position to pay for beach expenses, he said.

“For the first time in a long time we are seeing empty lots and many people are going out of business,” he said. “We live month to month around here. One bad summer season and you could be gone.”

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Among the dozens of plaques, maps, charts and pictures on the walls of the Hermosa Beach lifeguard tower is a tiny black-and-white snapshot of a strapping, blond lifeguard, hand-in-hand with a young toddler, both striding toward the surf with the lifeguards’ indispensable tool, the rescue can, draped from their shoulders. Crum estimates he was maybe 2 or 3 years old when the picture of he and his father was shot.

“I grew up around the ocean and I would rather be around the beach than anywhere else,” Crum said. “But we always remember that our main job is to ensure the public’s safety . . . and we know the product we have is a good one.”

Financial Wave

Los Angeles County provides lifeguard and maintenance services at all 22 beaches within its boundaries, at an annual cost of about $18 million. Faced with severe budget problems, the county is asking beach cities and the state to contribute more money to the operation. Some beaches generate huge parking fees that help cover the cost of services. Others generate very little revenue. Here is a glance at the vital statistics of 10 beaches.

1993 1994-95 1994-95 BEACH ATTENDANCE RESCUES EXPENDITURES REVENUE Cabrillo 1,619,900 99 $1,003,000 $83,000 Dockweiler 3,586,560 658 $1,779,000 $1,141,000 Hermosa Beach 2,494,900 889 $1,355,000 $145,000 Malibu 1,415,000 193 $376,000 $90,000 Manhattan 5,263,450 1,577 $1,188,000 $209,000 Redondo 2,973,050 476 $589,000 $245,000 Santa Monica 13,443,650 1,334 $1,865,000 $1,188,000 Venice 7,635,000 1,211 $1,826,000 $1,565,000 Will Rogers 3,527,750 174 $1,580,000 $2,003,000 Zuma 5,878,200 1,379 $1,849,000 $917,000

Note: 1994-95 expenditures and revenues are estimates

Sources: Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors, Los Angeles County chief administrative office.