Posted on February 16, 2021
Online grocery sellers. Big-box retail stores. Plexiglass fabricators. Meal delivery services. Remote meeting platform providers. Whiskey and wine producers.
These are a few of the industries that had bigger sales, predictably, in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdowns took hold.
One area of revenue growth might be surprising, though, during a year of a stay-at-home orders or admonitions. Jersey shore towns that sell beach tags apparently cleaned up. Some 27 of the municipalities that require fees for in-season beach use reported increased revenue over 2019, according to an NJ Advance Media survey, while just nine took in less money than the previous year.
This doesn’t seem to square with shore business owners who declared the 2020 season a lost cause, except that lousy weather, less than the coronavirus, may have cut beachgoing by people who had already purchased seasonal tags.
In any event, off-season talk now turns, as it often does, to price increases for 2021 badges. Also lurking around is the whole idea of charging anyone for the right to encamp on what are clearly public beaches — supported not just by local property taxes, but considerable federal and state funds to replenish the shoreline.
Reports have emerged that the Wildwoods in Cape May County, home to the state’s only sizable totally free beaches (along with Atlantic City) are considering instituting beach fees. Relax. It’s not going to happen for 2021. But this provides a time frame for lawmakers and the public to rethink the broad philosophy of charging for access to non-private beaches, something other states simply do not do.
New Jersey’s municipal beach fees have long been a target of some environmental and nature groups, but the last time the Legislature made any noise about dumping them was in 2012 and 2013, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Miffed that millions of state and federal revenue went to shore up dunes and rebuild beaches, state Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, declared war on the practice of charging folks to use them. Backed by Sen. Michael Doherty, R-Warren, Sweeney authored a bill that would have banned any town that accepted outside replenishment money from charging for beach access.
Finding his inner populist, Sweeney even went as far as complaining that the fees linger because they are a way to discourage the working class and the poor from using the beaches. No ban was enacted, although beach fees are no less a discrimination tool now than they might have been eight years ago.
If Wildwood, Wildwood Crest and North Wildwood institute beach fees, those who can’t afford badges will be limited to just Atlantic City and, as the T-shirts state, tiny Where-the-Hell-is-Strathmere? (It’s in Upper Township.) Is this what the state’s populace and lawmakers want? Yet, it would be considered unfair to prevent the Wildwoods from using a revenue source that other Jersey beach towns already tap.
Market forces alone might be enough of an argument to keep the Wildwoods fee-free. This trio of towns needs to study whether it’s cost effective to reduce the flow of tourists, some of whom flock there mainly because of the no-tag beaches. Remember, these people still rent hotel rooms and buy food on the boardwalk. Business operators generally don’t appreciate any reduction in warm bodies.
Surely, the increasing local cost of maintaining beach areas is an issue, and tag revenue lessens the blow. There are limits to how much these municipalities can raise property taxes on resident homeowners.
Still, you don’t get something for nothing. Before the Wildwoods act, this state should decide whether or not public beaches should to be free to all. If the answer is yes, enact a statewide fee ban, but come up with a plan to replace the revenue with some kind of additional aid.
