Support Beach Badge Financial Sunshine in New Jersey

Surfrider Foundation's Jersey Shore and South Jersey Chapters support, with some suggested amendments, Assemblymember Margie Donlon and Senator Vin Gopal’s identical bills regarding beach access financial transparency in New Jersey (A5755 and S4677). We appreciate their leadership on this important topic.

The Surfrider Foundation has spent decades advocating for improved beach and ocean access in New Jersey. We fundamentally believe that beaches are a public resource that should be welcoming, safe, and available for enjoyment for all people. At the same time, we understand the unique and long history in New Jersey of beach fees funding beach services.

The 1955 Municipal Beach Act (generally known as the “Beach Fee Statute”), grants NJ municipalities the authority to charge a beach fee at publicly or privately-owned beach or waterfront areas for access to the beach and bathing and recreational facilities--in order to fund operations, improvements, and maintenance of beachfront recreational facilities such as boardwalks, restrooms, lifeguards, parking, waste management, and beach cleaning. 

The New Jersey Supreme Court subsequently upheld this municipal authority to charge a reasonable beach access fee in the 1972 case of Borough of Neptune v. Avon-By-The-Sea, so long as the fee is legitimately based upon the jurisdiction’s costs of operating and maintaining the beachfront.

We appreciate that bills A5755 and S4677 seek to add additional financial transparency and "sunshine" to beach badge revenues and beach services in the State. We ask for additional language in the bills to make it clear that the State will act on this financial information, and that the information is publicly available. 

The bill text specifically says: For a municipality with a municipally owned beach for which the municipality charges beach tag fees, the public access plan shall additionally include (a) an itemized budget of the actual costs for the operations and maintenance of each municipally owned beach for the previous beach season; (b) the revenues generated by each municipally owned beach for the previous beach season; (c) an itemized projection of costs for the upcoming beach season; and (d) if the revenues enumerated pursuant to subparagraph (b) exceed the costs enumerated pursuant to subparagraph (a), an explanation of how the municipality will expend the excess revenue.