Westport beaches will be fully staffed for the remainder of the month, after the finance committee voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a $13,000 transfer to the beach commission to cover expenses. The money comes from the town’s benefits and health insurance account.

Earlier this month, commission members voted to cut lifeguard hours at the beach through the remainder of the fiscal year on June 30, to help cover a funding shortfall caused by increased lifeguard salaries and several unanticipated expenses. Though there were enough funds in the beach enterprise fund to cover the deficit, commission chairman Sean Leach said that money was not available — moving those funds would have required approval at Financial Town Meeting.

“I’m at the mercy of the town at this particular point,” Leach said.

Funds are tight

Select board members approved the transfer on Monday. A night later, Leach told fincom members during their review that money is tight, warning that current trends in Westport are pointing toward lower revenue, higher costs and tighter budgets.

Last year, the cost of seasonal resident beach passes rose from $35 to $50. This year, between that price increase and the rainy spring, the numbers are down.

The town sold about 2,700 passes one year prior to the pandemic. That jumped to 4,600 during the pandemic, but went down to about 4,000 afterwards. This year, about 3,000 passes have been sold for the season.

“I want to attribute it to the lousy weather,” Leach said. “I hope that’s the case.”

But there could be other reasons, he said.

Westport is an aging town, and Leach said that with seniors paying a $25 reduced rate for the season, he sees more passes being sold at the lower rate in the coming years, as people age out of the full price category.

Also, with the higher cost per pass he’s seeing fewer families buy multiple passes, as they once did. Instead, more people are taking their chances and parking at Cherry and Webb without a permit, figuring that even if they don’t get away with it, the resulting $50 fine is about what it costs to park at Horseneck for a day.

Fincom member Cindy Brown suggested that the town might consider raising the fine to $100 — “maybe that’s something worth discussing with the select board,” she said.

“We’ve been talking about it,” Leach said. “We’re preserving (beach funds) as best we can. The problem is, I think ... it won’t be long before we have a deficit and we have to figure out how to” increase the enterprise fund’s revenue stream. We’re running at a point now where we’re breaking even with costs and salaries due to a decrease in the number of passes that we are selling.”

Back to the shortfall

Leach said the shortfall was also due to several unanticipated expenses, including a $12,000 bill for piping plover monitoring that was expected to come in at $8,000, and $3,000 in parts costs for a new lifeguard chair, built by Diman students, which Leach said was essential but not budgeted.

“Pennies make dollars and it added up,” he said. “It got to the point where we just ran out of money.”

Though they voted in favor of the transfer, several fincom members politely scolded Leach for not bringing the matter before them earlier, noting that commission members saw the shortfall coming for months. He acknowledged that lapse.

Still, fincom member Hugh Morton said he’d vote for the request.

“Hindsight is great,” he said. But “rather than stiff the beach for two or three weeks in June, I think it’s a reasonable thing to let it go ahead.”

“I don’t want to stand in the way of not having the beach open fully,” fincom chairwoman Karen Raus added.