Municipal lifesaving officials say low pay is one reason shore towns can have trouble recruiting and retaining lifeguards, particularly veteran supervisors and instructors.
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After Belmar's mayor noticed last summer that the Monmouth County borough wasn't staffing all its lifeguard stands, he led a shakeup that ousted the senior lifeguards and managers in Belmar and raised the official starting pay for guards.
The mayor, Matt Doherty, was criticized during a Feb. 20 Borough Council meeting by current and former lifeguards and supervisors, many of them angered or confused about who would get to keep their job under the shakeup. But most agreed on at least one point: low pay makes it tough to attract and keep qualified lifeguards.
"it's the biggest thing," Bill Karatz, a retired Belmar lifeguard supervisor, said of the pay issue. "You talk to Seagirt, you talk to Manasquan, you talk to Spring Lake. They can't cover all their stands, either."
Up and down the shore, officials say pay is a critical issue for lifeguards and the local officials who hire them to protect not only the public, but the reputation of shore communities as safe places for often inexperienced beach goers to frolic in the inviting but deceptively dangerous surf along New Jersey's Atlantic coast.
"We're not the pool," said Steve Downey, chief of the Atlantic City Beach Patrol, whose guards made over 1,000 saves last summer. "I can't tell you how many times a day people come up and ask me, 'Where's the rip tide?' And I point out it's right in front of where their kids are swimming. You'd be surprised how many people we get that have never seen the ocean before. People ask me, 'Where's the ocean?' and they're standing right next to it."
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Officials say it's true that many life guards are high school or college students who don't have to rely on the job to support a family or pay the rent.
But, they add, many other lifeguards take the job at least in part for the money, especially veteran supervisors and trainers, who have built the summer guarding season into their overall annual income scheme, whether it's in addition to teaching in the fall, winter and spring, or to supplement a night shift in a casino, bar, or patrol car.
For those guards, lifesaving officials say, if the pay doesn't meet their material needs, they may chose to look for summer employment elsewhere.
"People can't find lifeguards because they're not paying enough," said Tom Gill, a spokesman for the United States Lifesaving Association, a lifeguarding education organization based in Virginia Beach. "I think people see it as a lot more of a job than they used to, but I think there's still some people who may say, 'Who wouldn't want to spend all summer on the beach?'"
The City of Atlantic City pays rookie lifeguards $12.50 an hour, rising to $22 an hour for those with 20 years of service.
Downey said austerity measures under a state takeover of the city's finances included a 10 to 15 percent reduction in lifeguard pay last summer. Downey said the pay cut resulted in a younger, less experienced pool of applicants from which the corps of 150 guards were culled.
"Did it hurt recruitment? I believe so," Downey said. "We had 59 hires under age 18. That's probably the youngest group we've ever had."
The struggle to retain lifeguards is nothing new, and Atlantic City is among several shore towns that have long contributed to a state-sponsored pension plan for guards created in the 1920's.
Doherty, who stepped down as Belmar's mayor on April 10 to head the state Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, said the borough could afford the recent pay hike, which raised the official starting wage from $8.50 to $10 an hour.
He and Borough Administrator Colleen Connolly said the pay hike helped attract 125 applications this year through the end of March for 70 lifeguarding slots. They said the borough hoped to hire a new lifeguard director by the second week of April, and have a full staff in place by early May.
As in many shore towns, Connolly said part of Belmar's guard contingent will officially go on duty Memorial Day weekend, building to a full contingent by July Fourth.
Hourly pay tops out at $15 for all lifesaving staff in Belmar, including training officers, lieutenants, captains, supervisors and even the director. But starting pay for leadership positions is higher, and assistant supervisors are paid summer season salaries ranging from $8,000 to $15,000 depending on experience, while the director makes $11,000 to $15,500.
State lifeguards at Island Beach State Park, lakes and other locations tend to earn less than their municipal counterparts, ranging from $8.60 to $10.50 an hour, according to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, their employer.
The hiring age is a tender 16 years old, and DEP spokesman Larry Hajna said the relatively low wages are supplemented by the training and certification that young state lifeguards can use to land other jobs.
The feds earn the most. At Sandy Hook, in the National Park Service's Gateway National Recreation Area, the starting hourly pay is $17.51, topping out at $22.60, said Daphne Yun, a park service spokesperson.
Like state and local life guards, Yun said those at Sandy Hook are a combination of students, teachers and others, most of whom live the area. She said some learn about the job and apply through the park service job portal.
About three quarters of this summer's 80 lifeguarding jobs at Sandy Hook had been filled by the end of March, said Yun, adding that the annual turnover rate is about 20 percent.
Thanks at least in part to the higher federal pay, Yun said, "We do have a lot of returning lifeguards."
Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.