Wildwood may tiptoe toward beach fees

WILDWOOD - Come next year, Wildwood may no longer be able to market its famously free beach.

The Cape May County resort's status as one of a handful of Jersey Shore destinations that do not require beach tags is advertised to would-be tourists from Florida to Quebec.

A recent assessment of the city's finances has officials wondering whether that may have to come to an end - a move that at least one tourism expert warned could backfire in a still-sputtering economy.

It costs at least $1.5 million a year to groom the strand, say officials in Wildwood, where the population swells from about 5,300 to 250,000 in the summer. The money from beach badges would help cover that maintenance and reduce strain on the city budget, which has suffered the effects of a shrinking tax base.

"Property owners here are already paying a beach fee in the form of the taxes they pay. . . . It seems unfair to keep expecting they will be the ones to bear all of that burden as costs continue to rise," said Wildwood City Commissioner Pete Byron, who said the bill for keeping the beach clean had risen about 14 percent annually in recent years.

Officials are completing an analysis to determine whether the badges would cost too much in the long run, Byron said. Wildwood has such a vast oceanfront - about two miles long and nearly a half-mile wide in spots - that it may be too expensive to create restricted-access points where badges could be checked and sold, he said.

The city also is investigating whether different revenue-generating activities on the expanse might prove as lucrative - and less infuriating to tourists. Private cabanas, beach bars, RV camping areas, storage-box rentals, and expanding the resort's new offseason horseback-riding program all have been mentioned, Byron said. No timetable has been set for a decision.

One possibility is to put the badge question to voters in the form of a referendum, which has not happened in Wildwood for 30 years. In any case, the beaches will be free in 2012.

If tags prove necessary, Wildwood would sell them for less than the Shore average of $5 daily, $10 weekly, and $20 for the season, Byron said.

Nearly all Shore resorts - with the exception of Strathmere, Atlantic City, and the Wildwoods - require beachgoers to buy badges. In most places, that has been the case for more than four decades. Towns are not allowed to profit from the sale of tags.

Officials in North Wildwood and Wildwood Crest - which shoulder Wildwood and share its (beach) umbrella identity, boardwalk, and a fleet of tram cars - have said they would not follow if Wildwood joined the pack.

"Every town is up against it with a loss of revenue and other factors in recent years, so we're all looking for new avenues of revenue. . . . But I don't think beach fees are the answer," said Kevin Yecco, Wildwood Crest borough clerk.

The borough's governing body has not broached the subject since voters defeated a referendum on the subject by a 2-1 ratio in a recessionary economy 30 years ago, Yecco said.

North Wildwood doesn't have the matter on its agenda, either.

In the still-recovering economy, with tourists demanding a lot for their dollar, imposing a new user fee - even for something as lovely as a day at the beach - could be tricky, according to Wesley Roehl, a professor and travel research director at Temple University's School of Tourism and Hospitality Management.

"Adding the cost of a seasonal tag may not have that big of an impact on most people's budgets, since it's a relatively small cost over a whole summer," Roehl said. "But there could be a psychological impact overall, because you have something that goes from being entirely free to something that has a cost associated with it."

A beach fee also could affect spontaneous day trips, he said. "Currently, a family can wake up, say, 'Let's go to Wildwood,' hustle the kids into the car, and not stop until they're at the beach. If Wildwood goes to tags and the family in question aren't already season tag holders, the impromptu trip to the Shore just became more complicated," Roehl said.

Though free beaches have been a great marketing tool for Wildwood, it's understandable that the town is rethinking that, said Diane F. Wieland, director of Cape May County's Department of Tourism.

"The costs are so high to keep them clean," Wieland said. "First and foremost, it's important to have clean beaches."

Some tourists complain about the fees to use public beaches in the Garden State compared to places like Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Florida that generally do not charge, she said. But she contends that not all those places are as scrupulous about grooming their bathing areas.

"I'm not sure they are cleaning their beaches to the extent that we do here. All the dollars collected through beach tags go to offset the costs each of these towns pay," Wieland said. "The cost is high. . . . It is huge."

Tourists are likely to want to go to Wildwood no matter what, said Israel Posner, executive director of the Lloyd D. Levenson Institute of Gaming, Hospitality and Tourism School of Business at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

"A summer day on the Jersey Shore is the next best thing to heaven, and that's a damn good value," Posner said.