With a City Council committee’s blessing July 14, city beaches are one step closer to featuring commercial advertisements on lifeguard stations and seasonal lifeguard stands. If approved by the full council, the proposed commercialization of the beaches could bring millions of dollars back to the city’s lifeguard program, which has been hit hard by budget cuts. “It was an important step and I give the lifeguards a lot of credit,” said District 2 City Councilman Kevin Faulconer, part of the council’s Budget and Finance Committee that unanimously approved the project. Faulconer said the beach advertising proposal would likely be brought to full council in the fall, with public outreach planned between now and then. In this proposed pilot program, each of the city’s eight main lifeguard stations alone — including the one in Ocean Beach — could potentially generate between $200,000 and $500,000 per year — as much as $4 million annually. “It’s an approach that has been utilized at other beaches that has really helped other lifeguard programs,” Faulconer said. Faulconer said the key to the project is that all of the advertising would stay within city sign ordinances, ensuring that nothing too flashy or overbearing appears on the beaches. That is the primary concern with the project — a beach full of big, gaudy advertisements. “That’s the important provision because I would not have ordered wholesale billboards on the beach,” Faulconer said. Lifeguard Sgt. Ed Harris, spokesman for the Teamsters who represent city lifeguards, said he supports the idea of beach advertising. But he said lifeguards want the money to stay where it is generated — at city beaches. “The lifeguards are supporting this, but we want to make sure that the money that comes in is used for replacing positions,” Harris said. “We don’t want to see it go back to the general fund and for the public to not see a benefit to the beaches and the staffing levels and everything else.” City lifeguards brought the idea for beach advertising forth a few years ago and they have been meeting with city officials since last November about the idea. Prior to last year, Harris said the idea didn’t stick because lifeguards didn’t have a strong enough voice through the Municipal Employees Association. “Now that we belong to Teamsters, we were able to have direct access to the mayor’s office,” Harris said. “We took the mayor on a tour and showed him everything and [city Chief Operating Officer] Jay Goldstone. Then we started working with [city Director for Strategic Partnerships] Jenny Wolff to develop how it would work.” Along the way, Harris said the lifeguards consulted with marketers from Los Angeles and other areas to find ways to advertise subtly on the beach. Ideas included a sponsor for the surf report recording, and company logos on surfboards, uniforms, information boards and towers. “We want to ensure that people realize our situation and that this is a good thing,” Harris said. “We can do subtle advertising, we can bring money back into the city, but it needs to be put towards a purpose.” According to Harris, revenue generated by potential beach advertising for lifeguard services would go toward staffing and training. He estimates about 12 percent of staffing and 90 percent of training have been cut as a result of citywide reductions over the past few years. “We used to have a pool of relief guards that would backfill those on straight time,” Harris said. “When we cut all these relief positions, we now have to backfill those on overtime. We need to build back in these relief positions.” In addition to lifeguards working shifts outside of their training, Harris said they are averaging 40 vacant shifts per week because of the lack of staffing from sickness, injury or vacation. Harris also estimated that it currently takes an average of six years to fully train a lifeguard because of the current crimp in funds available for training. “Our fear is that we signed a contract with the city that raised our retirement age from 50 to 55 for new hires, we took our 6 percent pay cut, we gave away terminal leave,” Harris said. “We’re doing everything we can to function, but we’re fearful right now that we’re not keeping on training and we don’t have any plan for succession training.”