The beautiful beaches of San Diego draw people from all over the world. Whether it’s to sunbathe, enjoy the ocean breeze, take a dip or make a quick buck, the beach attracts people from all walks of life.
Surf camps, youth service programs and the general public can crowd these areas and create a potential safety hazard for everyone and an undesirable setting for legitimate, law-abiding commercial business.
In 2004, District 1 City Councilman and current Council President Scott Peters helped procure funds to launch a beach Ambassador Program at La Jolla Shores in response to these concerns. The program, staffed by the lifeguard service, designated two ambassadors with the responsibility of monitoring the various surf camps, surf schools and the boat launch area in La Jolla.
The lifeguard service continued to help out with the program in the summer of 2005 as a secondary responsibility: they saved lives first and played ambassador second.
According to a City of San Diego manager’s report issued Nov. 23, 2005, in the summer of 2002 the Parks and Recreation Department, with the cooperation of the Lifeguard Service, began to take regulative action at the beaches by implementing a permit process for surf instruction and schools.
The following summers, the permit process was refined to “foster a stronger business relationship between surf instruction concessions (SICs) and the city,” according to the report.
“There was a lot of people just going out there and setting up shop without any credentials, without any safety training, and just teaching people how to surf, and that was obviously a strain on our fire safety personnel,” said Chanelle Barry, policy analyst for Peters.
This overuse of a public resource that everyone should be able to enjoy prompted the City Council to accept Requests for Proposals (RFP) from various surf camps and schools.
One of the surf schools that the city invited to bid for a site at La Jolla shores was Surf Diva.Isabelle “Izzy” Tihanyi, CEO and founder of Surf Diva, completed the RFP process that resulted in her company being one of two commercial entities given permission to operate in La Jolla Shores.
The process included an extensive 100-pages-plus application form that required the operators to submit all the necessary operating permits and verifications, including background checks and employee CPR certification. The permit is good for three years.
“They wanted to make sure they got the best [surf school] operator “¦ You had to come in with recommendations, and they wanted to know what we do for the community at large,” Tihanyi said.
Besides making sure the operating permits were given to the most qualified surf camps and schools, the city gains 10 percent of the gross revenue from each of the nine companies allowed to operate along San Diego’s coastline.
According to Barry, last year the program earned about $121,000, all of it earmarked to go back into the Ambassador Program’s enforcement. According to the city manager’s report of Nov. 23, 2005, the projected city revenue from Surf Concession Agreements for fiscal year 2007 totals more than $236,000.
But did all this regulation improve conditions at the beaches? The answer seems to be a resounding yes. Keeping the number of people a surf school could take out into the water to 25 helped improve safety conditions almost immediately.
Meeting minimum safety requirements also helped ease the burden for San Diego lifeguards by ensuring that people going to these schools to be taught are getting a safe, reliable program, said Marine Safety Captain Rick Wurts. The issue of managing the beach so that it remains as available to the general public as possible also saw dramatic improvement, Wurts said.
“If we just let everybody out there who wants to try and teach surf lessons, then all of a sudden you have beaches that are full of various business and companies trying to utilize a limited public resource “¦ by creating this permit process, we identify specific individual companies who will operate specific areas and thereby providing us an opportunity to manage the overall beach resource that is open to the entire public,” Wurts said.
One especially valuable resource is the boat launch at La Jolla Shores. Overcrowding of the only beachfront boat launch within city limits drew complaints from citizens and local residents and contributed to the creation and implementation of the Ambassador Program in the first place.
The success of the Ambassador Program at La Jolla Shores encouraged the City Council to expand the program to Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach and other beaches along the San Diego coastline during the summer months.
Currently, there is one ambassador seven days a week, eight a hours a day, in the Mission and Pacific beaches area, and one ambassador seven days a week, eight hours a day at La Jolla Shores who deals with kayak and boat launch, according to Wurts.
The expansion of the program could include a year-round program and additional staff. Part of the plan is the phasing in of other instructional companies to be included under the program.
Kayaking and scuba-diving schools may soon be asked to bid for permits, which would limit the number of those types of businesses allowed to operate at the beaches. This aims at driving down competition for the boat launch area and other spots around San Diego where scuba instruction takes place.
John Metzger, owner and operator of OEX Dive and Kayak Centers, says that he expects to go through the RFP process in the near future.
So far, the ambassadors have been a tremendous help down at the boat launch, which can get a little too busy on warm summer days, especially at high tide, Metzger said.
The long-term impact of the Ambassador Program has yet to be fully realized. The response, so far, is one of overwhelming support from local surf schools and residents, to whom overcrowding and safety has always been a concern.
But consumers will be the ones fishing for change if the limited competition results in higher prices, leaving them diving into their wallets just to take a dip into the ocean.