The lifeguards responsible for the lives of 20 million-plus beachgoers along San Diego\u2019s 17-mile coast who made more than 5,000 water rescues in 2013 are asking for a little more than $5 million over the next five years from the city during budget deliberations.
\n“The main thing is to look ahead and have a plan ready so that, as funding is available, we know where we want to be (operationally) and can act on those opportunities,” said San Diego Lifeguard Services Chief Rick Wurts. “We recognize the city is still going through its recovery in the budget and that there are many important needs throughout other departments like police and fire. The list of needs we\u2019ve submitted are our top priorities.”
\nWurts\u2019 recent budget proposal to the city asked for about $5.28 million over the next five years. This includes $1.77 million in fiscal year 2014-15, to add personnel and address maintenance and equipment needs.
\nWurts said his department\u2019s budget proposal was projected over five years “to take a comprehensive look at areas where we felt we could augment operations to be able to continue to provide even better service in all aspects of our operations.”
\nOn Monday, April 14, Mayor Kevin Faulconer released his proposed budget, which will be vetted by the public and City Council in budget deliberations over the next couple of months. The budget will be finalized sometime in June for the new fiscal year starting July 1.
\nThe lifeguard budget proposal requests 15 additional lifeguards and support staff. Faulconer\u2019s budget calls for a $500,000 increase in the city\u2019s current $19.2 million annual lifeguard services expenditures.
\n“We have 97 full-time lifeguards working year-round, and in the summertime we bring in about 200 seasonal, part-time lifeguards,” Wurts said.
\nNew lifeguards would reportedly be added to La Jolla, Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach, South Mission Beach, Windansea and Mission Bay for the boating-safety unit.
\nThough the lifeguard\u2019s flotilla of watercraft is small \u2014 totaling 11 vessels, including two fire boats and nine patrol\/surf-rescue vessels \u2014 it\u2019s integral to the department\u2019s lifesaving mission.
\n“We have a cliff-rescue vehicle that sorely needs replacement,” Wurts said. “That\u2019s currently being constructed and we hope to get that delivered to us sometime in January 2015.”
\nWurts said another big-ticket item, replacement of a fire boat, is going through vendor selection.
\n“We\u2019ll hopefully get that boat about 12 months from now,” he said. “We\u2019re setting chunks of money aside over the next 20 years or longer so when a boat comes due for replacement, there\u2019s money that\u2019s been set aside. “Our goal is to pre-plan for when these things start coming due,” he said.
\nThere\u2019s also funding set aside in the lifeguards\u2019 five-year plan to expand lifeguard headquarters at Mission Bay.
\n“We\u2019ve shared that facility with the Park and Recreation Department for decades,” said Wurts. “We need some additional lifeguard headquarters for things we want to do,” he added.
\nOne way lifeguards could be getting more space is through the conversion of a carpenter garage used by Park and Rec at Quivira Basin into a boating safety unit locker room and sleeping quarters.
\n“\u2019It\u2019s a really big footprint (garage) and used by only one person,” Wurts said. “We\u2019re in the process of identifying another space to relocate all that shop equipment. “We\u2019re hoping to build out that same space into a large locker room and sleep facilities for our emergency lifeguards who work 24-hour shifts.”
\nWurts noted supporting lifeguards is important, not only for their rescue function but for the “preventative” work they do.
\n“Last year, we made more than 251,000 preventative actions,” said Wurts, pointing out such actions involve activities like “lifeguards seeing people too close to a rip current and warning them to move further north or south.
\n“There is a tremendous amount of activity that goes on along the coastline to make sure that our beaches are safe,” he said.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The lifeguards responsible for the lives of 20 million-plus beachgoers along San Diego\u2019s 17-mile coast who made more than 5,000 water rescues in 2013 are asking for a little more than $5 million over the next five years from the city during budget deliberations. “The main thing is to look ahead and have a plan […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":267382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"Beach lifesavers ask for budgetary boost for staff, equipment needs","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}