SOLANA BEACH — The city of Solana Beach is increasing its full-time marine safety staffing pool in order to remain on par with neighboring cities and ensure retention within the department.
The Marine Safety Department consists of five full-time positions — a Marine Safety Captain, one lieutenant, and three sergeants — and four part-time (1,500 hours) lifeguards, with seasonal staff filling in all other positions. One of these lieutenant positions has also been vacant since last year.
These staffing levels lag behind neighboring cities, according to Marine Safety Captain Greg Uruburu. Encinitas has the equivalent of nine full-time and three to four part-time employees; Imperial Beach has nine full-time and two part-time employees; Del Mar has six full-time and two to three part-time employees; and Coronado has eight full-time employees.
At the Solana Beach City Council’s Jan. 29 meeting, the City Council agreed to reclassify one of the sergeant positions to a lieutenant position and convert two of the part-time lifeguard positions into full-time senior ocean lifeguard roles.
Uruburu said the department is staffed by passionate employees who do well with what they have. However, crowds at the beaches continue to grow each year, and many of the lifeguards have maxed out their hours by the spring.
“We’re bought into this city, bought into each other, and we just want to grow our department, but we are looking at things like retention. We’re looking at other cities growing and us not, so we’re really just trying to meet industry standards and benchmarks,” Uruburu said.
Crowds at the city’s beaches have grown, especially with the completion of the sand replenishment project last year, which added 700,000 cubic yards of dredged sand and increased the width of the beach by 150 feet between Tide Beach Park to the city’s southern limits.
In addition to ensuring safety in the water, lifeguards also promote safety near the fragile bluffs. This includes advising people not to sit at the foot of the bluff due to the danger of collapse.
Thanks to there being more room on the beach, Uruburu said lifeguards’ bluff contacts with visitors have gone down in the past year.
The Solana Beach Marine Safety Department also runs the largest junior lifeguard program in the county, with over 1,200 youth ages 7 to 15 participating in the eight-week program last year. The city also briefly hosted the junior lifeguards from the city of Imperial Beach last summer when it was unsafe for them to swim in their own water.
Uruburu said the junior lifeguard program has been a unique and effective means of recruitment, with over 75% of seasonal and full-time staff coming through the program.
The department’s intern program also hosts 25 teens and young adults ages 16 to 19.
Along with adjusted staffing, lifeguards are also pursuing a new Marine Safety Center to better accommodate their needs. In December, the City Council approved permits for a new 4,300-square-foot building at Fletcher Cove Park to replace the current 1940s-era facility.
“It’s an exciting time for us, it’s a new chapter. We have a huge beach, we have the prospect of a new Marine Safety Center, the prospect of adding new full-time positions … It is an important time to make sure that we’re meeting these benchmarks with other cities,” Uruburu said.
