The System
There’s been quite a bit of talk lately about the relationship between the city and the Park Board. When the Park Board was originally formed, it was intended to be a vehicle for tourism management. The beach, being Galveston’s primary attraction and driver of tourism, was a big part of that equation. It’s tough to talk about the relationship between the city and Park Board without including the management of the beaches, namely Beach Patrol, Beach Maintenance, and Beach Parks Departments. No matter how nice the attractions, hotels, and restaurants on the island may be, they would have a tough time staying afloat if they were located in the desert.
Making sure the beach is clean and safe is an integral part of the tourist experience. If there was a general perception that the beaches were not well maintained and well protected, tourists would not come in the numbers they do now. If they didn’t visit the beach, they wouldn’t be on the island to stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, shop in stores, or visit any of the wonderful amenities the island has to offer. Creative and comprehensive advertising is important, but it only works for the long term if you have a good product to promote. A clean and safe beach with decent amenities is the best advertising there is.
To make sure the beaches were managed properly, in the very early 80’s a highly intelligent group of people figured out a system that enabled us to have adequate resources to keep the beaches maintained and protected by a first class lifeguard outfit. Lifeguards and Beach Maintenance were moved under the Park Board of Trustees. Actually financial management fell under the Park Board but operational oversight of the Beach Patrol was moved from the Police Department to the Sheriff Department at the same time the funding source changed (Nowadays, the Beach Patrol is a mature organization and is an independent lifesaving and law enforcement entity). Using tourist dollars that came to the Park Board in the form of hotel tax (H.O.T.) monies and beach user fees guaranteed this independent funding source because the money came with the caveat that it could only be used for specific purposes. Beach Patrol received one penny for every dollar spent in the hotels.
When the first large beach nourishment project happened, Beach Patrol received an extra half a penny of hotel revenue to help cover the increase of beach use the new sand enabled. But a decade and a half ago, about a third of a penny (22% of the Beach Patrol’s H.O.T. allocation) was taken from Beach Patrol and Beach Maintenance to help build the Convention Center on the Seawall. How this affected the operational sustainability of both programs is another story, but the upside of using H.O.T. tax monies and beach user fees is that, in theory, as tourism grows the two programs could grow proportionally.
We all owe a lot to the group that designed this system.
