VIERA, Fla. — Thousands of people will flock to Florida’s beaches during the upcoming Memorial Day Weekend, kicking off the busy summer season for the lifeguard workforce.

During its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, the Brevard County Commission voted unanimously to begin shifting the cost of that support effort to the coastal municipalities. They also want to establish more full-time lifeguard towers.

According to county data, the current annual lifeguard costs are split as $2,530,720 for the county and $145,280 split among the cities. Assuming the shift in costs moves forward as desired by the commission, beginning in fiscal year 2024, the county obligation would drop to $1,480,184 and the cities' responsibility would jump to $1,921,322.

The county would still oversee the recruitment and training of lifeguards through the county fire department, but the capital and operational costs for the towers located in the city or private parks would fall to those municipalities.

“In other words, we would merely be a pass-through. Profits would be made, staff can create a consistent cost guideline for all cities, so we do it equitably and fairly,” District 3 Commissioner John Tobia said.

Tobia was the one who introduced the motion following the release of the 2023 Ocean Rescue Assessment. The document noted that between November 2022 and March 2023, more than 390 rip current rescues were reported. The risk notably increased following the impacts of Hurricane Ian and Hurricane Nicole in fall 2022.

Ocean Rescue Chief Eisen Witcher said that increased threat may be with the Space Coast for some time.

“Whenever we have storms, such as what we experienced in November, this could take months, even sometimes years, to fix some of the issues that are going on with the rip currents,” Witcher said.

As of now, there are five full-time lifeguard towers along the Space Coast and 11 seasonal ones. In his remarks to the commissioners, Tobia noted that towers with lifeguards proved extremely effective, based on historical data.

“Since 2009, 2010, when a full-time tower was first installed, there were zero drowning deaths at lifeguard-protected beaches during operational hours,” he said.

His motion also called for the transition of the following seasonal towers to year-round ones (listed in order of priority, per the report):

• 1 tower at Indialantic Boardwalk
• 1 tower at North Spessard Holland Park
• 2 towers from Indialantic Boardwalk center and N. Spessard Holland center to Juan Ponce De Leon Landing and South Spessard

Part of the reason for the focus in that area is five of the 10 drownings between December 2022 and the end of March 2023 happened at the Indialantic Boardwalk or in the vicinity. In the county’s Full Time Tower Prioritized Risk Analysis chart, it describes those areas as seeing both “very high” usage and rip current rescue incident frequency.

Municipalities that have paid parking at their beach accesses should be able to use some of that money to take on the cost of the lifeguards, Tobia said.

“For instance, the city of Indialantic actual 2021-2022 numbers for Nance Park were $411,000 alone," Tobia said. "The cost estimate for a full-time tower in Indialantic is $362,000, leaving them leftover money. If a city thinks it can provide the services more efficiently than Brevard County, then by all means they would have the right to provide those lifeguards to do that.”

The county’s Public Safety Group is also working with Patrick Space Force Base to provide a full-time tower on the beaches it controls, which the report notes saw both high usage, significant incidents and features free parking, the same as county parks.

The county is looking to transition some seasonal towers to full-time ones following summer. That will require shifting about $800,000 in the budget. The county commission will then make more long-term adjustments heading into the FY24 budget.

Witcher said they are still actively recruiting new lifeguards and will continue to do so throughout the summer.

Going into the holiday weekend, Witcher said they are preparing for the influx of vacationers and are ready to handle “maximum capacity, as we like to call it.”

In addition to the rip currents, he said the copious amount of sargassum that has both washed ashore and may still be in the water can be hiding some potentially dangerous marine life.

“In the last few weeks, we’ve been experiencing some seaweed come in, and sometimes that seaweed will have jellyfish caught up inside of it or Portuguese Man o’ War,” Witcher said. “So, that’s something important to look at as well when coming out to the beach, not to handle it too much — or to try to avoid it, if possible.”