Support more junior guards

The city of Newport Beach and its City Manager Homer Bludau should be embarrassed and held responsible for not acting fast enough last year to ensure enough room for every child who passed the swimming test for the city’s junior lifeguard program. The city has expanded its physical limits and grown in population -- how could it not see the result that would effect some existing programs like the junior lifeguards.

The question here is whether to include Costa Mesa kids in the Newport Beach program, and I say yes. These kids live within the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, and we in the city of Newport Beach should share with them as they do their parks. Yes, Newport Coast is part of Newport Beach, and they should be included within this program too. The beach is big enough for every child who wants in and can pass the swimming test and pay the registration fee. Newport kids already get the benefit of early sign-up and test days.

The junior guard program already has two sessions, a morning and afternoon, which until last year worked just fine to the outsider, but the overcrowding (16 kids to a morning instructor) and logistics of traffic during the drop-off and pick-up and at graduation need to be addressed. To shorten the program from eight to four weeks is a joke. Please don’t do it. Also to expand sessions on Friday is not good either, as family vacations begin, and more tourists visit the beach.

How about expanding? Using a second location at Big Corona beach for the program seems feasible and logical for those drivers who live in the Newport Coast area. They won’t have to get their children down and back from the peninsula four days a week. Create an optional alternative site for those who live far enough from the peninsula location that it doesn’t matter where it is, as long as their children are in a junior guard program for the summer.

I believe the city should support any changes that a second guard program would cause, such as hiring more lifeguards and instructors, instead of hiring outside consultants to study the flow of fresh air at City Hall.

The solution here is a piece of cake.

TOM SMITH

Balboa Peninsula