Beach fees finalized, approved unanimously

It’s official now – there will be no more free parking at Warwick beaches this upcoming summer. The Warwick City Council voted unanimously on Monday night for a second passage to amend Chapter 18, Section 8 of the city ordinances, which will reinstate parking fees for the first time in the city since the 90s.

After being originally proposed in August, the ordinance bounced around inside City Hall for a few months before this final version passed, with a couple amendments lessening costs that were originally proposed.

Season passes were finalized at $20 per car for Warwick residents and $40 per car for nonresidents ($10 and $20 respectively for senior residents and nonresidents); and individual tickets (per car, per visit) will now cost $5 for Warwick residents and $10 for nonresidents ($3 and $6 respectively for senior residents and nonresidents). Buses carrying loads of beach goers will be charged $30 per visit.

The fees will apply to Warwick public recreational facilities - specifically to Conimicut Point, Oakland Beach and City Park. They do not apply to Rocky Point (which is partially state-owned) or Goddard Memorial Park (which is state owned and operated).

“This is not a new issue, at least since I’ve been on the council. It’s been talked about for years and I know some members of the public have cleaned beaches themselves,” said Ward 9 councilman and chair of the ordinance committee Steve Merolla. “So any money we can raise to help maintain the beautification process of our beaches I think is what we’re hearing the public wants. That’s what we’re trying to implement.”

Merolla answered skeptical questions from Warwick resident Don Johnson about how much public input was sought prior to the passage of the ordinance change.

“We’ve heard from the public, we’ve discussed it with our constituents and I think the amount we’re charging for people is fair and reasonable because that amount is hopefully going to make a difference in the quality,” Merolla answered.

The council responded quickly to an assertion that the fees were “another tax” on the citizenry.

“A tax, by definition, is uniformly applied to every resident of the city of Warwick. This is a use fee for the beach,” Merolla said. “It’s not a tax.”

Council president Joseph Solomon took it a step further, saying that the fees will actually help unshoulder some of the burden that the everyday taxpayer have had to carry by paying for the city’s cleanup efforts of the beaches, which some on the council publicly claimed are consistently full of waste and debris.

“Right now the taxpayers of the city of Warwick have borne 100 percent of the costs of maintaining these facilities,” Solomon said. “What we’re asking for by the implementation of these fees is assistance from people who also utilize these facilities to contribute to the cost of maintaining, upkeep and upgrade to these facilities.”

“It’s not an appealing place to go when you have dog waste and feces all over the beach, trash all over the beach,” Merolla said. “If I had a choice between going to that beach and someplace else that doesn’t have hypodermic needles or other things on the beach – then that’s not a business generator.”

The council further argued that the change to the ordinance had universal support from multiple city departments, including DPW and the parks department, as well as Mayor Scott Avedisian, and that Warwick is perhaps the only Rhode Island community that has not implemented beach parking fees.

“I think we may be, if not one of the last, probably the last community to implement a fee of this nature,” Solomon said. “If you go to beaches in other cities and towns, you’re going to pay a fee to go to the beaches in those cities and towns.”

“Why should we be the only free beach?” asked councilwoman Donna Travis, whose Ward 6 encompasses Oakland Beach.