Strathmere beach tags: what's being proposed and why

I am back from a week mostly off the grid, and this is the story that found me anyway.

I read the headline on a mountaintop in Sullivan County, of all places, and my heart sank a little. Strathmere might start charging for its beaches.

I have loved this place since high school in the late 1970s. I spent time there through my single years in my twenties. In the summer of 1988, my wife and I threw a beach party in Strathmere complete with a quarter keg sunk right into the sand. We partied that night, fell asleep on the beach, and woke up to high tide lapping at our feet. In the '90s and 2000s, right up through today, we watched our kids grow up there every single summer. Now we are empty nesters, and we still go back. It has always been free. We were hoping it would stay that way.

What's actually being proposed

According to NJ.com, Upper Township officials outlined a preliminary plan at Monday's committee meeting to bring seasonal beach tags to Strathmere for the first time. Under the proposal, a full-summer pass would run $45, with daily tags at $10 and weekly tags at $20. Two groups of tag checkers would patrol the beach to enforce it, and a preliminary vote is expected in August.

Mayor Curtis Corson pointed out that Strathmere is currently the only town in Cape May or Atlantic County offering both free parking and free beach access. That is genuinely rare. Strathmere is one of just four Cape May County Shore towns — along with North Wildwood, Wildwood, and Wildwood Crest — that does not charge for beach tags at all.

The meeting got contentious fast. Some residents pushed for full-time residents to be exempt or to get a discounted rate. Township officials explained that state law forbids charging tourists more than residents for the same tag, and one committeeman noted, fairly, that people in Ocean City, Stone Harbor, Avalon and Sea Isle all pay property taxes and all pay for beach tags too. Corson floated the idea of asking the state Legislature to change that rule, though any change would likely run into the 1972 New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that bars municipalities from charging residents and nonresidents differently for beach access.

Why now

The honest driver here is money, and the beach itself has needed it badly. Strathmere endured what officials called the worst beach erosion in recent memory, and federal funding cuts delayed the Army Corps replenishment project that only recently started pumping sand back onto the shoreline. The township already tried directing a slice of cannabis sales tax revenue toward the beach fund, estimated at roughly $70,000 a year. That is not close to enough. Beach tags, by comparison, are projected to bring in as much as $340,000 annually. The township also looked at parking meters as an alternative and rejected the idea, concluding it did not have the staff to enforce it.

I understand the math. Beach erosion is real, replenishment is expensive, and Strathmere has been getting by on goodwill and a shoestring for a long time. I do not think the town is wrong to look for revenue. I just know what gets lost the moment a beach town like this starts charging — a certain kind of quiet, unpretentious access that made Strathmere feel different from Ocean City or the Wildwoods in the first place.

What Strathmere has always been

I wrote recently about how much I love this town — the no-fee, no-crowd version of the Jersey Shore that still exists if you know where to look. Strathmere was that place for my family across five decades. A high school hangout. A single guy's summer spot. A quarter-keg beach party that ended with the tide. A place where our kids learned to body surf. A place we still return to now that the kids are grown.

Nothing has been decided yet. The committee's preliminary vote is not until August, and there will be more public debate before then. If you love this beach the way I do, that is worth paying attention to, and worth showing up for.

I hope it stays the way I found it. But if $45 for an entire summer is what keeps Strathmere's beach from washing away completely, I will pay it, and I suspect most of the people who love this place the way I do will too. We just wanted you to know, before it changes, what it has meant to have it free for this long.

But hey at least the parking is free — and hoping it stays that way. Arrive early!