EDITORIAL: Walton’s Lifeguards Stay on Duty

By Northwest Florida Daily News, Fort Walton Beach

Jan. 14–Atip of the sun visor to Walton County commissioners, who voted last week to keep lifeguards at six public beach accesses during the summer tourist season for at least three more years.

The commissioners extended their contract with the South Walton Fire District, which posted two lifeguards at each of the accesses last year from mid-March to the end of September. With the county’s first lifeguard program came increased safety. Dozens of swimmers in trouble were rescued, and, for the first time in three years, there were no drownings related to rip currents.

The program’s next three years will cost $560,000 annually. The money comes from the “bed tax” on shortterm tourist lodging.

It is, as we’ve said in this space before, money well spent. When a government ensures public access to a beach, it has a responsibility to try to ensure the safety of those who use that beach.

Public safety is, after all, one of government’s essential functions. Attempting to make beachgoing safer is a reasonable use of tax revenue — more reasonable, certainly, than Shalimar town officials’ notion of buying and operating a marina, or Air Force officials’ idea of building a “resort” for federal employees on Okaloosa Island.

Walton County’s lifeguard program is a better idea than those. It may even be expanded to a seventh beach. That would be better still.

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Copyright (c) 2007, Northwest Florida Daily News, Fort Walton Beach

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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