Where does Gloucester's beach money go?

The short answer: into the same pot as everything else. Money from beach parking and resident stickers goes into Gloucester's general fund, the main account that pays for schools, police, fire, public works and the rest of city government. The beaches are not run as a separate fund that keeps its own money. Gloucester's separate funds are water, sewer, the rink, waterways and Community Preservation. Beaches are not one of them.

The costs of running the beaches, from lifeguards to lot attendants to police overtime on hot weekends, are paid out of that same general fund through the Public Works and Police budgets. Whatever is left after those costs helps pay for the rest of the city budget and keeps that much off the property tax bill.

A reader asked the question after our line by line look at the city's $179 million budget (Oct. 5), which showed beach parking among the city's bigger local receipts. Here is the longer answer, with 11 years of numbers from the city's own budget books.

How much the beaches bring in

The city tracks beach money on three lines in its revenue budget:

• Daily parking fees at Good Harbor, Wingaersheek and Stage Fort Park. This is the big one, usually $1.6 million to $2.3 million a year.
• Season stickers. Today these are the resident beach stickers. Until 2022 the line also included season stickers sold to nonresidents.
• Beach concession rent, paid by the food stands.

For this year, fiscal 2027, the city budgeted about $3.02 million from the three lines combined: $2.7 million in daily parking, $175,000 in stickers and $143,135 in concession rent. That is more than any year the city has actually collected so far.

Light bars: before online reservations. Dark bars: with online reservations, starting summer 2022. Fiscal 2026 is a partial year to date figure. A summer season counts in the fiscal year that begins July 1 of that summer. Source: actual revenue printed in Gloucester budget books, fiscal 2018 through fiscal 2027.

Before and after online reservations

In late May 2022, Gloucester stopped selling nonresident parking at the gate. Out of town visitors now reserve a space online ahead of time, through Yodel the first summer and Blinkay since 2023. Residents still park with a sticker, which costs $20.

The city's goal was traffic as much as money. In the mayor's budget letter the next spring, the city said the system "dramatically improved traffic, reduced beach incidents, and resulted in almost $2 million in revenue."

So did the money change? Comparing the seven fiscal years before the switch with the first three years after it:

In dollars, the reservation system by itself did not raise more money. Daily parking stayed about where it had been, around $1.9 million a year. Sticker money fell, mostly because the city stopped selling season stickers to nonresidents when reservations began. Concession rent rose a little. Taken together, the first three reservation summers brought in about $79,000 a year less, on average, than the seven summers before. These figures are not adjusted for inflation, which would make the gap larger.

Single years swing a lot. Summer 2023 was the best year in the chart at $2.71 million. Summer 2024 was one of the lowest at $1.89 million. The budget books do not explain the swings, and part of it is timing. Concession rent, for example, shows $0 in some years and about double in the next, which points to payments landing in a different fiscal year than the season. That is why this comparison uses averages.

The real jump came with a price increase, not the app. Before summer 2025 the city raised nonresident rates by $10 a day. Good Harbor and Wingaersheek now cost $40 on weekdays and $45 on weekends and holidays. Stage Fort Park costs $30 and $35. With part of the year still to be counted, fiscal 2026, which holds the summer 2025 season, already shows $2,494,166 in daily parking. That is more daily parking money than any full year in the chart, and the year is not finished.

What the beaches cost, as far as the budget shows

The city does not publish one total for what it costs to run the beaches. The costs are spread across several departments. These are the pieces the budget books show:

• Seasonal staff. Public Works pays its temporary summer workers from one line: lifeguards, head guards, parking lot attendants and supervisors, plus Stage Fort Park maintenance and general laborers. It cost $584,339 in fiscal 2025, up from $400,256 in fiscal 2016. Not all of it is beach work, but much of it is.
• Lifeguards. Within that line, the city budgeted $225,000 for lifeguards in fiscal 2025, up from $170,000 in fiscal 2018.
• Police beach overtime, for officers at the beaches on summer weekends from Memorial Day to Labor Day. It was $79,007 in fiscal 2020 and $18,500 in fiscal 2025. This year's budget sets aside $32,637. The Police Department's own performance table says traffic related beach issues "declined following beach reservation system."
• The reservation app. The city budgeted $50,000 a year for Blinkay in fiscal 2025 and 2026, and $58,500 for the "Beach Reservation Application" this year. That is a cost the city did not have before 2022.
• Other beach lines this year: $50,000 for site improvements at the beaches and Stage Fort Park, $8,500 for seasonal sticker clerks, and a $90,053 salary for an operations manager for beaches and parks.

Add up the pieces that can be pinned down and the beaches still bring in far more than they cost the city in seasonal staff, overtime and the app. But because costs like beach cleaning, trash pickup, restrooms and regular Public Works crews are mixed into larger lines, the budget does not show an exact profit figure.

What we still do not know

• How much summer 2026 brought in. It falls in this fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2027, so it will not appear as a full actual in a budget book until spring 2028. The city has not published a total for summer 2026.
• Whether 2026 met the budget. At a May 20 budget review, the Budget and Finance Committee had "a brief discussion regarding decreasing revenue from parking fees from beaches, Stage Fort Park, and resident beach stickers," according to the minutes. No figures were given.
• The full cost of the beaches, for the reasons above.

How we compared

Every figure is an actual dollar amount from the City of Gloucester's budget books, except fiscal 2026, which is a partial year to date amount printed in the fiscal 2027 book. "Before" is fiscal 2016 through fiscal 2022, the seven years the books show before reservations began (fiscal 2015 is not printed in any book we found). "After" is fiscal 2023 through fiscal 2025, every full year with reservations so far. The sticker line changed in fiscal 2023: before, it counted resident and nonresident season stickers; after, resident stickers only. Dollars are not adjusted for inflation. Comparisons were checked Oct. 5, 2026.

Weigh in

Beach revenue is set in the city budget each spring. The mayor presents the fiscal 2028 budget to the City Council in early May 2027, followed by Budget and Finance Committee reviews and a public hearing. Beach parking rates are set by the City Council. You can also ask your ward councilor, or send your question to the Current through Crosscurrents.

Earlier coverage: Gloucester's $179 million budget, line by line (Oct. 5), the first part of our budget series. Crosscurrents: At Good Harbor, more dogs and fewer gulls (Oct. 3), a reader's view from the beach this fall.