PRINCE FREDERICK, Md. — The term “swim at your own risk” has taken on a much more serious meaning this Summer in Calvert County.
Water parks and beaches in Calvert County and across the rest of Maryland are struggling with a significant shortage of lifeguards.
Applications for this Summertime job popular among high school and college students have taken a hit in recent months since the lifting of most pandemic restrictions.
The number of vacancies for these types of positions is quite high. Back in April, the Calvert County government announced that there were around 150 vacancies.
These vacancies have impacted the times in which certain public aquatic facilities are open for operation.
On their website, Calver County Parks and Recreation announced that “it will adjust hours and services of various Parks & Recreation facilities, due to seasonal staff shortages.”
In addition to this, CCPR did not open Kings Landing Pool until after the Fourth of July.
According to Director Shannon Nazzal, Calvert Parks and Recreation is working on hiring more lifeguards as applications come in.
They have also raised the pay rates, which are now the highest in the area for lifeguards, hoping to get through August.
“We actually just put out a press release to state we’d be expanding hours at Kings Landing Park pool beginning Monday, August 1st. New hours will be Monday through Thursday, 8:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.… We are still hiring so anyone with a current lifeguard certification can be immediately hired by Calvert County for our pool locations across the county.”
Those interested in reading the press release, CLICK HERE.
Contact our news desk at news@thebaynet.com.
IF the County paid a worthy hourly wage commensurate with the job, say at least $20-$23hr at a minimum, they wouldn’t have any difficulty finding lifeguards. But the County is too cheap to pay people their worth and instead waste money on pet projects. In addition to have something like $40 to$50 million in their rainy day fund just sitting there doing nothing.
And that will only raise taxes, which are already sky high
A lot of the pools have an admission fee which is supposed to be used to cover operating expenses such as salary. Raising the salary would only have an impact on that, not taxes.
County currently pays 17.60 for life guards, if they raise that to 20.60, admissions fees would only go up roughly 75 cents per visitor (depending on how many people go to the pool and hours of operation). I’m sure your safety and your child’s safety would be well worth the additional 75 cents.
They’re lifeguards, not rocket scientist. 20-23 bucks? You wonder why prices on everything have gone up.
They are responsible for lives!
My Brother in law got his certificate and applied almost a month ago now, and they still haven’t picked up his application….
One of my 3 children that works there gets paid 18 something and hour and the other 2 are just shy of 18 bucks. I don’t know about you but I never got paid that much as a teen.