{"id":17496,"date":"2025-05-21T04:41:20","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T08:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/?p=17496"},"modified":"2025-05-21T04:41:20","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T08:41:20","slug":"lavallette-beaches-to-be-guarded-memorial-day-weekend-mats-ordered-curfew-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/2025\/05\/lavallette-beaches-to-be-guarded-memorial-day-weekend-mats-ordered-curfew-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Lavallette Beaches to be Guarded Memorial Day Weekend, Mats Ordered, Curfew Back"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lavallette<\/a>

Lavallette life boat. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

Lavallette officials will open beaches with lifeguards and badge checkers on Memorial Day weekend this year, with borough officials putting the finishing touches on new policies and amenities this week before the unofficial start of summer arrives.<\/p>\n

After debating the idea at a council meeting last month, Lavallette officials decided to go ahead with a plan to require beach badges over the holiday weekend. There will then be a pause before the “official” bathing season begins June 14. While guards will be on duty, the ocean water temperature was hovering around 58 degrees this week, meaning few swimmers are likely to take the plunge. Requiring badges on Memorial Day weekend, however, has become more routine in recent years in New Jersey beach towns, with Lavallette officials believing that the borough became overcrowded on several past holidays because they were the only town that did not have fees. Several residents at Monday night’s borough council meeting complained about an inordinate amount of litter being left behind over past Memorial Day weekends when there was no beach patrol present.<\/p>\n

This year, fear of “pop-up” parties on the beach, avoiding litter, as well as the changing locations of rip currents due to the now-completed beach replenishment project combined to convince officials that beaches should be staffed for Memorial Day weekend. Roving badge checkers will be walking the beaches, officials said, and the Department of Public Works has assembled nine lifeguard stands on the oceanfront. Several special police officers will begin work this weekend and will be patrolling the beaches on ATVs. Seasonal, senior and daily badges will be sold this weekend; weekly badges will be available once the bathing season begins.<\/p>\n

Beach badges will be sold at borough hall through Thursday, May 22, but will move to the beach badge office at 2001 Baltimore Avenue beginning May 23. Season badges are $60 and senior badges are $20. Daily badges are $13. So far this year, the borough has generated $522,235 in beach badge revenue in pre-season beach badge sales.<\/p>\n

Beach Matters Heading Into the Season<\/strong><\/p>\n

Though they will not all be in place for Memorial Day weekend, the borough will have more access mats at beach entrances this summer. The borough council this week voted in favor of purchasing mats for Trenton Avenue, while New York Avenue already is outfitted with them. The mat that was previously at President Avenue has been moved to the bay beach since it was considered too large for the entrance, and is in line to be replaced this summer.<\/p>\n

“We bought the first one for Trenton Avenue because that walkover is the shortest,” said Councilwoman Joanne Filippone. “We did pay to have them install it since there\u2019s a specific process. We do like it, and I think we have enough money to buy one more before the summer, and we can get these in about two weeks.”<\/p>\n

The borough has located a new, New Jersey-based matting company that competes with the French company that manufactures the popular “Mobi-Mats.” The company, AccessRec, recently upgraded their materials to better compete, and is currently pricing their units for nearly half of Mobi-Mat.<\/p>\n

“The Mobi-Mats are being made in France, and it\u2019s very difficult to get service,” said Filippone. “We had some problems with the fasteners and they had to come from abroad, and it became a burden. They\u2019re also very expensive.”<\/p>\n

The council voted to appropriate $21,097 for the Trenton Avenue matting, and may have enough funding left over to replace the President Avenue matting by July 4, Filippone said. Pennsylvania Avenue is being eyed as the fourth street that will be outfitted with mats. Each of the streets will also see the installation of decking material to ease the transition from mat-to-sand.<\/p>\n

“Those four beaches will also have the Matrax decking, so you can walk off the mat and find your spot on the beach, and it\u2019s much easier for carriages and wagons,” Filippone said.<\/p>\n

Separate from the matting, the borough plans to have benches returned to seven beach entrances that were still being reconstructed as part of the beach replenishment project. With that work complete, the benches can now return, officials said.<\/p>\n

Curfew Is Back<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shorebeat is planning a wider article later this week on the threat of large “pop-up parties” promoted in local towns, prompting many to adopt curfews to avoid violent incidents that have marred early summer weekends in recent years. Lavallette passed a resolution placing its youth curfew back into place.<\/p>\n

The curfew will run May 23 through Sept. 1 and will apply to those under the age of 18. The nightly curfew will run from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Minors accompanied by an adult over the age of 25 are excepted.<\/p>\n

Filippone said the borough will have a “full complement” of special police officers this season \u2013 including four Class II officers who are armed and can make arrests, and 10 Class I officers who are unarmed and may issue summonses, but must call for sworn officers to deal with major issues.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lavallette officials will open beaches with lifeguards and badge checkers on Memorial Day weekend this year, with borough officials putting the finishing touches on new policies and amenities this week before the unofficial start of summer arrives. After debating the idea at a council meeting last month, Lavallette officials decided to go ahead with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[30,1959,29,2885,2817],"class_list":["post-17496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lavallette-government","category-lavallette","tag-beach-badges","tag-featured","tag-lavallette-nj-news","tag-memorial-day-weekend-2025","tag-summer-2025"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/DSC_0355.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgsn9q-4yc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17497,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17496\/revisions\/17497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}