Long Beach to tighten beach access with barcoded passes, wristbands and consolidated booths

Long Beach City Manager Dan Creighton on Tuesday outlined a package of operational changes the city will implement this summer to improve enforcement and data collection at the beach.

Creighton said the city will reconfigure many access points so visitors funnel through a single collection point, move some staffed booths to an upper‑level location, put barcodes on physical passes and issue single‑day wristbands for daily pass holders. "The booth will be moved from where the yellow is over to where the blue is," Creighton said while describing plans to create a "tighter funnel" for beach access. He added the wristbands will be coded to a single day so they cannot be reused the next day.

The changes are intended to address three recurring problems Creighton cited: ticket collectors being bypassed at multiple entrances, aggressive behavior toward booth staff and difficulty for police to identify daily pass users on the sand. "We're gonna issue a wristband to the daily passes so that way when they leave the beach, they have a wristband that's coded to that day," Creighton said. He said the wristbands will be similar to resort Tyvek bands, waterproof and color coded by day so they cannot be reused.

Council members welcomed the plan as a combination of enforcement and better data. President Finn said the measures were "long overdue" and argued the changes should not unduly affect season‑pass holders. Vice President Miyamura praised the data‑collection component and asked about wristband durability; Creighton replied the bands will be waterproof, destructible when removed and use different colors and icons to prevent reuse.

Creighton also said the city will add barcodes to the physical beach passes to permit location tracking and usage counts. "It will allow us to track better, over the year how many locations are entered, how many people are in which locations, how many times the pass was used a day," he said, adding that data will help determine lifeguard deployment and temporary beach closures.

To improve confrontations at booths, Creighton said the city will supplement collectors with more experienced workers and recruit from veterans and retirement organizations; a 2024 pilot using sanitation workers produced higher collections on days with extra enforcement, he said. Creighton also proposed removing a household limit on season passes (currently three) so households can purchase as many passes as they need.

Creighton said the changes are intended to increase revenue and reduce the need for future budget increases. "Hopefully it will result in the increased revenue that I expected to result in and we will be able to offset some of the additional cost to our residents next year based on the increased revenue we get from beach passes this year," he said.

Council members asked follow‑up questions about opening dates and staffing. Creighton said the city is exploring earlier openings and more weekday coverage but that staffing constraints — many lifeguards are students — limit how early and long the season can be extended. He said the city may open fully around June 19 and expand weekend staffing if more lifeguards are available.

The council did not take a separate vote on Creighton’s report during the meeting; the beach measures were discussed as part of the city manager’s regular report and on agenda items later in the session.