Wildwood Hopes to Break Even on Beach Events

WILDWOOD – The City of Wildwood earns some revenue from beach events, but for the most part, city officials are happy to provide entertainment even if events don’t bring in money for the city.
“We do not anticipate revenue on most events. While we do collect fees, these fees are to cover the cost of city services that is incurred to host events,” Wildwood City Manager Steve O’Connor said.
O’Connor referred to a participant fee that is charged per participant, or per ticket. He said this could be considered revenue since it’s above and beyond the city services fees of police, fire, EMT, public works, and so on.
“Our philosophy, at least at the moment, is for events to not cost the city taxpayers money. We just want to cover our expenses. We realize that special events drive business to the Wildwoods, and we certainly do not want to drive people away with fees, but we also can’t expect the taxpayers to foot the bill for every event that comes to town,” O’Connor said.
Wildwood’s Chief Financial Officer Susan Plaza spoke to the Herald over the telephone and said the 2021 Country Fest, which was a large event on the beach, brought in $158,943.70 to the city in vender fees, permits, parking, and participation fees, plus charges for police, public works and EMS. The city’s costs to cover services for Country Fest ran almost $90,000, yielding about $69,000 in revenue. This year, the Country Fest brought in $176,083.68, of which $94,655.89 was revenue.
“The participation fee is actual revenue,” Plaza said, meaning there is a fee received for which the city does not spend money.
Commissioner Krista Fitzsimons, the city’s Commissioner of Revenue and Finance, said, “Some of the large-scale events must utilize our city services (potentially) costing the taxpayer a lot of money. We began to enforce the collection of city service fees in 2020 – really 2021 because of Covid we didn’t have events – and we added the participant fee to generate a little revenue.”
She said the Barefoot Country Music Festival produces the lion’s share of the participant fees the city collects.
The City of Wildwood does not have a beach utility or maintain a separate beach budget. According to the adopted 2022 municipal budget, the city realized $490,079.16 in Beach Services Revenue in 2021, and budgeted for about the same amount in 2022. Beach patrol salaries and wages budgeted in 2022 were $550,000, plus operating expenses of $49,000. Beach taxi salaries and wages were $44,000 and other expenses budgeted were $12,000.