Strathmere has gone without beach tags for generations. Upper Township just voted to introduce an ordinance ending that, and the final vote is August 24.
Strathmere is the kind of place people are protective of on purpose. Small, quiet, a little hard to find if you do not already know the way between Stone Harbor and Ocean City. And free, which on the Jersey Shore in 2026 puts it in a very short list.
That is on the table now. The Upper Township Committee voted unanimously on Monday to introduce an ordinance requiring beach tags and fees in Strathmere starting next summer. The vote on whether to actually adopt it comes at the committee’s next meeting on Aug. 24.
What It Would Cost
The proposal covers Strathmere’s shoreline from Corson’s Inlet to Whale Beach. Anyone 16 or older would need a tag.
Daily tags run $10. Weekly passes are $20. Seasonal tags cost $45 if you buy between mid-February and the end of September, and drop to $30 if you buy during the October through mid-February window. Buy early, pay less.
Officials expect the program to bring in as much as $340k and they have said tags will be easier to enforce than parking fees, which is a practical point that anyone who has tried to police shore parking will recognize.
Where That Leaves the Free Beach Map
If the ordinance passes, the list of Shore towns without beach tags gets very thin. Atlantic City, North Wildwood, Wildwood, and Wildwood Crest would be most of what is left.
There are a few others that work differently. Corson’s Inlet State Park in Ocean City is free. Sandy Hook Beach (Highlands) does not require tags but charge for vehicles, so you are paying either way, just at the gate instead of on the sand.
Why Now
Mayor Curtis Corson said township officials started looking at a tag program back in 2022 and described this as leveling the playing field with other shore towns.
State law limits what the money can do. Towns can only charge for beach access if the revenue is appropriated for shoreline costs, things like lifeguard salaries and sand replenishment. It cannot be dropped into the general fund.
And the shoreline costs are the whole story here. Strathmere’s beach erodes regularly in the offseason, which is normal for New Jersey. This year it got worse, because congressional spending cuts delayed sand replenishment projects. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started repair work on several eroded Cape May County beaches in July, Strathmere included.
This is also not the township’s first attempt at plugging that hole. When the committee approved local cannabis retailers in January, it planned to appropriate the tax revenue for beach maintenance, with an estimate of $70,000 in the first year of sales.
Compare those two numbers. Weed money covers $70,000. Beach tags cover up to $340,000. That gap is the argument the committee is making without having to say much.
The Town Is Split
Residents and regular visitors have been divided since the township floated the idea informally in July. At Monday’s meeting, several residents said support has grown over the four years officials have been kicking it around.
The other side is not really arguing about $10. It is arguing about what Strathmere is. Being one of the last free beaches on the Shore is a piece of the town’s identity, and once tags go in, they do not come back out. No shore town has ever added beach tags and then reversed course.
Both positions hold up. Sand does not replenish itself, lifeguards do not work for free, and federal money got cut. Also, something that has been free for generations stops being free in a single August meeting, and the people who love that beach are allowed to be unhappy about it.
The vote is Aug. 24 at the township committee meeting. If you have a stake in this, that is the room to be in.
The New Jersey Digest is a new jersey magazine that has chronicled daily life in the Garden State for over 10 years.