Greenwich Beach Card Renewal Goes Digital

It's annual rite of late spring...as the clock ticks away to the Memorial Day weekend requirement that Greenwich residents need their beach passes renewed, the lines in the Town Hall lobby grow long.

Rather than mail the beach pass applications dozens of residents will queue up each day waiting to process their paperwork at one of the two Parks and Recreation Department beach pass service windows in the Town Hall lobby. And each year, many are disappointed that they cannot receive immediate renewal of the passes or parking passes for their vehicles.

To ameliorate that situation and to reduce administrative costs, the 2013 application process has gone digital.

The online permit renewal process has been the dreamchild of Parks & Recreation Assistant Director Thomas Greco for three years. "It was just a natural progression. I want to be there with digital renewals for most of our service deliverables. This is first use of this. So far it looks like it's pretty successful," Greco said Wednesday.

"I think the response has been terrific. Some 57 percent of the cards were renewed online," according to Greco. Some 13,500 beach card renewal applications, representing about 39,000 beach cards, were mailed March 7, Greco said.

The process is pretty straight forward. To renew a beach pass, residents only have to submit proof of residency by emailing a copy of a driver's license,  utililty bill or bank statement. Once residency is verified by the Parks and Recreation Department, an email notification is sent to pay the $31 beach pass fee by credit card. After the fee is paid, the plasti, credit card-like beach pass is automatically activated.

"We've been toying with this thing for about three seasons," Greco said. "We had to meet with software supplier, meet with the law department, meet with town assessor and tax collector to put all the pieces together. The software vendor wrote some special software for us and we got an agreement by all interested parties for the change in the procedure in issuing vehicle stickers." The software develoment cost about $7,500, Greco said.

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And renewing vehicle beach parking permits also has been streamlined.

"It's plain and simple, if you had a beach card and had a vehicle registered in Town of Greenwich, you got a vehicle sticker," Greco explained. "Now the rules are pretty straightforward, if you are on the Town of Greenwich Grand List as of October 2012, if the vehicle has a passenger or combination plate, you automatically get a (parking) sticker, whether you get a beach card or not."

Reasons for that, Greco said, is that beach parking stickers also are used for admittance to the Holly Transfer Station, and for the designated seasonal parking at the Island Beach commuter lot.

"You will get a letter with a vehicle sticker that informs our rsidents that this sticker is registered to this plate numbered car," Greco said. Those letters are being collated and readied for mailing soon by a crew of disabled clients from Pathways who are working out of Christ Church Greenwich, Greco said. The Pathways group has performed other similar duties for the Parks and Recreation. "They are very reliable. It's a win-win situation for everyone," Greco added.

However, for residents who lease cars, they will not automatically receive the parking stickers. They must submit copies of the vehicle registration by mail, fax or in person.

Greco said it's too early to determine just how successful the digital renewal program will be and how much money it will save his department. He understands that some residents will be apprehensive about submitting confidential information for residency proof and credit card numbers for payment. "I feel pretty warm and fuzzy that we've done all the right things to preserve the personal information of our customers," Greco said.

"We can turnaround the online ones a lot quicker than through the mail," Greco said. "Think about it...look at all the people involved in the process...it takes a couple days to get here, then it's delivered to the office, opened, scan the documents, then put in the pile to be processed....all of that is gone in the online process...nobody has to touch that."

Greco added, "This is the beginning—I can't predict when it'll happen but we'll be looking to expand this for boat registration and camping."

But if you prefer to renew your beach pass the old-fashioned way—snail mail or in person, that process will begin April 1.