Beach sticker sales are up this year thanks to a new system aimed at preventing theft and misuse, according to Parks Director Tim Lancaster.

Following the first year of using the new system — barcoded stickers that are less prone to theft than the prior system — 4,200 stickers have been sold, Lancaster said.

The new stickers record vehicle registration data and the owner’s contact information. That info can be accessed using a handheld scanner at the beach gates, which prevents visitors from purchasing a sticker and attaching it to another car, Lancaster noted. It’s also allowed staff to easily contact vehicle owners when necessary.

“We knew there was a lot of fraud as far as copying or handing them out went,” Lancaster said. “We weren’t sure if as a result of implementing the new beach stickers the numbers would drop because people weren’t buying them to give to friends, but it seems like beach sticker sales have rapidly increased.”

Although the system itself works flawlessly, Lancaster said the department’s aging database system, which was not upgraded when the new beach stickers was added, can cause issues. Staff have to manually input a sticker number when assigning it to a resident, which can cause errors if there's a typo.

To solve that problem, Lancaster aims to upgrade the database with a system that will allow staff to automatically fill in the sticker number by scanning it into the computer.