Secaucus Town Pool Is Free For Residents Again This Year

SECAUCUS, NJ — For the second summer in a row, the Secaucus town pool will be free for all town residents, Mayor Mike Gonnelli said Tuesday.

This was a decision made by Gonnelli and the town Council, as a way to give back to Secaucus residents who are still suffering through the continued coronavirus pandemic, Mike Pero, the superintendent of Secaucus Recreation, told Patch on Tuesday.

You will also not have to make reservations this year, as residents did last year. There will be a max capacity limit each day, but Pero said the town is waiting on outdoor crowd limit size numbers from the governor.

Secaucus is also ready to launch its town summer camps and is just waiting for Gov. Murphy to release his rules on summer camps, which should be coming this week.

"We're all ready to go, full-scale on our camps," said Pero.

Similar to how it was last year, town residents will be limited to bring in two guests per day and guest passes will cost $20 each.

"With the continuation of COVID and expected restrictions, the Council decided to keep the pool membership free to residents for this year with limitation on the number allowed in the facility based on state guidelines," said Secaucus town administrator Gary Jeffas.

The town of Secaucus has abandoned using the booklets for guest passes, as it has done in previous years, and will not be returning to that, said Pero.

According to Pero, there were some issues in previous years where out-of-towners would linger in the pool parking lot and ask Secaucus residents to let them into the pool, even if the residents did not personally know the guests.

"We wanted to address that; that was a little bit of an issue," he said. "It is not cheap to run the town pool. We don't make money off the pool."

The Secaucus town pool will open for the season on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, May 29. It will be open on weekends only until June 21, at which point it will be open daily.

Like millions of towns across America, the town of Secaucus was given a $2 million windfall in federal cash under the $1.9 trillion second COVID relief bill, passed under President Joe Biden. Pero said he did not know if that money is being used to make the pool free for residents this year.

However, there will no municipal tax increase for 2021, said Mayor Gonnelli, despite the fact that Secaucus lost significant hotel and parking revenues this year. The town is using the CARES relief money to keep the tax rate flat, he said.

Past reporting: Secaucus Will Use $2M In COVID Relief To Offset Lost Hotel Taxes (March 12)

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