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Beach fee revenue in the city is up $130,532 over last year as of Aug. 4, city manager Terence Reidy told the council at its meeting on Wednesday.

“So the beach is still doing well,” Reidy said.

Beach fee revenue for Asbury Park last year exceeded $1 million for the first time ever, beach utility manager Garrett Giberson, Sr. previously told the Sun.

Beach fee revenue for 2011 was approximately $890,000, he said.

“It’s been going up exponentially,” said Giberson of beach fee revenue increases starting about eight years ago. In several of those early years the revenue doubled annually, he said.

Giberson made his comments last September, at the end of the summer season.

Upon his appointment in 2003, city manager Terence Reidy previously told the Sun that the city was subsidizing the beach utility because attendance was so low.

In 2002, for example, beach fee revenue was only $71,000. Yet it cost an estimated $300,000 to operate the beaches on what was then a “bare-bones” budget, Reidy said. In 2003, the revenue increased to $100,000, he said.

“In ten summers we’ve gone from $100,000 to $1 million,” Reidy said after the season ended in 2012.

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