It’s hard to believe that the summer beach season is mostly over. Earlier this week, beach committee chairman Sean Leach sat down with the select board to break down the summer, and what’s planned for the offseason. A few takeaways:

• Cherry and Webb parking: Leach said the parking lot will be reconfigured over the off-season. Apart from landscaping and some reconfiguration of the spaces and metal barriers that separate bays from one another, the town will probably have signs made up so visitors trying to get to Horseneck know exactly where they are — “they come over the bridge,” see signs and take a right by the boat ramp — “they think they’re at Horseneck Beach,” he said.

• The old fence: The beach committee will also soon vote to accept one of two bids received for replacing the dilapidated old chain link fence at the edge of the Cherry and Webb beach.

Last August, resident Jim Mullins asked the town to finally take steps to replace the aging, worn-out fence that separates the town beach from several properties to the east, just off the access path from the parking lot.

The fence had been installed by the town around 1980, 11 or 12 years after Westport entered into an arrangement with the neighbors to install and maintain it.

It’s been in poor shape for 11 years and has needed replacement for at least six, and in 2019 voters approved funds that, at the time, would likely have been sufficient to replace all 600 feet of it.

Leach said two bids were received for the work but a winning bid has not yet been chosen, as the committee only had three members present at its most recent meeting and Leach said he likes to have a full complement when votes are taken.

He said the project should run by October, though he said the committee will leave the timing on the work mostly up to the successful bidder, as it will cost less when the company has flexibility over timing.

• Fifty dollars doesn’t hold the same sway it used to: Select board member Steve Ouellette suggested speaking with police in the offseason about more effective ways to deter non-stickered parking at Cherry and Webb, including increasing the $50 fine for parking without a sticker that is now on the books.

Leach believes it’s a good idea:

“We had a couple of weekends that were very bad this year” for parking, he agreed. “Fifty dollars isn’t going to deter a family that wants to go to the beach."

And with the parking lot often completely full at Cherry and Webb, he said, a sort of “drop-off syndrome” has developed.

“There’s 104 parking spaces and you get to the beach and there’s 1,000 people there. Where did they come from?”

• Recreation department: The beach committee is considering teaming up with the recreation department, using beach money to help fund administrative help from within the department. Currently, the committee doesn't receive administrative help from the town, apart from the "great" work done recently by Town Clerk staff to help administer the town's new online beach pass payment system, Leach said.

Recreation director Dana Stewart “helped out quite a bit” last year, he said. If the committee and recreation move ahead with a work arrangement, “some of the money that we take in now will be helping with her salary.

“I think it’s a great idea to combine the resources of the two committees,” select board member Craig Dutra said.

• More and more: Leach said it was a very successful summer, and unlike the staffing problems the beach committee faced over the past few years, “we had more lifeguards than we needed this year.”

Most should be back next year, he said, though that is subject to change depending on whether the state “poaches” lifeguards away with higher salaries at state beaches, including Horseneck.

Also on the “more front,” there were more rescues this summer than last year, but no serious issues. Some of the injuries guards attended to were at Boaters Beach.

“We don’t really have jurisdiction over that beach, per se,” Leach said. “But there have been a lot more problems including some of the injuries ... that the lifeguards had to attend to.”

• East Beach amenities: A year ago or more, beach officials had been working on a plan to improve handicapped accessibility at the beach, but the physical impacts on the beach left by the winter storms delayed that work.

But the committee is looking at parking again and will come up with a plan that includes handicapped parking to help people like the spouse of one woman who reached out, complaining that it is difficult to go to the beach with her partnter, a double amputee who has difficulty under the current parking arrangement there.

The committee did field some other complaints about the state of East Beach, including camping by people who don’t have stickers, and the state of the facilities there. The town did have a porta-john at the beach, Leach said, but it was taken out as it was being abused and ended up a hub for litter and trash left behind by people who didn’t want to pack it out when they left.

“People didn’t want to use it,” he said of the porta-john.