The 107-year history of the City and County of Honolulu’s Ocean Safety Division can be charted through significant evolutionary developments in the art of near-shore surf rescue.

Many of these advancements have been shared around the world, leading to the development of robust maritime safety agencies in hundreds of communities in the U.S., and abroad.

Perhaps the most significant advancement yet for Honolulu Ocean Safety is taking shape this year in the form of a proposed ballot question that would ask Oahu voters to decide if the world-famous lifeguard service should be a standalone public safety agency, on par with the Honolulu Fire Department, Honolulu Police Department and Emergency Medical Services (EMS).

Honolulu’s City Council has rallied behind Resolution 24-50 introduced by Councilmember Andria Tupola, and also engaged with Mayor Rick Blangiardi, in order to consider asking voters if the City Charter should be amended to remove ocean safety responsibilities from EMS, and establish a separate Department of Ocean Safety.

The time is right for this important advancement: Mayor Blangiardi, the City Council and the community all agree that a separate Department of Ocean Safety makes strong fiscal, administrative and operational sense. This advancement will improve both Ocean Safety and EMS.

I have testified that a new department would cost approximately $1 million in new adminis- trative position salaries in the first few years of its existence. Lifeguards and their supporters believe the new department with a commission makes sense for three primary reasons.

First, modeled after the fire department, the structure of a new depart- ment with a commission composed of invested community volunteers helps improve transparency with respect to Ocean Safety’s budget, priorities and strategic plan. Commission meetings have agendas, minutes and track day-to-day management of the department.

Second, the new department with a commission improves accountability both for administrators and elected officials on ocean safety issues, and ensures operational decisions affecting staffing, overtime, new towers, equipment and other considerations are clear, deliberate and measured by results. For example, Ocean Safety currently has no permanent facilities of any kind.

Third, the commission structure best provides for community engagement for a service that touches so many lives. On an island of a million residents, so heavily dependent on the visitor industry, improving ocean safety to account for emerging threats and hazards (erosion, sea level rise, changing visitor demographics, social media influence, etc.), makes sense, and proposed solutions should involve the community.

Oahu’s beach lifeguard service grew out of a government need to provide for public safety as the visitor industry began to blossom under the world-renowned Waikiki beachboys at the turn of the 20th century. The service expanded with development of the Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium in 1927, led by legendary waterman Walter Napoleon. In 1949, the service was moved under the relatively new county’s Department of Parks and Recreation, and expanded once again to cover beach parks.

The county hired Olympic swimming gold medalist Bill Smith as lifeguard captain, and in response to the exploding global surf scene in the 1950s and early 1960s, he sent a young Eddie Aikau to lifeguard the North Shore alone, and Buffalo Keaulana to Makaha.

Honolulu Ocean Safety lifeguards had been among the first to put fins in rescue boards, use rescue tubes in dangerous shore break, to develop safe practices for rescuing an unconscious victim in large surf, and to deploy oxygen bottles and AEDs to the beach. Then, in the early 1990s, lifeguards pioneered the use of the Jet Ski for rescues, and successfully shared techniques around the world — even with the U.S. Coast Guard, generally regarded as the gold standard for maritime rescue.

A standalone Department of Ocean Safety with a commission will yet again advance maritime public safety in our Honolulu and likely, around the world. This is a legacy to truly aspire to, in a community so dependent on the ocean.

I write in strong support of Resolution 24-50.

John Titchen is chief of ocean safety for the City & County of Honolulu.