- By Geena Monahan—For the North Star Reporter
The first day of summer is less than two months away, and North Attleborough officials have a choice to make regarding the town beaches.
The town’s three freshwater swimming spots, Whiting’s Pond, Falls Pond and Barbara Road Beach, have each been staffed in recent years with two lifeguards, hired through the Hockomock YMCA. However, a change in the YMCA’s liability insurance coverage could force the town to switch from lifeguards to “swim at your own risk” signs or close the beaches altogether.
The situation was brought to the attention of the Town Council at its April 14 meeting. According to Town Manager Michael Borg, the YMCA notified the town that its insurance company would no longer provide liability insurance for lifeguards on open bodies of water.
“This is causing us to take a look at how we are going to handle the beaches,” said Borg. “If it stays the same today, we’re looking at a change in service. We may be replacing lifeguards with signs of ‘swim at your own risk.’ But we’re looking for solutions.”
Borg specified that only lakes and ponds would be affected by this change in service, not the town’s pools.
Town Council President Justin Pare expressed his concerns over switching to signs instead of lifeguards, and asked if and when there could be further discussion on it.
“We’re still looking for an active solution,” responded Borg. “The Hockomock Y, who we relied on for the insurance policy, simply wasn’t offered it.”
Jim Downs, CEO of the Hockomock Area YMCA, said that this isn’t a matter of not being able to afford the insurance, but the insurance company not offering coverage for open-bodied water areas.
The YMCA has partnered in the past with Silver Lake in Bellingham and Lake Pearl at Luciano’s private beachfront in Wrentham, but won’t be providing lifeguards for those lakes either.
“The insurance company wouldn’t even give us a quote unless we eliminated doing lakes and ponds,” said Downs. “It’s unfortunate, because we partner with several towns, not just North Attleborough.”
Downs said that in the world of youth-serving, nonprofit organizations, there are very few options for insurance agencies because of risk, mainly due to child sexual abuse issues that have happened across the country.
According to Downs, a lot of insurance companies aren’t interested in insuring organizations like the Boy Scouts, the YMCA, Jewish Community Centers, or Boys and Girls Clubs, and finding a new insurance company poses a challenge.
“Could we try to get insurance somewhere else? Possibly, but it would probably be an absurd amount,” said Downs. “Unfortunately, our insurance company said it’s not an option. We tried talking it through with them and they said ‘listen, we won’t insure you if you do any lakes or ponds.’”
Councilors dove deeper into the matter at the Finance Subcomittee’s April 22 meeting, where Parks and Recreation Director Steve Carvalho presented the department’s fiscal year 2026 budget. The pools and beaches line item shows a 30.8% decrease, driven by the elimination of salaries for beach lifeguards.
Carvalho stated that he was first made aware of the loss of services in November 2024, and has since reached out to every local agency he can think of to find qualified lifeguards, such as the Attleboro YMCA, Goldfish Swim School and local universities and colleges.
“At this time, we’ve exhausted many, many avenues to see how we can resolve this,” said Carvalho. “This is not something that’s going to be easily solved, based on all of the factors that are against us.”
According to Carvalho, the town has barely enough lifeguards to staff its pools, and the certification needed to be an open body of water lifeguard — as opposed to a lifeguard at a pool — are different and costly. After conversations with Fire Chief Christopher Coleman, Carvalho said that putting buoys out to mark swimming areas might give people a false sense of security, and would most likely be avoided.
“If we do nothing except the signs, would you ever consider closing the beaches and saying ‘you can’t swim?’” asked Council Vice President John Simmons to Carvalho and Borg at the April 22 meeting.
Borg said he doesn’t have a specific answer to that question at the moment, but would like the Parks and Recreation Commission to weigh in and have further discussions.
“My gut tells me that if we wanted to just run it on a rigid position, we would just close the beaches,” said Borg.
Councilor Dan Donovan echoed Simmons’ and Pare’s concerns over the safety of having signs instead of lifeguards, referring to a tragedy that happened in 2018 when there were only “swim at your own risk” signs at Whiting’s Pond. Donovan was presumably referencing the death of 16-year-old Jonathon Lozada, who drowned at the pond while swimming with family and friends and no lifeguards on duty.
“The swim at your own risk signs scare the heck out of me,” said Donovan. “As much as I would hate to be the guy to say ‘no swimming,’ I really think if we cannot do lifeguards, that’s the way to go. The ‘swim at your own risk’ might absolve us of liability, but I think something stronger than that needs to be out there.”
In a statement given to the North Star Reporter by Borg’s office, the town’s goal is to still find a way to bring lifeguards back on board, and are currently working with the Alera Group to look at different insurance providers. North Attleborough has never carried liability insurance for lifeguards before but if costs are feasible, the town will try to find room in its FY26 budget, and Borg anticipates having quotes before the budget is finalized on May 12.
“I’d like to emphasize that we are continuing to work to look for a solution to this,” said Borg. “We’re not going to stop until we find an acceptable answer. Safety is an important factor in this.”