Slower Lower Delaware… a place where we enjoy no sales taxes and our amazing beaches. Individuals come from high and low to visit our “luxury” sand palace.  While tourists do bring in money to local beaches, they also take away from the locals who are passionate about spending time at our nearby beaches and favorite coastal towns.

Let’s be honest, the beach towns are what make our summer months the most enjoyable. So, with that being said, surf-fishing beach tags have become extremely popular amongst us Delawareans over the past several years. However, we now seem to have to go through a hop, skip, and jump just to even attempt to hold a seasonal pass. It was not until just after Covid that the Delaware State Parks began a yearly “cap” on how many surf-fishing beach tags were sold for residents and out-of state pass holders. 17,000 passes become the total number sold for the year. Yet, volunteer firefighters who were eligible for FREE tags are now walking empty handed after hearing that within 4 hours, the state parks have apparently sold every one of the 17,000 tags that went up sale as of February 1st at 10:00 a.m. just for them all to be sold out by roughly 1:00 p.m. the same day.

This petition is to make changes when it comes to surf-fishing tags. Let’s start by making our first responders the first priority, they should get first dibs on these tags since they are putting their lives on the line to keep us safe. Full-time residents of the State of Delaware should then have the next opportunity to snag one of these tags, since we are paying tax dollars and we should be able to enjoy something during the busy tourist season. If by Memorial Day, there are still tags available, then that is when non-residents can then pay and receive surf-fishing tags. I hope that I will have a large following behind me with this petition and we can get things changed.

Another idea can be not having a yearly cap, instead hold a daily cap per state park. For instance, just for the 17,000 tags they have sold, the parks have made roughly $1,700,000.00. Just imagine how much they can bring in after removing their yearly cap. This will be beneficial to the state since they will be able to sell more tags throughout the year and make more money to put towards the state parks.

This is our state, our domicile, and our home, we need to keep Delaware small but think large. After all, we are the first state, lets strive to put our Delawareans first.