“Local safety member” also includes all employees of a city who have by contract been included within this system, and whose principal duties consist of active protection, rescue, and rendition of aid or assistance to persons injured or imperiled in water areas at ocean beaches and the recovery from those water areas of submerged objects and bodies of persons drowned or believed to have drowned in those areas, or the immediate supervision thereof, including persons employed to perform the duties now performed under the titles of aquatics director, chief lifeguard,
captain lifeguards, lieutenant lifeguards, beach lifeguard, but who performs additional duties, some of which (including the maintenance of peace and order and the apprehension of law violators) are customarily performed by police or peace officers, and whose other duties (such as resuscitation work involving the use of special equipment in cases having no connection with their principal duties) that in other areas are customarily performed by firefighters, and other and further duties that do not come directly within any of the above classifications but are essential to the safety and security of the public, excluding those whose principal duties are those of a telephone operator, clerk, stenographer, machinist, mechanic, or otherwise clearly do not fall within the scope of active lifeguarding or lifesaving service, even though the person is subject to occasional call, or is occasionally called upon, to perform duties within the scope of active lifeguarding or lifesaving service.
This section does not apply to the employees of any contracting agency having a contract with the board made prior to September 18, 1959, until the agency elects to subject itself and its employees to the provisions of this section by amendment to its contract with the board pursuant to Section 20474; except that an election is required only among the employees to whom the provisions of this section apply.
The amendments of this section, made by Chapter 130 of the Statutes of 1982 do not constitute a substantive change in the law and shall not be construed to entitle any person to any right or benefit that he or she was not already entitled to prior to December 31, 1982.