Donald Wittkowski

Ocean City resident Donna Moore regularly attends City Council meetings as a member of the public, often speaking to the governing body about her concerns for the environment. Touting her credentials as an environmental advocate, Moore now wants to join Council as a new member. She filed her nominating petitions Friday for the May 10 municipal election, when three at-large Council seats will be up for grabs.

It might be a stretch to consider them attractions in their own right, but two new public bathrooms coming to the Ocean City Boardwalk this summer will no doubt be popular places to, ahem, go. During a brief presentation to the planning board on Wednesday night, city representatives unveiled designs for restrooms that will be built at 10th Street and 11th Street in a busy part of the Boardwalk’s retail and amusements area.

Dubbing themselves “The Big 3,” City Council incumbents Karen Bergman and Pete Madden and running mate John “Tony P” Polcini invited the public to a casual get-together Sunday that doubled as a political campaign rally pointing toward the May 10 municipal election.

Ocean City will be adding a chaplain to the police department, a volunteer position to provide comfort and counseling “in times of need.” Voting 7-0 at its meeting Thursday night, City Council approved an ordinance to create the chaplain’s position at the request of Police Chief Jay Prettyman.

Since the early 1900s, a modest building has been a fixture at the corner of Ninth Street and Atlantic Avenue, just one block from the Boardwalk. Spadafora’s Restaurant & Clam Bar has occupied the building for the last 40 years, but the iconic casual seafood place will not be back this summer and the structure itself will soon fade into Ocean City history. Thomas Spadafora, the restaurant owner, has requested that his lease for the city-owned building be terminated, city officials said. The city, in turn, plans to demolish the building to make room for an expansion of the adjacent municipal parking lot on Ninth Street.

West 17th Street is an enclave of upscale bayfront homes accessible by crossing a tiny bridge leading to the neighborhood. The neighborhood, essentially a narrow island jutting out into the back bay, is vulnerable to tidal flooding because of its location and the low-lying topography. In long-awaited action, Ocean City took a major step toward protecting the West 17th Street area from stormwater in the future by selecting a construction company to build a flood-mitigation project.

Motorists using the Cape May County toll bridges should get those extra quarters ready or make sure their E-ZPass accounts are replenished. The Cape May County Bridge Commission is scheduled to begin the first of what will be a series of toll increases over the next three years on March 13.

The person who will fill a new position in the Ocean City Police Department will be given no rank or salary. But they will play a critical role, nonetheless. Ocean City will soon have a police chaplain, a volunteer position to help members of the police department and the public “in times of need.”

Groups of rowdy teenagers turned parts of the Jersey Shore last summer into their own personal playground for bad behavior. Outbursts of foul language, underage drinking, vandalism and theft by juveniles disrupted shore towns during the bustling summer tourism season – and in some cases, police were virtually powerless to stop it. Hoping to avoid a replay of last summer, Cape May County representatives and state lawmakers are considering a series of preemptive measures ranging from new local ordinances to new state legislation to curb unruly behavior.

City Council met behind closed doors Thursday night to discuss the controversial proposed offshore wind energy farm, just one week after the project’s developer filed for state approval to run an underground transmission line through Ocean City.