Donald Wittkowski

Ocean City’s public housing agency has secured a major piece of funding for a nearly $25 million project that will provide affordable housing for local families. The New Jersey Housing Mortgage Finance Agency has approved $4 million in funding for the proposed 60-unit project that will replace the aging Pecks Beach Village housing complex on Fourth Street in the north end of town.

Michael and Marta Bravoco quickly found out just how vulnerable their Merion Park neighborhood is to flooding when they bought their Ocean City home last year. “We moved in last September and we’ve had four flooding incidents that came up to the first steps of our property,” Marta said of the couple’s Victoria Lane home in the heart of Merion Park. Hoping for some relief from the flooding, the Bravocos and about 40 other residents attended a community meeting Saturday organized by Councilman Bob Barr to hear details about a long-awaited drainage project that would protect the bayside Merion Park neighborhood.

Ocean City will control where cellphone towers and antennas are built in the future by restricting them to city property and on utility poles. Voting 7-0, City Council introduced a new zoning ordinance Thursday night that would prohibit wireless towers and antennas from being built on private property. The ordinance is up for a public hearing and final vote at the May 11 Council meeting.

Ocean City’s parking fees will be going up this summer at the meters and the municipal lots. Voting 7-0, City Council approved an ordinance Thursday night to raise parking fees for the first time since 2015.

Ocean City Housing Authority officials Wednesday unveiled architectural renderings for a proposed 60-unit affordable housing complex that is expected to blend in with the surrounding neighborhoods in the north end of town. The design of the estimated $22 million to $23 million project will feature 15 duplex-style buildings containing four units each for the families living there, according to a presentation made before the Ocean City Planning Board.

Emotions are running high among Ocean City homeowners in the neighborhood of 33rd Street and 34th Street along Haven and Simpson avenues. They fear that a proposal by Verizon Wireless to install new cellphone antennas on the roof of a commercial building close to their homes will disrupt their neighborhood. The controversy may come to a head when Verizon’s application to install the antennas at 3337-39 Haven Ave. will be considered for approval by Ocean City’s Planning Board at its meeting 6 p.m. Wednesday at City Hall.

The badly decomposed remains of a pygmy sperm whale, possibly dead for months, washed ashore Friday on the 49th Street beach in Ocean City. The nearly 9-foot whale was a little more than “a skeleton with some skin on it,” said Sheila Dean, executive director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine.

Parking fees would go up this summer as part of Ocean City’s proposed $98.9 million municipal budget unveiled Thursday night at a City Council meeting. In a related development with the budget, about 40 police officers stood in the back of the Council chambers in a show of unity amid their contract negotiations with the city. The officers did not speak during the meeting and quietly filed out of the room after the budget presentation.

U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew is renewing his demand for a moratorium on offshore wind energy projects following the deaths of eight dolphins that washed up on the beach Tuesday in Sea Isle City. Van Drew, whose congressional district includes the shore communities in Atlantic and Cape May counties, wants the federal government to halt activity on the wind farms until an investigation is done to determine if the projects are causing a series of whale and dolphin deaths along the East Coast.

Police officers and other first responders used buckets and fire hoses to pour seawater on a group of dolphins in a frantic effort to save the creatures after they became stranded on the beach Tuesday morning in Sea Isle City. Ultimately, the rescue attempt proved futile. The heartbreaking scene took a tragic turn when a veterinarian from the Marine Mammal Stranding Center decided to euthanize the dolphins after their condition deteriorated.