Donald Wittkowski

For the past three months Ocean City residents have been urging City Council to resume livestreaming its meetings on Zoom to make local government more accessible to the public. It just may happen. Council is expected to consider a resolution at its Sept. 22 meeting to reinstate Zoom to give residents another option for watching the governing body conduct its business. Councilman Jody Levchuk said he wants to put the resolution up for a vote by the seven-member governing body while indicating that he supports reinstating Zoom.

Parents and other members of the community held a protest rally on Thursday evening to urge Ocean City’s school district not to teach the state’s controversial sex education curriculum to local students. After the rally, City Council backed the protesters by unanimously adopting a resolution in support of proposed state legislation, called the Parents Bill of Rights, that opposes the sex education curriculum.

Ocean City will explore the possibility of buying the former Crown Bank building, the historic six-story structure that overlooks the heart of downtown at the corner of Eighth Street and Asbury Avenue. Built in 1925, the landmark building is “extremely worthy of consideration for acquisition, given its prime location within our downtown,” City Business Administrator George Savastano said. Savastano publicly disclosed the city’s interest in acquiring the property at 801 Asbury Ave. in a report to City Council during a meeting Thursday night. At the same time, he revealed that the building’s owner is now in bankruptcy.

Ocean City’s new jitney program this summer is producing promising results for the Boardwalk loop, but only low ridership on the route serving the downtown shopping district on Asbury Avenue.

A formerly drab public housing complex that occupies a prominent spot in downtown Ocean City is getting a makeover – both inside and out. The five-story Bayview Manor building owned by the Ocean City Housing Authority has already received a new roof, windows and a new facade to brighten up what had been a dreary exterior. Now, the interior of the building from the first to the fifth floor will undergo extensive renovation for the first time since Bayview Manor was constructed in the 1960s to provide affordable housing for Ocean City residents.

Could surging gas prices be to blame? Or could it be the sting of inflation overall? Or could there be some other factor this summer that is driving down revenue in two vital areas of Ocean City’s tourism industry? For now, Ocean City officials are not speculating on the cause, but the latest figures show that beach tag sales and parking revenue for 2022 have dipped compared to the banner summer of 2021 – a year boosted by the end of COVID-19 restrictions.

A turf war of sorts broke out at a City Council meeting Thursday night. The turf in this case is the artificial playing surface that Ocean City plans to install on a heavily used athletic field at Tennessee Avenue in place of the natural grass that is there now. The issue brought impassioned pleas from both supporters and opponents of the plan. Supporters included Ocean City High School head football coach Kevin Smith and girls' lacrosse coach Lesley Graham. Among those raising objections was Rick Bernardini, chairman of the Ocean City Environmental Commission.

A channel marker that is supposed to safely guide boaters through a popular waterway at the shore has instead become a navigational hazard, leaving some boats damaged or wrecked after hitting it. The marker is located in the Intracoastal Waterway between Avalon and Stone Harbor near a popular fishing area known both as Paddy’s Hole and Paddy’s Thorofare. It sits in a narrow channel dubbed the “football field” by local boaters. Sean McNulty, an owner of Carefree Boat Club of South Jersey, said the channel marker was apparently damaged during coastal storms over Mother’s Day weekend and is now partly submerged.

An entirely new type of affordable housing will be built at different locations in Ocean City now that a combination of more than $4 million in state and local funding has been nailed down for the projects. Five duplexes having a total of 10 rental units of affordable housing will be completed in 2023 for families of low and moderate incomes. City Councilman Bob Barr, who also serves as chairman of the Ocean City Housing Authority, noted that the design of the duplexes will blend in with the neighborhoods where they will be built.

The Richard S. Grimes Athletic Fields complex is one of the main hubs for Ocean City’s sports community. But the complex’s location in a low-lying area off Bay and Haven avenues between Fifth and Sixth streets often results in the grassy fields getting soggy or muddy. Now, city officials are discussing plans to give the site a more than $4 million overhaul that would include regrading and raising the field to make it less susceptible to rain or flooding. New amenities are also under consideration, including better bleachers and bathrooms.