Donald Wittkowski

Over the years, there has been a lot of racket back and forth between Ocean City’s tennis players and pickleball players. The tennis players wanted to protect their turf, while the pickleball players were eager to get their own permanent courts in town.

Ocean City’s school district is well managed and in strong financial shape, according to the results of an annual audit presented to the Board of Education on Wednesday night. The audit came out “clean” and uncovered no negative findings, said Michael Garcia, a partner with Ford-Scott & Associates LLC, an Ocean City accounting firm that conducted the financial review for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2016.

An engineering consultant is proposing an alternative disposal site that would allow Ocean City to continue with its multimillion-dollar dredging program in 2017, but already there is resistance from surrounding homeowners. Under the plan, muddy sediment that is dredged from the shallow lagoons would be piped to the proposed site on Shelter Road off Tennessee Avenue before it is hauled away by trucks for permanent disposal at other facilities off the island...

As a high school student vacationing in Ocean City in the early 1970s, Arlene Voudouris wandered through the Flanders Hotel one day and found herself marveling over the retail shops that were tucked inside the historic building. “I remember standing at the door, saying to myself, ‘Who would be lucky enough to have these shops in such a beautiful, historic hotel?’” the 61-year-old Voudouris recalled of what was a watershed moment in her life...

Randy Kohr had eight very small and odd-looking assistants to help him teach a class of first-graders Friday at the Ocean City Primary School. The squat robots at Kohr’s feet resembled four oversized billiards balls that had been patched together to create a bizarre prop for a sci-fi movie. They whirled around on the floor, flashed different colored lights and made funny sounds.

After several meeting with light agendas, City Council had a full docket this week...

In the 1971 fantasy movie “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” the finders of five “golden tickets” hidden inside some candy bars are promised a tour of the factory and a lifetime supply of chocolate...

Port-O-Call Controller Beth Pruzinsky, left, joins Waves of Caring board members Jim Smith, Patricia Smith, Debbie Buckley, Dana Linthicum and Frank Donato.

Some people may not be aware that there is a hospital in the middle of Ocean City’s downtown business district. Patients are given great care when they are rushed in for emergencies. “We are a doll hospital. We repair dolls,” explained Katy Himes, owner and head “doctor” at Kay Jay’s Doll Shoppe at 737 Asbury Ave. “People come in and ask us, ‘Can you fix it for me right now? My child can’t sleep without it.’”

Shoppers entering Mia’s Christmas Gallery over the weekend were pleasantly surprised by the worker who greeted them at the door. “Santa!” some of them shouted when they spotted the smiling, rotund man wearing the fluffy white beard and velvety red suit...