The Ventnor Middle School Volleyball team took home the middle school championship trophy in March.
Shallow water at low tide on the bay near West 17th Street in Ocean City. Credit: George Robinson
City Council will vote Thursday on paying a company $2.7 million to haul mud to Wildwood.
Council will consider awarding a $2,689,000 contract to Wickberg Marine Contracting Inc. of Belford, N.J., to remove material from an approved disposal site in the marshes near the 34th Street causeway.
The vote is the centerpiece of an effort to dredge lagoons and bayside channels that are too shallow for boat traffic during many parts of the tide cycle. Marine access is a big investment for waterfront property owners and a prime attraction for many visitors.
Ocean City has permits to use the site (Confined Disposal Facility No. 83), but it's filled to capacity, and all work to dredge the bay to make it deeper has been at a standstill.
The contract calls for the company to haul material away from the site — likely by barge and truck — and take it to Wildwood, where it will be used to help cap a landfill. Wildwood will accept the material from the contractor at $14 a cubic yard.
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The work will make room at the disposal site to allow new dredging projects to start — but it will come at a cost. The $2.7 million contract would free up only 40,000 cubic yards, according to the bid documents.
Mayor Jay Gillian, earlier this year, estimated that the city would have to dredge about 300,000 cubic yards of material to complete an Ocean City project “from tip to tip.”
In a 2012 project that was never completed because the disposal site filled up, Hydro-Marine Construction removed 73,000 cubic yards of dredged material under a $1,829,655 contract that called for the dredging of 106,000 cubic yards between 15th and 34th streets.
City Council has approved $5 million ($4.75 million of it to be borrowed) in spending for dredging this year. If the contract is approved, that would leave $2.3 million for actual dredging work. The city has not yet announced where that work will occur — but Finance Director Frank Donato at an Ocean City Community Association meeting on Saturday suggested it would pick up where the incomplete 2012 project left off, near 15th and 16th streets.
A separate spoils site near the Ninth Street Bridge is approved, but for an amount (4,000 to 6,000 cubic yards) far less than what Ocean City had anticipated.
The public City Council meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday (Feb. 26) at City Hall. Here are some other items on the meeting agenda that might be of interest.
- Changes to Hospitality Zone: City Council will consider the second reading of an amended ordinance that makes minor changes to the sections related to one-family and two-family residences in Ocean City's Hospitality Zone near the downtown blocks of the boardwalk. The changes make the language of the ordinance “a little less unwieldy,” according to City Solicitor Dorothy McCrosson. (See agenda packet below for full text and documentation.)
- Housekeeping Ordinances: City Council will consider the second readings of two ordinances: one that changes an outdated law making it possible for the mayor and City Council to appoint a replacement for a retiring tax collector, the other more clearly delineating the line of authority to help with an Ocean City Police Department re-accreditation application.
- Flood Damage Prevention Appeals Board: Council will vote on the first reading of an ordinance designating the Ocean City Planning Board as the body that will hear variance appeals related to flood damage prevention measures.
- Boardwalk Engineering: City Council will vote to award a professional services contract to Czar Engineering of Egg Harbor Township to study the design of the boardwalk between Eighth Street and the Ocean City Music Pier. That section will be reconstructed as part of a multiyear project between Fifth and 12th streets, but will need to be strong enough to accommodate trucks and heavy equipment headed for the Music Pier.
- Executive Session: City Council will vote to go into a session closed to the public to discuss appointments to the Environmental Commission.
