Ocean City voters will be sending in their ballots or going to the polls May 12 to choose who will lead the resort for the next four years.
What do they want?
Mayor Jay Gillian is seeking his fifth term. He is facing a pair of longtime city councilmen, Keith Hartzell and Pete Madden, who have been in office most if not all of that time.
The resort is in much better shape than when Gillian took office in 2010. The amount of capital work, neglected by prior administrations, is beyond substantial – new boardwalk, multiple pumping stations and road elevations to mitigate flooding, a new police substation and main police station in the works, replenished beaches and dredged back bays, taking over and expanding the senior center, plus miles and miles of paving of roads and alleys. That’s just a partial list.
That credit goes to Gillian’s administration.
Both of his opponents, Hartzell and Madden, were along for the ride, allocating the funding by approving capital plans for the projects. There were a few notable exceptions, such as Hartzell helping block an earlier expensive proposal to build a combined police/fire station, but otherwise few objections to all the work taken to get this resort in better shape.
The work has come with a big price tag – the long-term debt incurred by the city – but Chief Financial Officer Frank Donato has managed that well with low-interest loans and carefully calculated impacts on the annual budget.
Still, improving the resort has been expensive and is felt in the annual budget, but the capital work should outlive the length of the debt.
Gillian can take credit for that for leading the administration. Again, Hartzell and Madden have been supportive in their roles on council.
Gillian has been weathering a personal financial storm. His family business, Wonderland Pier amusement park, an iconic place for nearly 60 years on the Ocean City Boardwalk, closed in late 2024. He struggled since before the pandemic to keep the beloved institution going. He has filed for personal bankruptcy in the wake of that. His personal finances are wholly unrelated to how his administration manages the city finances, which get a top financial rating by ratings agencies, but there is no doubt some voters will take his personal situation into account when casting their ballots.
There is a contrasting style among the three candidates in the speaking. Gillian is not an eloquent speaker, but he does speak from the heart with his love for a resort his family has been prominent in for generations.
Hartzell is well known for his talkativeness and waxing eloquent, often using examples for his own ties and investment in the resort and frequently, often emotionally, linking his values to his parents’ examples, not a misplaced thing in a family resort.
Madden is as brief as Hartzell is longwinded. Over the years he has probably spoken fewer words than any council member, often keeping his comments to a sentence or two after his peers spoke at length. Those peers made him council president for seven years and VP for two more, a factor he said is tied to his communication skills.
Madden has supported almost everything Gillian has done, but said he believes it is time for a new and younger perspective in the mayor’s office. On major issues facing the resort, he is all for Eustace Mita’s controversial proposed eight-story hotel at the former Wonderland property, and believes most people agree in spite of very vocal opposition to that plan. Gillian, who used to own the property, said he supports something that the community can agree upon.
Hartzell, who campaigned in his former mayoral challenge against high-rise hotels on the boardwalk, has focused on parking in the resort, which is a major headache in the prime tourist season. He points out it is aggravated by countless investors who keep building massive homes on the city’s tiny lots, meant to be rented out to multiple people without anywhere near the parking needed.
Hartzell, unlike Madden, voted against the municipal budget last year and has cited the 17 percent increase over three years as the reason. He said he believes in more efficiency in government, but not in cutting services people want.
When it comes to the tax rate, the 17 percent increase over three years is a lot, but Ocean City property owners, who have seen the values of their properties grow incredibly since Gillian, Hartzell and Madden have been in office, still enjoy one of the lowest in New Jersey municipalities. (And almost all the others don’t have the resort’s beautiful beaches and boardwalk.)
Gillian is arguing for continuing on the path his administration has forged over nearly 16 years, though he has noted the bulk of capital improvements are now complete.
Voters know exactly what they’d get from giving him a fifth term in office.
Neither Hartzell nor Madden are talking about wholesale change in the resort, not wanting to fix the many areas that aren’t broken, but both say they would assess the people on the administration team to decide if changed are warranted. Each would bring a different leadership style, personality and perspective. Voters should be well aware of those aspects given the long tenures for Hartzell and Madden in city government.
Voters should be clear-eyed on all three candidates as they spend the next few weeks making their cases.
Unlike the previous Gillian-Hartzell matchup, a three-way race makes for a potential winner via plurality, not majority. The question is who may be the spoiler for whom?