Ocean City Public Safety Building appears doomed

Some council members say majority of council and public against spending for $42 million project

By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff

OCEAN CITY – The proposed $42 million Public Safety Building in Ocean City looks doomed.

At Thursday night’s council meeting, Council President Bob Barr and Councilman Keith Hartzell said there isn’t the will on council or among members of the public to fund the joint facility for the police and fire departments on the block where the fire headquarters now resides at Sixth Street and Asbury Avenue.

The building (plus another $1.3 million in design costs) remains in the five-year, $141 million capital plan council approved Thursday night, but it was clear some members of council are determined to remove it from the plan. 

Barr and Hartzell said they want to replace it with a less costly, $25 million police station, leaving the fire headquarters – and neighboring skateboard park – where they are now and use the additional capital funds earmarked for the building on more “quality of life” projects, such as flood remediation.

The announcements of opposition caught Chief Financial Officer Frank Donato off guard as he was presenting a resolution on the agenda for an $18.4 million bond ordinance to fund a multitude of other projects that are ready to go. 

Donato said the bond ordinance is for projects including $5.5 million for storm water drainage systems, $2 million for back back dredging and another $5.5 million road and alley work.

When he explained the bond ordinance was for projects consistent with the capital plan, the pushback began from a number of members of council.

Reiterating his roughly hour-long presentation before council two weeks prior, he said the five-year plan, that assumed $150 million in debt, would at worst-case cost less than an additional half-penny on the tax rate annually for 10 to 11 years and that the city identified grant funding for a best-case scenario with a potential $10 million to $40 million offset.

Councilman Pete Madden supported the plan, saying the money was being spent on “things people can see, touch and feel and feel like their tax dollars are very well spent. That’s been kind of a gold star for this council over the past few years. I think things are getting done. Tax money isn’t being wasted.”

The criticisms began after that.

Newly-approved council Vice President Tomaso Rotondi said he doubts there will be any grant money because the bulk of it is already earmarked and that they have to fight for the grants with all the other municipalities “so we’re probably looking at a worst-case scenario.” He said taxpayers are concerned about the half-penny hike in the tax rate every year for the capital plan.

Hartzell wanted assurances that “no part” of the Public Safety Building was included in the $18.4 million bond resolution. He said they also needed time to discuss the location of new pickle ball courts, an issue a resident brought up in public comment.

Councilman Jody Levchuk said rather than split building new public restrooms at 10th and 11th streets over the next two years, they both should be done before next summer along with the restrooms at the 34th Street playground.

Barr, who said he’s had the privilege of working with Congressman Jeff Van Drew (R-Second District) since late 2006, criticized the administration for not reaching out to the congressman about grants, which he said should have been done because of the heavy competition for funding.

“I can say unequivocally most if not all of this money has already been allocated. To sit here and say we have significant amounts of federal funding or state funding even for this year is not accurate,” Barr said. (A substantial amount of federal grant money is expected for states and municipalities as part of the $1 trillion infrastructure plan approved the U.S. Senate and possibly more if an additional $3.5 trillion proposal makes it through Congress.)

Changing topics, Barr added, “I can speak for the majority of council, the Public Safety Building … is not something we want to move forward with.” He added the majority doesn’t want to move the skateboard and he wants $25 million in the capital plan for a state of the art police station because the police deserve it, but the rest of the $42 million projected for the building should go into quality of life issues such as open space and flooding and drainage projects.

He wanted to table the capital plan and have the administration to return with one that went along with what he outlined and for city officials to connect with the congressman on what funding can be achieved in future years.

“I don’t think you speak for everybody on council when you say that,” Madden responded. “I don’t share the same view. I also think with the vast political connections at this table, rather than saying what we’re not going to get, I would hope we would work to get things for the city.” Rotondi said he talked to Van Drew’s office and to the state senator and assemblymen from this district and that no one from the city reached out to any of them.

Hartzell wanted to know if they could approve the bond resolution without approving the capital plan. Then he launched into a lengthy statement about public opposition to the Public Safety Building.

Saying he’s knocked on a thousand doors with Barr, “There is little to no appetite for the Public Safety Building the way it has been presented.”

He said that entailed the cost of the project, which rose since a $17 million police station was first discussed, and the loss of green space. (Part of the project was moving the skateboard park and parking lot at the north end of the block behind onto a quarter of Grimes Field behind the Primary School, putting the new building in place of that and then demolishing the current fire headquarters toward the south end of the block and replacing it with a parking lot nearer to downtown.)

He doesn’t want the current fire headquarters demolished or the skateboard park moved.

He also said he was concerned about the large spending in the capital plan given that when he came onto council in 2006 there was the real estate downtown that hit the city’s ratables and caused tax increases.

Hartzell said he didn’t want to have the city stuck with a $42 million project and that more members of the public were concerned about quality of life in their neighborhoods.

He said he would’t support the capital plan that was included in the council’s consent agenda.

Barr explained he wanted to hold off on the $18.4 million bond ordinance because he wanted more money put into it “and the entire plan reworked.”

Madden said he hasn’t knocked on a thousand doors, but has talked to 20 people a day every week for 16 years in his real estate profession, meaning he’s talked to 5,000 people a year.

“There are three sides to every story,” Madden said. “For every person who has a problem with a police station or drainage or any type of capital plan, there is somebody who does not have a problem with that. From my job, from a tax standpoint, people who are moving here and a large majority of people who are here couldn’t be happier with their taxes. Ocean City has a great tax rate and the projects that we’re doing people are happy with.”

Madden also suggested the reason there is a negative response on about the Public Safety Building is how councilmen are talking to residents about it. “When you’re approaching people looking for a problem, you find a problem,” he said. “If you approach people looking for solutions, you’re going to find solutions. I have no problem with this capital plan and I’d like to move forward with it.” (Hartzell later said he hasn’t tried to steer public opinion on the issue.)

Councilwoman Karen Bergman suggested getting the firefighters’ input on what they needed and she too said when Barr talked about a council majority that she was being actively excluded.

Donato responded to Hartzell and Barr, saying they never voiced any opposition to the Public Safety Building.

“This is the first time we’re hearing a lot of these comments publicly,” he said. “I never knew there was so much pushback on the Public Safety Building until now. We presented a plan two weeks ago and went around the table and there were no questions, no comments. It’s been on the website for two weeks now. 

“No one here picked up the phone to let anybody know (they) want to modify the capital plan. Everyone had time to call Van Drew but no one had time to call us,” Donato said.

“The reason the Public Safety Building is in the capital plan before you is because we’ve got almost a million (dollars) sunk into the design, which everybody voted for unanimously, but now we want to take a number out of thin air, $25 million, and slap that into the capital plan and take $42 (million) out,” he said. “Where’s $25 million? What is that? Where does the building go? I don’t even know. That’s what’s disappointing. Not a single call from anybody in two weeks.”

Mayor Jay Gillian interjected that he was willing to work together with council on a new proposal. Hartzell said he came to oppose the Public Safety Building after his discussions with taxpayers and that in recent weeks there have been a number of newspaper articles about the project so people are better informed. (See previous stories about the Public Safety Building online at the Ocean City Sentinel’s online site, ocnjsentinel.com.)

Although Barr had suggested holding up the bond resolution to expand it with more projects, Donato said they designed it specifically to keep infrastructure projects going.

“Vince (Bekier) and I purposely tailored that presentation so we can keep infrastructure going,” Donato said. “We purposely didn’t put much in there about the Public Safety Building because this is exactly what we didn’t want to happen,” he said. That project isn’t in the bond ordinance because it isn’t ready to go, he explained, but the other projects are ones the city is ready to move forward with.

He added that they couldn’t simply include new projects, as Barr suggested, without talking to the city engineers about all the work that is already scheduled and ready to go and what work is feasible in the off-season.

Donato also explained the council could modify the capital plan at any time because “it’s just a piece of paper” until a funding ordinance is attached to it.

Council late unanimously approved the bond ordinance and then approved the consent agenda – that included a resolution approving the capital plan – after being repeatedly assured they can modify it at any point.