City Council, administration blame each other for delay of bay, lagoon survey
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY – A host of local residents appeared before Ocean City Council last week to implore the city to get moving on dredging the back bay and lagoons, reigniting a debate over the engineering firm that had been doing the work for a half-dozen years.
The residents ended up leaving disappointed after Councilman Pete Madden’s request to add a resolution to the agenda for a new contract for a bathymetric survey by ACT Engineers was shot down.
The survey is an initial step needed before the city can get a contractor for dredging. The survey measures water levels and determines the amount of silt and sediment in the back bay and lagoons, giving the resort areas to target in the next round of dredging this fall.
A series of residents spoke up during the initial public comment session at the Thursday, June 24, council meeting.
Jack Davidson of West 17th Street said he has seen the good, the bad and the ugly with sediment levels affecting boating in the back bay. He said at one time before the city began its more recent dredging projects he saw kayaks run aground at the mouth of a lagoon. He said he wanted to know if the dredging was moving forward for 2021 and where the project stood because the lagoon openings at the bay “are filling in faster than I’ve seen before.”
Brian Logue of Bay Avenue thanked the council for the dredging work done over the past five to seven years. The self-described life-long boater said he doesn’t live on the bay but spends a lot of his time there.
“My concern is we’ve had the foot on the gas making great progress but the past six months or so we’re back off the gas,” Logue said. Normally, he noted, survey boats are out in the spring. He said some city projects such as dredging are time-sensitive and if the city doesn’t keep moving forward, “Mother Nature” is going to put the silt and sediment back.
Logue asked the city to move forward now so time isn’t lost to get to the bidding process for the next round of dredging.
George Robinson of West 17th Street said he was speaking on behalf of boaters, paddle boarders, the Marlin and Tuna Club, tourists and more supporting continuing the engineering process to get more dredging done this fall. “Today’s bayfront leaves waterfront marinas in a perilous position,” he said. Robinson said if waterways are not addressed, it could have a significant economic impact on the boating industry.
Jim Kolea, calling in while watching the meeting on Zoom, also implored city officials to speed up dredging.
After the public comment session, there was a heavy back-and-forth between some city council members and city Business Administrator George Savastano about who was to blame for the delay in getting the bathymetric survey moving. That devolved into the months-long debate among council members and between them and the administration about the contract bidding process and getting a qualified pool of engineers set up, something approved in a resolution back in February.
Council members Keith Hartzell and Michael DeVlieger said the delays were not council’s fault.
Hartzell said he heard a “lot of buzz” via a letter that was sent out and over social media that certain council members were trying to stop dredging work. One social media post “accused five of us of working against the people,” he said.
He asked Savastano, “Is there anything that was done (by council) that would stop the dredging work?”
Savastano said the survey was delayed because council wanted the administration to go out to bid on that project after the administration recommended using ACT Engineers at a mid-May agenda meeting because ACT had done that work for years.
“When you’ve worked with a company for six years and say you want to change horses mid-stream, it’s going to slow things down,” Savastano said. He said when council pulled a resolution for ACT, “I told you it would create some problems. That is just the fact of the matter.”
He said while ACT already knew the details to do the work, it would take more time to set up bidding for a bathymetric survey by other firms unfamiliar with the process.
Savastano was pressed repeatedly by Hartzell and DeVlieger on whether delaying the survey work this summer would delay the actual dredging in the fall. Savastano said he didn’t even have a firm on board to do the survey but was not clear on the impact of work after the summer season.
DeVlieger said members of the audience who came to complain about the delayed pace of the survey had been “snookered” into coming to the meeting.
Hartzell said the administration was asked back in February to put everything out to bid. “The delay is on you, not us,” he said, claiming Savastano let bidding on the bathymetric survey lapse for six to eight weeks. In addition, he said, “people got contacted to come here and yell at us.”
Savastano said he recommended ACT for this project because of its past experience with all the dredging work.
Madden said council could add the resolution for ACT to the agenda at Thursday’s meeting and vote on it to get everything moving forward immediately, but other members of council said they wanted to go forward with the bid process. They said they wanted the bid process to ensure the city was getting a fair price for the work.
The debate dragged on as Hartzell questioned why the city never brought ideas to council that could save the city money, including a shared-services agreement with Corbin City for dredge materials he claimed would be less expensive. “None of us were told about this,” Hartzell said, addressing the audience in front of him. “You see how things work?”
Savastano, noting “the rhetoric is a bit much,” said the administration doesn’t keep things from council and when it is appropriate they bring things forward. He said the agreement with Corbin City was investigated and found to not be cost-effective at the time, but it could be an option in the future.
City solicitor Dorothy McCrosson said Hartzell referred to letters that went out. “We don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
Madden made a motion to add a resolution awarding ACT a contract for the survey to that evening’s agenda and Bergman seconded, but they were the only ones in favor. DeVlieger, Hartzell, Bob Barr, Jody Levchuk and Tomaso Rotondi voted no. Those in opposition said it was better to do the bid process and to know for certain delaying the contract would delay the actual dredging work.
“We’re not moving forward,” Madden said. “We had the public come out and we just voted it down.”
“Those folks were snookered,” DeVlieger responded.
After that vote, a large group of citizens got up and left the meeting.