Said he needs a better work, life balance
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY – First Ward Councilman Michael DeVlieger announced Thursday he is quitting his elected position to achieve a better work-life balance.
In an announcement at the end of the Ocean City Council meeting that appeared to surprise some of his colleagues, DeVlieger said the Aug. 12 meeting would be his last.
DeVlieger was re-elected last year in an uncontested ward race. He was voted as council vice president at the reorganizational meeting at the beginning of July.
“Anyone who knows me knows I try to squeeze a lot into my day, my week,” DeVlieger said. “I don’t sleep a whole heck of a lot. For better part of 10 years I’ve been running crazy.” He said he talks to his children about wants and needs all the time, the difference between the things they want and the things they truly need.
He said he was with a friend and health profession who told him it was his turn to make decisions.
“He said to me, ‘Mike, you gotta make some choices. You gotta cut some stuff out.’”
“I can’t cut my work out and I can’t cut my family out,” DeVlieger said, announcing his plan to leave City Council after the Aug. 12 meeting.
“As much as I want to be here, I need to be healthy for my family and to enjoy them,” he said. “There are a lot of other important things coming up,” he added, and he has been wondering who would be “strong enough and passionate enough” to take on the issues. He said as he leaves his position, he is going to make recommendations on who he believes should be interviewed for his position.
“I don’t want to get too sappy,” he concluded. “I want to say it’s been a great honor.”
Councilman Keith Hartzell said he, too, had come to a point in his life when he needed to make a major decision and understood what DeVlieger was doing, saying it was important to get his life in balance.
Council President Bob Barr said he was “shocked. I don’t know what to say. I want to talk you into staying but it’s not what’s best for you. I wish you well.”
DeVlieger is partway through his third term that runs until 2024. He was not opposed in the 2020 election.
He joined City Council in 2012 at age 45, defeating challenger Fred Hoffman. At the time, he campaigned on bringing new jobs as a means to entice new families to Ocean City.
Since late 2020, DeVlieger has led the crusade against Ørsted’s planned wind farm off the coast of Atlantic and Cape May counties. The proposed project, estimated to cost about $1.6 billion and in the environmental review phase, wants to bring up to 99 853-foot-tall turbines to a site 15 miles off the coast.
DeVlieger believes the wind farms will be detrimental to tourism in Ocean City and harm real estate values.
Although Ocean City has no direct jurisdiction over the wind farm, Ørsted wants to run power transmission lines from the wind farm through Ocean City’s rights of way to the former B.L. England generating plant in Beesleys Point.
Last week, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a new law that took away Ocean City’s ability to stop wind farms from using the rights of way under streets and beaches, and gave that authority to the state Board of Public Utilities.
Legislators who brought forward the measure and approved it in the span of two weeks cited Ocean City Council’s opposition to the wind farm.
Suzanne Hornick, who leads the Ocean City Flooding Committee and is an opponent of the wind farm, called DeVlieger’s resignation “a huge loss for the city. You will be missed.”