By BILL BARLOW/Special to the Sentinel
OCEAN CITY – Former City Councilman Gregg Johnson attended the April 22 meeting of the governing body to discuss the issue of juveniles and bikes in the community, but he offered those currently serving some advice, warning them against trying to micromanage the city instead of acting as the legislative body.
“I sort of had a flashback to when I was on City Council, because we’re just going on and on and on and on and on,” Johnson said.
“You were a part of it, though,” added Councilman Keith Hartzell.
“I would go home with knots in my stomach from micromanaging as a city councilman,” Johnson said.
“I think Gregg Johnson hit the nail on the head with how council’s going right now,” Councilman Pete Madden said later in the meeting. “We’ve been here for what, two hours, 15 minutes? Of which 15 minutes were of ordinances and resolutions, 15 minutes or maybe 30 were of public comment and then a solid hour and a half of council talking.”
There are always big issues, he said.
“But I think it’s something that 90 percent of this could have been conversations outside of the council meetings, outside of the public meeting that we have the public sit through,” he said. Plus, he said, it was cold in the oceanfront Music Pier where the meeting was held, on a night the spring temperatures dropped into the 40s.
The comments received some pushback from council members and a member of the public. Councilman Michael DeVlieger said he would rather have too much communication than too little.
“I don’t want to be here all night either, but at the same time I want to address the issues that people want to address,” he said. Council President Bob Barr said he sets aside his Thursday nights to attend the council meetings.
“I’m not in a hurry to go anywhere,” Barr said.
Dave Breeden, a regular commentor at the council meetings, said there is a great deal of interest in what is happening in Ocean City.
“Let’s not do it behind closed doors, off-line and in private,” he said. “Mr. Madden, you get paid to stay here two or three hours. I don’t. I’m here because I’m interested.”
Madden, who served as council president before Bob Barr, seemed to offer another criticism of the current operation of council meetings. When the meeting reached the agenda item marked “Reports – City Council” and members were each called on to speak, he said, “I have nothing to report on my council committees. That’s what this is for, right?”
Other council members used that portion of the meeting to respond to speakers from members of the public or to comment on city reports. Later in the meeting, there are portions of the meeting set aside for pending business and new business.
It was under that portion that Madden questioned the meeting length.
Sentinel resolution on agenda, off again
A resolution returning The Ocean City Sentinel’s status as the city’s paper of record was added to the agenda for the Thursday, April 22, City Council meeting at about 1 that afternoon. By 4:30 p.m., it was off again.
City officials removed the Sentinel as the city’s official newspaper on April 8. The designation does not mean the newspaper is an official arm of the municipal government, but rather that it is where the city advertises budgets, ordinances and other legally required public notices. Council members at the time said the decision had nothing to do with their anger over a controversial opinion column published in the newspaper, but instead related only to the revelation that the paper was printed in Pennsylvania, while state law requires official newspapers be printed in New Jersey.
The Sentinel now has a contract with a new printer and the paper is printed in state, and the city was provided with a notarized letter attesting to that. The city attorney has given an opinion that the law now requires the Sentinel be the paper of record if it meets the legal criteria, because it is the only regularly printed newspaper with an office in the city.
At the meeting, Councilwoman Karen Bergman questioned why the resolution was pulled.
“We still have some questions that need to be answered by the Sentinel,” Barr said. He did not offer further details when resident Donna Moore questioned the change later in the meeting.
Contacted on Friday, he declined to say what those questions were.
“I really don’t want to get into that, we’re trying to handle that behind the scenes,” he said.
15 mph on alleys
City Council on Thursday approved an ordinance setting a 15-mph speed limit in all alleys throughout town. At previous meetings, city attorney Dottie McCrosson told council members that there was a presumed speed limit, but it was never previously codified.
McCrosson said there is no plan to post signs on alleyways throughout the city.
“I always thought the rule existed anyway,” DeVlieger said. He and other council members said it would be good policy to let visitors know. Hartzell said putting signs on every alley would be a huge undertaking, suggesting posting a notice at the town’s entrances.
Some alleys already have a posted speed limit.
The change was not prompted by reports of speeding along the narrow routes, although DeVlieger said there was an issue with speeding on the alley where he lives. The city painted “slow” on the alley surface, he said. Previous studies have found that the Ocean City alleys function in part as open space, where families play ball and kids skate or ride bikes.
Wind power fight continues
Several speakers at the April 22 City Council meeting addressed Ocean Wind, a proposal for wind turbines off the coast of Cape May and Atlantic counties. The Dutch energy company Ørsted has a contract to create the project, set to be the largest offshore wind farm in the country but the first of what is expected to be more to come.
Opposition to the project has been building in Cape May County, and members of City Council have expressed skepticism about the plan.
Among the speakers was Richard Bernardini, the chairman of the city’s Environmental Commission, who expressed support for the proposal, with reservations. He started his comments by wishing the council happy Earth Day, one of a couple of speakers to do so. He said the commission and members of the environmental club at Ocean City High School planted about 50 beach plum trees at the 57th Street beach access, in part as a hedge against rising seas.
“Climate change is slow in developing, it will be slow to control, but we can’t wait any longer,” he said, describing the barrier island city as especially vulnerable. “Global warming is the biggest long-term threat to Ocean City and neighboring communities.”
He read to council a statement from the commission outlining support for offshore wind as part of a multi-prong approach to reduce carbon, but expressed concerns about migrating birds, whales, sea turtles and other wildlife, especially the right whale.
The organization also called for improved engineering of the cables bringing the power to shore to avoid impact to the sea floor ecosystem, and called for documentation that the project will be carbon-neutral.
Later in the meeting, resident Suzanne Hornick blasted Bernardini’s comments.
“There’s a million things we could be doing besides putting 6(00) to 700 900-foot turbines with 750-foot wide blades out in our ocean,” she said. “Why aren’t we going solar? Why aren’t we going geo-electric?”
The Ocean Wind project, the one furthest in the approval process that will include turbines 15 miles off Ocean City beaches, calls for a total of up to 99 turbines. But other projects are also in the works in New Jersey and surrounding states that could eventually mean hundreds of wind turbines along the coast.
Others also spoke against the proposal. Resident Kim Wetzel said she and her family and neighbors were in “deep opposition to everything that this entails.