OCEAN CITY — One criticism leveled at the 2024 Ocean City municipal budget was that it included a line item that increased 2,900 percent.
The budget increase stems from Ocean City taking over operations for the Howard S. Stainton Senior Center in the Ocean City Community Center.
Cape May County previously operated the center and bore its related costs.
Since Ocean City took over, it has greatly expanded the operations for the resort’s seniors.
In the PowerPoint budget presentation Chief Financial Officer Frank Donato made in the first City Council meeting of April, one page showed a line item under the heading of Department of Community Services.
Labeled “Neighborhood & Social Services,” that line item increased from $3,000 in the 2023 fiscal year to a proposed $90,300 in fiscal 2024. The increase is $87,300 or 2,910 percent.
Some critics pointed to that as an example of bloating in the $113 million spending plan that carries a 3.7-cent tax rate hike per $100 of assessed valuation. The budget was approved at Thursday’s City Council meeting.
Contacted by the Sentinel on Monday, Donato explained that budget worksheet for expenses in the presentation did contain that line item that still showed the Senior Center Operations as part of Neighborhood & Social Services.
However, throughout the rest of the budget, the Senior Center was broken out into a new and separate division. An ordinance approved in March by council following a public hearing established Senior Center Operations in the city’s Administrative Code.
That is clear on an earlier page of the presentation where there are two line items, 14.1 and 14.2, under Community Services. Both of those line items, for $146,000 (salaries and wages) and $159,300 (operations expense), respectively, are clearly labeled as “Senior Center Operations.”
The extra $87,300 that was listed under Neighborhood & Social Services is actually included in the $159,300 of operations expense.
Because there was no Senior Center expense for the city in the 2023 budget, these are new line items with no 2023 budget comparison.
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff