OC Today WWW.OCEANCITYTODAY.NET
APRIL 28, 2017
SERVING NORTHERN WORCESTER COUNTY
LIFESTYLE
BEST OF THE BEST IN OC Ward World Championship Wildfowl Carving Competition and Art Festival this wknd. – Page 41
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IAFF’s arbitration petition succeeds OC election board clears way for issue to go to referendum
By Katie Tabeling Staff Writer (April 28, 2017) Silence fell in the council chambers Tuesday, as Mayor Rick Meehan and the City Council listened to Jamie Albright of the Board of Elections announce that the local firefighter/paramedic union’s petition had enough signatures to take the union’s quest for binding interest arbitration to referendum. Required by Maryland law to obtain 20 percent of Ocean City’s registered voters’ signatures to force a referendum, the petition
exceeded that mark by 201 voters. “There were 1,656 signatures, and 242 were invalid,” Albright read from a letter written by Board of Elections Chairwoman Mary Adeline Bradford. “The board found the other 1,414 signatures were valid.” The petition was submitted to the city clerk’s office on March 2, and was remanded to the Board of Elections for verification. According to Albright, the resort has 6,067 registered voters. The council accepted the results of the petition without comment. The Chapter 4269 of the International Association of See COUNCIL Page 6
Tank to get night light, tourism pays LISA CAPITELLI/OCEAN CITY TODAY
LEAP OF FAITH Melanie Lewis and her dog, Remington, participate in a Delmarva DockDogs event last Saturday during the third annual Pooch Palooza Dog Festival, presented by Delmarva Unleashed, at Frontier Town in Berlin.
Sunny outlook for solar project County approves plan for 52,000 panels on tract near Route 50
By Brian Gilliland Associate Editor (April 28, 2017) After a public hearing at the beginning of the month, and after approving the planning commission’s findings of fact on the project, the Worcester County Commissioners on
Tuesday approved the plan for Gateway Solar’s 426-acre project near the Route 50 and Route 90 split to the west of Ocean City. Construction is set to begin on the project next year, and will make use of about 52,000 solar panels on almost 130 of the 426 acres for a utility-scale project generating 15.6 megawatts of electricity. Gateway Solar developed
sites generating about 700 megawatts of energy in 10 states, mostly west of the Rocky Mountains. The Worcester proposal is neither the largest nor the smallest of the company’s existing farms. Tom Anderson, the development director for the project and company representative during the proposal review before the See DELMARVA Page 7
Where to budget cost was larger discussion
By Katie Tabeling Staff Writer (April 28, 2017) The one thing the Ocean City Council could agree on easily Tuesday was that the “beach ball” water tower on First Street should be lighted up at night. What wasn’t so easily decided was whether the tourism department or the water fund should cover the $4,100 cost of the light fixture and the annual $550 electric bill. After Ocean City built a million-gallon water tower with a beach ball-in-thewater paint job, city officials told Public Works Director
Hal Adkins they wanted to capitalize on the image and asked him to look into having it lit. “The first thought was to create the illusion of the ball floating by focusing the light on the ball and not the stem,” Adkins told the council at Tuesday’s work session. Original plans involved a sixlight configuration, but Adkins scrapped this plan after See TOWER Page 3