RESTAURANT WEEK:
Your guide to the 22nd edition of Ocean City’s annual spring festival PAGE 49
Twenty-two Ocean City eateries are offering $10, $20, $30 and $40 dishes during two-week promotion PAGE 43
INSIDE THIS ISSUE: BUSINESS . . . . . . . . . 43 CLASSIFIED . . . . . . . . 85 ENTERTAINMENT . . . . 53 LEGALS . . . . . . . . . . . 70
LIFESTYLE . . . . . . . . . 49 OPINION . . . . . . . . . . 20 OUT&ABOUT . . . . . . . . 59 SPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . 38
SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES MAY WORK ‘ON THE CLOCK’ AT SEACRETS…PAGE 28
Ocean City Today WWW.OCEANCITYTODAY.NET
MAY 4, 2012
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Scooter law hits major skid when PZ learns of some surprising effects ZACK HOOPES ■ Staff Writer
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OCEAN CITY TODAY/ZACK HOOPES
Competitors show their skills during the Delmarva DockDogs Big Air compeition, held in conjunction with the 42nd annual Ward World Championship Wildfowl Carving Competition and Art Festival last weekend at the Ocean City convention center. The Big Air contest tested the dogs’ jump length, but the event also included vertical leap and speed retrieval competitions held over three days.
COUNCIL SELECTS CITY MANAGER Choice is made by 4-3 vote, negotiations will proceed with candidate Hall phoned ZACK HOOPES ■ Staff Writer (May 4, 2012) The furor surrounding Councilman Joe Hall’s phone call to a candidate for city manager has seemingly ended as quickly as it began, with an ethics inquiry against him having been withdrawn and the hiring of a new city manager moving forward.
Late last week, it was leaked that an ethics inquiry would be held Monday afternoon at the request of Joe Groves, a member of the group Citizens for Ocean City who had voiced his displeasure at Hall’s actions. “I don’t know how that got out,” said City Clerk Kelly Allmond, who also serves as the administrator of the town’s Ethics Committee. Allmond
said it was her understanding that ethics hearings were to be made public knowledge Joe Groves only after a formal decision had been reached by the committee in order to protect those under investigation. However, the hearing ended up with Groves withdrawing his complaint for reasons that those involved
have agreed not to disclose. “I came to an agreement with everyone in that room that my statement would be that I withdrew my inquiry,” said Groves. “After a 90-minute exchange of information, Mr. Groves agreed to withdraw from the process,” said Hall. “I would say that all of us — the two of us [Hall and myself] and the three attorneys involved — came to a decision that we could all agree on,” said Groves. See COUNCIL’S on Page 16
(May 4, 2012) An otherwise predictable meeting of Ocean City’s Planning and Zoning Commission Tuesday night ended with the revelation, surprising to many of the commissioners, that proposed city ordinances could potentially shut down three quarters of the island’s scooter rental establishments, including some businesses that had helped to develop the ordinance recommendations in the first place. At the close of Tuesday’s commission meeting, Zoning Administrator R. Blaine Smith noted that City Council had requested the commissioners’ presence at Monday’s public hearing on the scooter-related ordinances currently moving through council. But in a bizarre twist, Smith also said that his analysis showed 15 of the 20 scooter rental businesses in the city would not be compliant with the new stipulations set forth in the ordinances — including some of the businesses that had helped to develop the proposed regulations. “I’d hate to put somebody out of business because of something we did up here,” said Commissioner Chris Shanahan. “We need to see what kind of options for flexibility there are,” said Commission Chairwoman Pam Buckley, “I can see where it might need to be tweaked.” The Planning and Zoning Commission, with the help of several local scooter rental businesses, had conducted a study earlier this year regarding scooter accidents and best practices amongst scooter rental shops. It submitted its recommendations to City Council in March, which resulted in two proposed ordinances that would use zoning and licensing requirements to control the proliferation of scooter rentals on the island. One ordinance makes scooter rentals a “conditional use” zoning, meaning that businesses would have to appeal the city — via the Planning and Zoning Commission, with City Council’s final approval See PROPOSED on Page 11