Teachers worry raises not enough

Continued from Page 55 pay, bringing the total to longevity pay to $1,600, and a one-time bonus of $2,250 for the 2023-2024 school year.

Agreements with the educational support personnel association state that school personnel will receive a 1.64 percent cost-of-living adjustment, the same longevity raise and total as teachers and a one-time $1,000 bonus for the 2023-2024 school year.

Contractual changes with school bus contractors raise the hourly wage by 50 cents, bringing the total wage to $25.50. Per vehicle allotment also in- creased from $20,920 to $22,385, and bus contractors will receive a retention bonus of $1,000.

Before the agreements were signed, the board recognized members of the public who wished to speak.

Megan Seyler, a teacher at Stephen Decatur High School, told the board that she believed the four percent cost-of -living adjustment, which the teachers association originally asked for, was already too low.

“In the long term, every year we get slighted on COLA (cost-of-living adjustment) as a ding to my retirement. In the short term it's a battle between low COLAs and high inflation,” Seyler said. “It's deciding between a full grocery load of food or filling up my gas.”

Mary Malone-Hathaway, also a Stephen Decatur teacher, said she worries that recent budget cuts might affect her daughter’s learning experience as she enters kindergarten.

“I’m nervous what the next 12 years look like for her. Not only for myself and the bottom line, but what that means for opportunities for her moving forward,” Malone-Hathaway said. “Whether it’s after-school programs for enrichment, or god forbid, she needs some remediation or stayafter with a teacher, those opportunities may not be there for her.”

Blessing Of The Ocean

Saturday Crafting

Brittany Lescalleet, of Westminster, visited the Ocean City Center for the Arts on Saturday, Aug. 5, to make a piece of art to take home. Free crafts for kids are available from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Saturday in August at the Arts Center at 502 94th St.

Painting Presentation

Kiwanis Speaker

Offshore wind, marine-life deaths

Editor,

Do you remember the line from “The Wizard of Oz” when Dorothy and her companions are on their way to Oz and are afraid of being attacked? The line was “Lions and tigers and bears - oh my! Lions and tigers and bears - oh my!”

Well, I have revised that to “Murphy and Carney and Moore - oh my!” referring to the three Democrat governors of New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland who are absolutely determined to go full steam ahead on offshore wind, no matter what evidence of harm to wildlife and commercial fishing and the economy is presented.

I read Doug Miller’s letter to the editor of Aug. 11 with interest, also.

I’m not entirely sure from whence his information comes, but I would like to dispute a couple of his points. First, I don’t understand equating people who oppose industrial size wind turbines a few miles offshore with “culture wars” in Florida.

Regarding Mr. Miller’s statement that concern about whale deaths is nonsense, I beg to differ.

The concern is well-founded and what we are asking for is a moratorium on construction until the issue can be studied completely - including necropsies on the dead creatures that includes what damage there may be to their ears due to the impact of the loud sonar necessary to the building process.

Over 60 whales have washed ashore along New England, New York and New Jersey since December, 2022, where surveying for the turbines has been underway for a while. Has that ever happened before? I don’t recall anywhere near this number of whale deaths at any time in the 45 years I have lived near the Atlantic coast.

Mr. Miller also contends that the Europeans are not having any “notable bird and whale die-offs” after years of offshore turbines. This is simply not true; many European countries are having significant difficulties, inclusive of marine traffic incidents, marine life deaths and population decimation.

Finally, don’t forget that just recently the IPCC warned that the green lobby needs to cool down on the alarmist global warming claims.

A good person to listen to on the whole global warming agenda is

Bjorn Lomborg - an environmentalist who believes wholeheartedly in manmade climate change but has common sense ideas for how (and even whether) to deal with it that won’t destroy lives (both human and animal).

So, do I sound like a culture warrior?

Carol Frazier Ocean Pines

Sports complex spending problems Editor,

On a list titled “The Visit Experience” prepared for the Tourism Commission by Baseline Perceptions Research on Oct. 14, 2021, the overwhelming top three reasons given by visitors to the beach were: the beach (87 percent), the Boardwalk (74 percent) and shopping (70 percent).

Next amusements and mini-golf drops to 47 percent and the list continues down to 7 percent.

The mayor has pulled up all of his connections in a last-ditch effort to promote one final grandiose scheme with a sports complex study group.

It’s interesting that an unbiased consideration on spending tax dollars will be considered by mostly politicians and workers under them in the local government bureaucracy. In addition, some of the wealthiest men on the Eastern Shore have been appointed to this committee.

With all the hundreds of millions of dollars these individuals are worth one should wonder, if a “sports complex” is such a money-maker, why don’t these multimillionaires pay for it? Why should this group determine how to spend our tax dollars or someone else’s tax dollars in the State of Maryland?

Let’s take a look at the numbers in the Ocean City Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) and then have a quick summary of the three studies on the “sports complex” dating back to 2017, and one additional study from Saint Mary’s County.

The CIP calls for spending on the “sports complex” $8.1 million in Fiscal Year 2024, $91.2 million in Fiscal Year 2025, for some reason it skips Fiscal Year 2026, and for $67.6 million to spend in Fiscal Year 2027.

The total is $166.9 million, of which $127.04 million will come from state grants. It leaves $39.86 million to be funded, I guess, by bond in Ocean City.

This is the way it is written in the Ocean City capital plan today. It could change many times in the future. The grandiose largely crowned (not elected) clever politicians in Ocean City by circumventing the will of the county taxpayers will ultimately have to seek Ocean City taxpayer approval for a near $40 million dollar bond.

Now on the studies.

The county spent $75,000 on a study in 2017, and among the com-

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