OCEAN CITY – In “the brief” this week, the City Council decided to let the sweet sounds of television advertising join the beeping of the Boardwalk tram, struggled to get through the passage of the first reading of the wind turbine law for the second time and said that continuing the reduced trash pick up schedule in Ocean City might be a good thing for everybody for a little while longer.
Comcast To Sell Ads On Boardwalk Tram
Back in October, when City Manager Dennis Dare brought the first round of his multi-million dollar budget cuts to the Mayor and Council, he mentioned the idea of using the DVD players that are currently installed on the Boardwalk trams to air television advertisements in addition to the currently aired “safety messages” as a way to enhance revenue through ad sales.
The council instructed Dare to look into it, and after being turned down by Direct Media, which is the company that handles the advertisements on the city buses, Dare turned to Comcast in Ocean City.
Dare said Comcast’s sales force will offer existing clients the ability to run their 30- or 50-second television ads on the tram during the summer months, and all revenue will be split evenly between Comcast and the town.
“This is a revenue source and I hope this is going to keep the residents taxes down,” said Councilman Jim Hall, “so I’d like to try it for a year and see how this works.”
Hall said that he motioned for a one-year trial run of the partnership to leave open the option of bidding out the service to another entity next season, but noted that Comcast was really the only company that could make this happen in the short term.
“It’s already March, and we want to get this up and ready for the season, and Comcast has existing customers to offer this service to and will be a good partner,” said Hall.
The 50/50 split of revenue between the town and the local cable provider will be determined after Comcast recoups production costs and Ocean City recoups administrative costs, which, according to Public Works Director Hal Adkins, “would be incredibly minute.”
As far as financial benefits, Adkins said a projected number thrown around during discussions was approximately $60,000 annually for increased revenue.
Wind Turbines First Reading
It seems like every time the council takes a step toward approving wind turbines, it gets a bit nervous, recoils and rethinks it, and Monday night’s first reading was no different.
After the first city ordinance allowing wind turbines was vetoed by Mayor Rick Meehan two weeks ago, council passed a new version of the ordinance, forcing all wind turbines to go through the “conditional use” process.
Acting City Solicitor Mark Cropper advised council that a change in the language was needed at first reading to define what a “neighboring” property was.
“After talking to [City Solicitor] Guy Ayres, we had a concern to the legal meaning of ‘neighboring’”, said Cropper. “It is our belief that the Mayor and City Council intended that section to apply to adjoining properties and because you could be deemed a neighbor and not be adjoined, we are recommending the change from ‘neighboring’ to ‘adjoining’.”
The new wind turbine ordinance did pass through first reading, but in a split 4-3 vote (with Mary Knight, Margaret Pillas and Jim Hall in opposition).
“There has been concern in the past with wind turbines offshore, which would be about the size of your thumbnail when you view them from shore,” said Knight, “but now, we have gone from worry about something the size of a thumbnail, to putting up a wind turbine 10 feet off the bay, which would be about 900-1,200 thumbnails so I can’t support this is as it’s written.”
Meehan thought that perhaps the council should convene for a work session on the matter between first and second readings of the ordinance.
“We have been trying to compromise many things up here and this issue has been very well discussed and created a lot of attention”, said Meehan, “but sometimes when you talk about it this much, you sometimes lose a bit of the meaning, so maybe we should get together and talk about this in the interest of compromise.”
Town To Extend Trash Pickup
Dare also informed the council that the decision to reduce the trash pickup schedule in Ocean City has been working so well that he thought that more savings could be accrued by extending the winter schedule through Sunday, May, 17.
Under the winter schedule, residential properties have their trash picked up once per week (formerly twice) and commercial properties receive trash pickup twice per week (formerly three times).
“You are on to something with this, said Councilman Jim Hall, “and I think it’s a really good thing. I’d like to see you monitor it and maybe look at some other neighborhoods that you could even continue this schedule further.”
The council unanimously granted Dare’s wish to continue the winter trash schedule.
“If for some reason, things change and we need to operate more days, we can do that very easily,” said Dare.