Thoughts From The Publisher’s Desk

For good reason, the Route 50 repaving project has a lot of local motorists agitated. It’s the timing that has many scratching their heads, and it’s understandable to question why this project has to be completed in the summer months.

The resurfacing project covers about five miles, from Herring Creek to Berlin’s Main Street. There actually has not been any new paving added yet with crews last week repairing deteriorating concrete in rectangular sections. The end result this week amounted essentially to mild speed bumps on the highway.

All of those will reportedly go away soon when the paving work begins. The only good news with this headache is starting soon the crews will begin working 10-hour night shifts, from 7 p.m.-5 a.m. That should at least cut down on the 30-minute trips from West Ocean City to Berlin that were the norm last week.

The Ocean City Air Show returns for its seventh installment this weekend. Fortunately, most weather forecasts look pleasant for the weekend after a gray and wet week here on the lower shore.

This will be the first time in recent history that the Air Show will be essentially the sole major special event in Ocean City on a particular weekend. It has in the past coincided with the OC Car and Truck Show, the youth lacrosse tournaments and the beach soccer event, among others.

This year Art’s Alive and the Wine in the Park events are being held at the same time as the Air Show, but they are at Northside Park and are more of a value-added event for people already in Ocean City than an affair that actually draws people by themselves.

It’s a wise move from a planning perspective to bump the Air Show back to the second weekend in June, particularly in light of how busy Ocean City was last weekend with other events.

Staff Writer Joanne Shriner’s story about a local woman finding her stolen bikes on her own shines a light on what has to be one of the most common crimes in Ocean City.

It happens so frequently that police when notified are blunt with the victims. The chances of it ever being recovered are unlikely, officers warn those who contact them. That response usually results in the victims assuming police will not make any efforts to look for their bikes.

For Heather Lowe, an observant personality teamed with her outrage over being victimized helped her crack the case of her stolen bicycles. While stopped at a traffic light, she saw a foreign worker riding her bike, which was stolen from her north Ocean City condominium building. She followed the woman and contacted police. The woman told her and police that she bought the bike for $30 from a man at her apartment building. Through video surveillance at the apartment building, the man was identified and turned over to police. He reportedly told the police he sold the bikes for a man in West Ocean City on a commission basis.

Therefore, the belief is a local man is stealing the bikes and then immediately flipping them to desperate individuals in need of transportation for the season. The police are investigating the case and here’s to hoping they find this lowlife ripping people off.

In other news, there are some things that happen in the news business that cause bewilderment. One of those instances was this week when a wanted man contacted this paper after seeing his photo on the newspaper’s Facebook page linked to a press release about how he evaded police, was wanted and was the subject of a major land and aerial search.

While still on the loose, the wanted man wrote to the paper’s Facebook page administrator, “Hey The Dispatch, I just noticed that I’m in this photo, and I don’t want others to see it. Would you please take it down? Thanks.”

The man was later apprehended. There is no way to make this stuff up.