OCEAN CITY — All is relatively calm on the Ocean City street performer front after the Mayor and Council this week agreed to accept task force recommendations tweaking the controversial busker ordinance.
Throughout a process that was chippy at certain times and downright nasty at others, the Boardwalk Task Force, appointed by the Mayor and Council two years ago, began a tedious review last fall of the town’s street performer ordinance adopted in mid-summer last year. Among other issues, an unattended side effect of the new ordinance had street performers camping out in front of City Hall each week to sign up for one of the coveted approved spaces on the Boardwalk in a first-come, first-served basis.
Many street performers railed against the new registration process and a handful even sued the city over the cumbersome process along with other issues in a case that is still plodding along in federal court. However, the task force last fall began systematically tackling the many issues with the new ordinance adopted last summer including the sign-up process, and through working with the buskers came up with an list of recommendations for the Mayor and Council on how best to amend the new law.
Task Force Chairman Greg Shockley on Monday presented those recommendations to the Mayor and Council, including a proposed change to a lottery system whereby the performers would sign up a week in advance in two separate lotteries. One lottery would allocate the approved spaces on the Boardwalk from Monday to Thursday, while the second would allocate the spots from Thursday to Sunday. The intent is to level the playing field and provide all of the street performers with an opportunity to land the coveted spots on the Boardwalk from 9th Street south. In addition, the larger 10-foot by 10-foot spaces would be offered in the lottery first to those performers who need the bigger space, followed by a lottery for the smaller 5-foot by 5-foot spaces. Any of the 10 larger spaces not taken during the initial lottery would be folded back into the second lottery for the 5-foot by 5-foot spaces. Different performers need more space depending on the types of acts, and naturally, there are some locations that are better than others in terms of pedestrian traffic flow. The proposed changes are an attempt to regulate the spaces with a system amicable to the performers and the Boardwalk business owners and visitors, and depending on whom one talks to, it achieved the desired results to a large degree.
While the task force recommended several changes to the existing ordinance in terms of the time of year the ordinance is in place and the daily hours of operation, for example, the most significant change is the move from the contentious registration process in place last year to a more amicable lottery system.
“It levels the playing field,” Shockley told the Mayor and Council. “This is a consistent way of putting performers in spaces on the Boardwalk. It’s very clear and concise with little room for interpretation. It lays out the ground rules from day one.”
Even before Shockley could present the task force recommendations, some of those on the front lines of the opposition to the existing ordinance, including Tony Christ, who has led the busker suit against the city in federal court from the beginning, had softened their stance on the proposed changes somewhat. Christ spoke on the proposed changes during the public comment period on Tuesday before the street performer ordinance appeared later on the agenda.
“On the street performers, the good news is a process has been created whereby the performers won’t have to sleep outside City Hall anymore,” he said. “Also created is a system by which the street performers can get positions on the Boardwalk. Both of those are encouraging.”
Despite the apparent détente, Christ could not resist a little dig at the town’s elected officials for their expenditures on changing the ordinance again including the legal fees, ironically to which he has contributed to a large degree.
“However, it amazes me the ego of the town moving forward and spending what I determined to be around $300,000 on this, most of which is legal, on what? On the appearance of fairness,” he said.
Bill Campion, a street performer who is a plaintiff in the federal suit against the town on the street performer issue, had kinder things to say about the proposed tweaks to the busker ordinance.
“I want to congratulate the council on making some improvements,” he said. “They are small improvements, but they are steps in the right direction and that’s good. More performers will be working and not sitting around waiting for a spot.”
Campion said the changes were a long time coming and resulted in getting the parties together at the table.
“If we had some of these concessions from the beginning, we wouldn’t be where we are today,” he said. “I just wish we would have listened to each other and talked and it would have been a lot better off.”
Again, chief among the task force recommendations is a reworking of the existing registration system which created so much of the controversy last year. There were several other issues to resolve, each with varying levels of importance, but those chips began to fall into place once the larger issue was decided.
“The biggest change is going from lining up to pick a space once a week to the lottery system,” said Shockley. “Once we opened the dialogue, most of the minor issues were resolved without difficulties.”
Like the performers themselves, the council generally embraced to proposed lottery system.
“I think the lottery is better than the first-come, first-served system,” said Councilman Wayne Hartman. “This is definitely a step in the right direction.”
However, there were still some lesser issues to debate. City Solicitor Guy Ayres said preliminary discussions included allowing an agent to represent the performers that can’t be present at the lotteries.
“One issue that was discussed was the idea of an agent signing up performers for the lottery,” he said. “If you have three friends from the D.C. area planning a two-week trip to Ocean City, they would have to come a week in advance to sign up,” he said.
Shockley said the task force supported an agent system for the performers on a limited basis, but cautioned about going too far with it.
“My only concern is limiting an agency so they can’t be the agent for the whole Boardwalk,” he said. “It can ease the process for those who can’t come every week, but we wouldn’t want to see five or six guys controlling the whole process.”
Another issue to resolve was the hours of the day when the performers could operate. Under the current ordinance, buskers are allowed to perform from 10 a.m., or roughly the time when bikes and pets are no longer allowed on the Boardwalk, until 1 a.m. Some street performers pushed for an earlier start time at 9 a.m. and a later closing time at 2 a.m., after the Boardwalk bars close, but the task force recommended keeping the times the same and the council agreed, although there was some debate on the issue.
Another issue to resolve was the length of the season for the ordinance. The task force recommended having the ordinance in place from May 1 to Sept. 30, or after Sunfest. Some on the council, including Councilman Dennis Dare, pushed for a Memorial Day to Labor Day timeframe for enforcement.
“Let’s monitor it for a year and fix any problems to make it better,” he said. “That’s where we’re heading with this. I think Memorial Day to Labor Day is a good plan and maybe the rules can be relaxed a little in May and September when there are fewer performers seeking the spots.”
Shockley said it was at the council’s discretion to set the seasonal parameters for the ordinance.
“These are the recommendations of the task force,” he said. “You can do whatever you like. If you want to change the dates, that’s fine.”
Councilman Tony DeLuca suggested the task force had spent a lot of time on the issues and urged his colleagues to accept them.
“We’re not the Boardwalk task force,” he said. “We put them in place to make recommendations and I think it’s time to accept their recommendations and stop tweaking it further.”
After considerable debate, a compromise was reached, setting the ordinance enforcement schedule from May 1 to Sept. 15. With that said, the council voted 4-1 to accept the task force recommendations with the time frame change with Dare opposed, presumably over the Memorial Day to Labor Day issue. The 4-1 vote moves the task force recommendations to change the ordinance to first-reader.
For the time being, all of the stakeholders including the performers and the town appear pleased with the tweaks although it remains to be seen how long the armistice will last. Inevitably, there will continue to be problems with the busker ordinance, but it appears there is at least a mechanism in place to address them.
“Obviously, the two sides will never agree entirely,” said Shockley. “I think both sides now know there can be a discussion about it and you guys are willing to work to make it better for everybody.”
Council President Lloyd Martin said the ordinance is a living document and more changes would likely be needed.
“We are listening,” he said. “We’re trying to make it better. I don’t think we’ll ever make it perfect, but we have some good ideas here and I believe it is a work in progress.”
