Ocean City’s effort to address last summer’s unsightly trash issue on the beach is obvious. Surely, if you have been to the beach, you know what I mean. The amount of trash cans on the beach has at least doubled and I think it will make a difference. There was no issue last weekend from what I could see, but the new program will be tested this weekend with the Air Show bringing the biggest crowds of the season to the beach.
Rather than the typical one row of cans lined up north and south on the beach, there are now several rows. On my favorite beach, there are two rows, but further south there have been three or four various setups.
It’s good to see an issue of the past getting addressed by the city because there’s nothing quite like seeing piles of trash on the beach as a result of the trash cans being overwhelmed. That might still happen from time to time, but a change was made and it’s definitely noticeable. That’s a good thing.
With the increased population of Uber drivers in Ocean City, the local taxi industry is basically back to the Wild West that it once was before it was regulated.
It’s a mess and will continue to be all summer most likely, despite some new regulations passed in Maryland, resulting in the Public Service Commission’s involvement in Transportation Network Companies, such as Uber. It’s a disturbing situation and the local taxi companies have every right to be upset. They are getting a raw deal. They are regulated and have to pay to do business in Ocean City. Additionally, they have to abide by numerous regulations imposed by the city that Uber drivers do not.
Although there are some new rules, Uber drivers can essentially come to Ocean City, do business so long as they fly under the radar, make a lot of money and not report any of it.
Ralph DeAngelus, owner of a large fleet of cabs through his two companies, Taxi Taxi and Shuttle Shuttle, summarized it well this week.
“In the month of July alone last year, we picked up 6,000 fares and we have only 28 medallions,” said DeAngelus. “The problem is that the law doesn’t require Uber to share their information with anyone so the city or any of us will never know what they are actually bringing in. It’s not a fair playing field based on how the law is written.”
To make matters worse, the city capped the number of taxi cabs allowed in Ocean City at 160 several years back. That’s the number of medallions they allowed to be sold because they thought it met the demand. Just recently, the PSC reportedly swiftly approved 200 new Uber driver applications looking to operate in Ocean City this summer.
Yes, it’s a mess and it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.
I received a letter this week that couldn’t be published as a letter to the editor because the writer wanted to remain anonymous. Instead, I will share it here. The writer wanted to share a positive experience she had with the Ocean City Police Department after reading negative comments posted on the department’s Facebook page as well as this paper’s social media accounts.
“Well, I have an amazing story involving the OCPD and PFC Officer Chris Snyder — we arrived for week’s vacation June 1, 2016 and were unpacking the car at 14th Street and the Boardwalk right next to our hotel, Beach Plaza.
A group of teenagers were loitering on the Boardwalk watching us. I didn’t think anything of it until one of them ran by and lifted my purse from the handle of my mother’s wheelchair. We were targeted. I yelled for help. My grown son and another guy about his age (30) (his wife’s name was Dana by the way – I wish I knew how to contact them to thank them again and tell them what happened). Anyway they took off after the thief like Olympic runners. They ran after him for 10-plus minutes until they lost him. Police Officer Snyder arrived, my son did something on the officer’s computer to get a fix on my bag/phone and we drove off in search of bag. We were walking around and around the area beeping on the officer’s tablet, then the officer spotted the bag stuffed in the dirt under a stairway. We would never have found it without Officer Snyder. He did a forensic on the area, taking photos, fingerprints, etc.
When he opened the bag, all the cash and everything was still there. We could not believe it. Turns out, I recovered everything, credit cards, license, keys, everything. We think because my son and the Good Samaritan had been so close to catching up to the thief, he had to hide the bag until he could come back later and get the contents. Except we got there first. I would have loved to see his face when he returned in the middle of the night and found the bag was gone.
Thanks to the persistence of Office Chris Snyder in searching, our vacation was not ruined. It was really like a miracle. Turns out other officers were involved too and one on a bicycle cornered someone who matched the description of the thief, but he was able to get away. At the suggestion of Officer Snyder, we had our fingerprints taken at “HQ” to ‘rule out’ our prints on the evidence, which we did. So in our opinion the OCPD, PFC Chris Snyder, and the other officers involved are pretty darn great.”
