City Should Concentrate On Avoiding Tax Increase
Editor:
Last week, the city manager was quoted as saying that a tax increase of 7.6% will be needed in the next year or two. He said that this projection is based on current spending levels and future expenses and revenue probabilities in the city government’s strategic plan and a five-year finance plan. I am a full-time city resident and I find it difficult to believe that we can’t find a way to live within the current tax revenue base. It seems that the idea of freezing or even cutting government expenditures to maintain or even lower the tax rate is never seriously debated or even considered.
For example, I’d like to look at promotion and marketing. Obviously, we live in the age of the Internet and social media. We have the city website, the city Facebook page, the Chamber of Commerce web site, and innumerable Ocean City related websites across the Internet. We also have the Ocean City local TV channel 4, and many related Internet Ocean City web cams.
As far as printed material for promotion and marketing purposes, we have the attractive, well stocked Convention Center Visitor Center and the Chamber of Commerce Center on Route 50 just to mention two. So I question the need and the cost to print and mail the 28-page, full color OC Newsletter & Community Calendar every year. As another example, I recently received the annual city report on water quality. I found it to be overly technical and not of much benefit. If that report is needed or helpful, it seems to me it could be printed in black and white and included in the city water bill and not mailed separately. The water report lists causes of pollution including various bacteria. It would seem to me that a report like this, should have included the existence and dangers of a flesh eating bacteria in Assawoman Bay which killed an Ocean City resident last year. The danger of entering the water with an open wound should have been highlighted. I have been visiting or living in Ocean City all my life and I haven’t met one resident or visitor who was aware of that bacteria until the unfortunate death of this citizen last year.
I am very much aware of the importance and need for marketing and communication. I am not diminishing these fields. In fact, I was heavily involved in both of these fields during my professional career. However, the Ocean City calendar and the water report are just two examples of what I think are unnecessary expenditures in the city budget. More importantly, in my opinion, they are indicative of a political culture which has no interest or inclination to ever look at lowering costs, lowering taxes and living within our means. Instead of spending all this time and effort just to calculate how big a tax increase should be, why wouldn’t our first priority be to look at ways to avoid any tax increase?
Eric Waterman
Ocean City
Response To Letters
Editor:
It seems to me that two of last week’s letters require responses, one positive, one not so much.
Mark Ferragamo’s letter about the wind turbines off Ocean City is right on the money. It is hard to understand why people would object to the tiny specks on the horizon that they would make, especially when compared to all of the benefits of clean energy. I just heard that our new president is pushing to open up oil drilling off the Atlantic coast — a potentially devastating development. The threat of that alone is enough to justify wind power.
The other letter was from Susan Coleman, who wants to save all cats. There are somewhere around 80 million cats in the US. Together they kill an estimated 1,300,000,000 wild birds every year. That’s 1.3 billion. In some areas, the bird population is down by as much as 90%, and cats are a major factor in this. It is a mistake to take stray/feral cats, spay or neuter them and return them to the slaughter. Wild birds are worth saving too.
Daniel Heinecke
Ocean City
Open Letter On Youth Suicide, Netflix Series
Editor:
(The following is an open letter to families about youth suicide and “13 Reasons Why.”)
Within days of its release, the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why rose to the top of the list of most-watched (and most-tweeted-about) Netflix series. If you are a teenager, you’re aware of the film’s extraordinary popularity among your friends and classmates. If you are a parent, you need to be aware, too.
As one of the area’s leading suicide awareness and prevention organizations, the Jesse Klump Memorial Fund is pleased that the tragedy of youth suicide is on every young person’s tongue, but disappointed about the portrayal of the suicide victim and the graphic nature of many scenes. Above all, we regret the failure of Netflix to recognize that the issues and their portrayal can be a trigger to a young person in a suicidal crisis by failing to provide crisis prevention information in every episode.
For those reasons, we join other experts in suicide prevention to advise that families watch the series together. If that is not possible, we urge adults to openly discuss the issues with the teens in their lives.
Reviews of 13 Reasons Why run the gamut from “It is powerful” from a high school teacher to “the show may be perceived as glorifying and romanticizing suicide,” from a mental health professional. On Facebook pages, and in our conversations with parents and young people, those diverse opinions are reflected. While we agree that it is vital that the community address issues like bullying, sexual assault, drinking and drug use, gender identification and preference, and the destructive potential of social media, we are wary of a scenario in which many mental health practitioners are issuing stark warnings.
Critics have pointed to the graphic and vicious depiction of rape as being gratuitous, and to the suicide scene, which many think is little more than a tutorial on one way in which a young person may make an attempt on his or her own life. The young woman whose fictional suicide is the conceit of the plot is depicted as “not a victim so much as a manipulator, enacting her own revenge on the characters,” behavior that is atypical of suicidal young people. The series is nearly devoid of practical prevention information. It does not even feature the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline number, 1-800-273-TALK, which we believe at a very minimum, should appear before and after every episode.
At its best, 13 Reasons Why opens adult eyes to the problems modern young people face, and provides a forum for discussions between adults and youth to find solutions that make kids’ lives safer, less stressful and more secure. As a catalyst to conversation it serves a useful purpose, but at its worst, 13 Reasons Why can be disturbing and harmful, and when presented to a young person already contemplating suicide, with no mature guidance, it could have tragic consequences.
Ronald W. Pilling
(The writer is the secretary/treasurer of the Jesse Klump Memorial Fund, Inc.)
Relay For Life An Event To Support
Editor:
Hope is a word we use every day. We hope for a better life, better family relationships and more peace and civility in our world. These are just three hopeful wants of many. My hope wish is a cure for cancer. On May 12 at Frontier town in West Ocean City a celebration of HOPE is going to take place, it is the Relay for Life.
Today everyone, one way or another has been affected by cancer in their lives. Cancer doesn’t discriminate. It attacks all walks of life, young, old, all genders and every ethnic group. It is a dreaded disease. I am a 14-year survivor of cancer. I want to fight this disease until a cure is found. It scares me now and scared me when I found out I had it. This made me want to fight harder.
The American Cancer Society, Relay for Life is a friendly walking celebration for the entire family. Our objective is to raise funds and make everyone aware of the ongoing fight against cancer. We celebrate with hope and prayer for the lives who have beaten cancer, ones who are fighting cancer with their caregivers and for those who have succumbed to this disease.
This event is both happy and sad. Tears and laughs are so common but so truly worthy to attend. Our theme is “Hope” and the color of “Hope” is purple. We want to paint the world purple so we can beat this dreaded disease. We are trying to raise funds for this event. Good people of this community, please help us. We need contributions to the American Cancer Society.
A quote by the wonderful Helen Keller goes as follows, “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without HOPE and confidence”.
Gold Bless and thanks to all.
Nick Bartolomeo
Selbyville, Del.
