City Council, staff set to rank capital improvement projects

By Mallory Panuska Staff Writer

(Feb. 3, 2023) Over the next week, Ocean City Council members and department heads will evaluate the details of 45 high-dollar projects to decide which ones are most worthy of funding in the fiscal 2024 capital improvement plan.

At a work session Tuesday, council members got their first look at the projects in the hopper. They ranged from proposed upgrades to Baltimore Avenue to a newly designed downtown multiuse facility.

City officials have until Feb. 7 to definitively rank each project one through five, with those ranked ones the most critical and fives the least.

“We are asking the ... council and department heads, as key deliverables, to rank the projects by priority,” City Engineer Paul Mauser explained during the meeting.

From there, staff will chime in with projects that need to be completed for safety purposes — unofficially called one-plus rankings — and formulate a definitive list to present to council for approval.

City Manager Terry McGean said the resort’s capital improvement plan is fully updated every two years for projects looking out over a five-year span, and revisited for upgrades and changes in the years in between. This budget year is a full upgrade, with cash to be allocated through debt service, grants and other sources in fiscal 2024 beginning July 1.

The projects listed are valued at more than $50,000 each, have life spans of 20 years or more — with the exception of some tech-related entries — and result in creation or revitalization of an asset. Examples include construction of new town facilities; remodeling or expansion of existing facilities; buying, improving or developing land; operating equipment or machinery for new or expanded facilities and more.

While many of the projects presented Tuesday were not new — such as the Baltimore Avenue utility burying plans, the floundering county sports complex, street paving, canal dredging and golf course upgrades — others were new.

Most notably, McGean and Ocean City Development Corporation representatives presented details of an estimated $4.2 million project on Somerset Street.

“If you’ll recall, those of you who were on the council when we did the update to the CIP last year, there were two projects on there,” McGean said. “One was this mixed-use facility and the other was a new police substation. We have combined those two projects.”

Plans for the three-story building now call for a smaller bicycle storage area on the first floor combined with a police substation to include a bus shelter, ground floor lobby and public restrooms, with seasonal employee housing upstairs. The original building called for 25 beds, but the new design reduces the number to 16.

“We still feel that is adequate and we feel the loss of the nine beds has more than made up for the ability to combine the two projects into one,” McGean said.

And while the cost has shot up to $4.2 million from the original $2.5 to $2.6 million estimates reported last year, McGean said the new number is not a product of the changes, but “the reality of the market.”

Glenn Irwin, the executive director of OCDC, said the organization plans to cover more than half of the price through inlet parking lot funds and a state grant, with the remainder to come from a bond issue. McGean said there is also a possi- elcome alk-Ins W Wa W

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