SUV CRASH: A man remains in
CHAMPS: Berlin Little League team
critical condition after his car was struck at an intersection by a police vehicle on Tuesday PAGE 8A
does it again, winning its third state title. The All-Star team will now compete in the regional tournament PAGE 39A
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Ocean City Today BUSINESS . . . . . . . . . . 31B CLASSIFIED . . . . . . . . . 37B ENTERTAINMENT . . . . . . 5B LEGALS . . . . . . . . . . . . 39B
LIFESTYLE . . . . . . . . . . . 1B OPINION . . . . . . . . . . . 43A OUT&ABOUT . . . . . . . . . 17B SPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . 39A
TOURNAMENT AND PARTY, IT’S THE WHITE MARLIN OPEN … PAGE 1B
AUGUST 2, 2013
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Petition on parking could halt metering Preliminary count reveals drive has 50 percent more signatures than required ZACK HOOPES ■ Staff Writer
BUSY, BUSY
OCEAN CITY TODAY/LISA CAPITELLI
For all the talk about whether crowds are bigger or smaller, the Boardwalk was packed on Sunday as Ocean City enters its prime weeks of the season.
(Aug. 2, 2013) It appears that Ocean City’s residents have spoken – or scribbled, as the case may be – against the addition of paid parking in the resort, as a petition to stay the controversial metering ordinance was submitted to City Hall this week. “We’re confident that we’re there, but we’ve told people that [the signatures] are not certified by the election board yet,” said petition drive organizer Vince Gisriel. “You always try to build in a 200 to 300 signature cushion to allow for errors,” Gisriel said. “But we’ve audited the sheets very closely ourselves before turning them over to the city.” The drive produced 1,770 signatures, according to the city’s preliminary review. Once the city’s Board of Election Supervisors verifies that the requisite number of registered voters have signed the petition, the town will be barred from enforcing the additional parking until the issue can be
put to referendum. “Legally, once they are in possession of those signatures, those meters will have to be bagged immediately and rendered ineffective until the voters say ‘yay’ or ‘nay,’” Gisriel said. The magic number of signatures is 1,226 – 40 percent of the number of voters who participated in the last municipal election, per the city’s charter. However, it will likely take some time for the town to independently verify each signature with the voter rolls. “There is no prescribed time frame,” said City Clerk Kelly Allmond. “It’ll take as long as it takes to get the ladies from the Board of Election Supervisors together and go through [the signatures].” Per the ordinance, the city has added Cale-brand electronic meters to the ocean block of 146th and 49th Streets, the stretch of 131st Street between Coastal Highway and Sinepuxent Avenue, and the west side of Philadelphia Avenue below the Route 50 Bridge. Meters would also go into the municipal lots at City Hall and the 65th Street Public Safety Building. Metering of the latter two lots has caused little disturbance, but there has been considerable public outcry about the metering of street parking, espeSee CITY on Page 4A
We know how to catch ’em, but that’s about it CLARA VAUGHN ■ Staff Writer (Aug. 2, 2013) Hundreds of anglers will arrive in Ocean City next week hoping to land a prize-winning fish in the 40th annual White Marlin Open tournament. Last year, almost 1,000 white marlin were released during the weeklong event and anglers seeking marlin, tuna, wahoo, shark and dolphin netted around $2.3 million in prize money.
But little is actually known about the lives of the tournament’s namesake fish. “For as much as we know about the fishing of these animals, the biology of these animals is pretty vague,” said John
Graves, chair of the fisheries department at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. White marlin start their lives somewhere near the Sargasso Sea. Though researchers track them, they can swim well
over 100 miles in a day, making pinpointing exact breeding grounds as yet unfeasible, Graves said. Traveling that far takes a lot of fuel, making marlin voracious eaters. “You’ve seen that hot dog eating contest on Coney Island? These fish would put those guys to shame,” Graves said. He’s pulled more than 20 market-sized squid from the stomach of a 50-pound marlin. See MARLIN on Page 3A