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March 13-19
Wildwood Indictments
The other shoe dropped in Wildwood this week. Mayor Pete Byron, former Mayor Ernie Troiano Jr. and sitting Commissioner Steve Mikulski were each indicted on four counts of official misconduct, theft, and tampering with public records.
Arrested in June for allegedly illegally accepting health benefits, the three had exhausted potential preindictment resolution of the case. All three men allegedly illegally billed benefits totals well over the $75,000 threshold for a second-degree theft. Conviction for a second-degree crime can carry a five- to 10-year prison term.
The three men were indicted by a state grand jury and will be prosecuted by a state deputy attorney general. A court order on venue sent the cases back to Cape May County for trial. The three were arraigned locally in Judge Bernard Delury Jr.’s courtroom on St. Patrick’s Day.
Troiano was offered a plea deal that included a lifetime ban on holding public office, full restitution of benefits he claimed and a three-year jail term. He refused. Byron was offered the same plea deal and also refused.
A deal offered to Mikulski, who claimed health benefits for a much shorter time period, would have allowed him to avoid any jail time, but that deal would have involved a guilty plea for a third-degree crime and was not accepted. None of the charges have yet been proven.
The criminal charges brought against the current and former Wildwood officials in June 2022 came exactly one year after a sitting councilman in Cape May, Christopher Bezaire, was arrested in June 2021. Bezaire eventually pleaded guilty to crimes of stalking, harassment and contempt of court. He resigned his governing body seat in November 2021.
Offshore Wind
This was the week when county opposition to the state and federal offshore wind initiative gained new forums. A information session on offshore wind activities, organized by Cape May County and Ocean City, attracted several hundred county residents to The Ocean City Tabernacle one night before U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd) brought a congressional field hearing to a packed house at the Wildwoods Convention Center to examine “offshore wind industrialization.”
At both events, the audiences were overwhelmingly hostile to the offshore wind initiatives of the Biden and Murphy administrations. The recent spate of whale fatalities served as a rallying issue for broad-based opposition to wind farms off the county’s coast.
Arguments against the wind farms range from their potential harm to the county’s tourism economy to the danger they allegedly pose to the environment. Critics claim that the top-down, executive office initiative is proceeding too fast and at too great a scale for effective understanding of total economic cost, the potential for environmental damage, and for a proper assessment of the ability of the initiative to deliver on proposed benefits.
School Funding
Another budget year is bringing yet another cut in state aid for half of the county’s school districts. The reductions in adjustment aid are part of a process that began in 2018 when Senate Bill 2 mandated a phased end to adjustment aid, also known as “hold harmless” aid. It was a form of state aid that augmented state assistance for school districts that otherwise would see a decline in state aid under the new funding formula enacted in 2018.
Between 2019 and the projected aid for 2024, state funding to Cape May County school districts has declined by over $21 million. The cuts in 2024 funding have hit some county districts especially hard, among them Wildwood which will see a 53% decline in state support.
This phase out of adjustment aid comes as the school districts have also hit the halfway point in the allowable period within which Covid relief funding must be obligated and spent.
A recent study by the consulting firm McKinsey states that many local school districts across the country are behind in the spending of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) allocations which must be obligated by Sept. 30, 2024.
The McKinsey study states that the principal causes of the lag in spending the relief dollars are administrative hurdles, talent and staff shortages, and insufficient planning and operational capacity.
Happenings
The Cape May County tourism economy continues to improve after the harm done by the recent pandemic.
A former state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) assistant commissioner hopes that he can ease the tensions that have built up between the state agency and the City of North Wildwood. He will have his work cut out for him given that this week we report that the DEP has denied the city’s emergency request to extend its bulkhead.
Wildwood is proposing a local tax increase as part of its 2023 budget. The increase is blamed, in part, on the state hike in premium costs for employee health care programs. Meanwhile, West Wildwood released the figures behind its proposed $0.06 increase in the local tax rate. The mayor’s budget for Ocean City also includes an increase in the tax rate of 3.7%.
A Lower Township resident is reporting more encounters with “aggressive” coyotes. The township does not see that it has many avenues of response open to it.
The six arches along Cape May’s Promenade continue under construction with the expectation that they will be completed by Memorial Day. In North Wildwood, the city has moved forward on plans to create a new gateway to the resort.
The engineering firm studying the balcony collapse in Sea Isle City has called for more investigation before balconies along parts of the tower are safe for use.
An Ocean City couple are looking to a doctor in Indiana for help with their 5-year-old son’s health issues following exposure to mold and complications from a tick bite.
In Wildwood, a woman has been charged with stabbing another woman during an argument in a city apartment. In nearby Wildwood Crest, police responded to a tip and arrested a North Wildwood man on drug and weapon charges.
In Upper Township, officials have introduced an ordinance that requires the registration of all short-term rentals.
The Cape May Point Science Center is eying a June ‘soft launch’. A year of hard work has given the center confidence that the doors can open at what is also the start of the summer tourist season.
Spout Off of the Week
Villas – There seems to be two kinds of patriotic Americans right now. One group loves America so much that they think that she is perfect. The other group loves America so much that they love her knowing she isn’t perfect but might one day get there.
Read more spouts at spoutoff.capemaycountyherald.com.
