In-Car Cameras Approved
The City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to allow the Ocean City Police Department (OCPD) to use $47,746 in grant money to fund a pilot program that would see the installation of five Panasonic cameras in five police cruisers.
The process apparently began in October of 2007, as a group of OCPD officials reviewed seven different manufactures of the cameras, before deciding that the Panasonic brand was the best for the job.
Once Homeland Security grant money became available in the sum of $65,000, the department found that Pelican Mobile Computers Company would be the installer of the cameras.
Officials told the council that five cameras would be installed then monitored over the course of the year to see if additional cameras should and could be installed.
Scarce Parking Spots
Residents of the Isle of Wight mobile park units on 25th street have apparently been scared to leave their homes on busy weekends in Ocean City because they were afraid of losing their parking spots.
Donna McCauley, who is one of the residents of the mobile park who doesn’t have an allotted parking space due to where her home sits on 25th Street, came before the council to plea for help in amending the street’s lack of parking.
“It’s really becoming a hardship for us, and we hope to get some sort of a parking permit or even doing a curb cut so that people could park on their own properties,” said McCauley. “Right now, on busy weekends, we feel like we are in bondage and can’t leave our houses because we are afraid we’ll lose our parking spots.”
The council voted to instruct City Engineer Terry McGean to provide “curb-cuts” to residents who desire a parking space on their lot, and will end up switching the “head-in” parking spaces on the street to the other side of 25th Street to make room for the curb-cuts.
Adding to the parking woes for Isle of Wight residents on 25th Street was the fact that they had to compete with not only the summer tourists, but also Embers Restaurant employees.
“This will be much better than what it was before, and I hope this solves what has been a terrible problem for many of us on 25th Street,” she said.