Defense counsel Frank Corrado, who represents the taxpayers, said the city just wants to keep the tax-revenue geyser flowing. The city is spending $52 million this year — 25 percent more money than five years ago.

The city's biggest expenses are for salaries and wages with its eight unions.

“The city seems to take the position that it is entitled to enter into these (contractual) agreements. There's a certain arrogance in that. Don't bother us with participatory democracy. We're too busy spending your money,” Corrado said.

A group of residents collected enough signatures to put their idea — the Taxpayer Protection Ordinance, or TP — on the ballot for a public vote. Under their proposal, city spending would be tied to the Social Security Administration's Cost of Living Adjustment, which was 4.1 percent for 2006.

If the City Council wanted to spend more than that in a given year, the city would have to ask the public through a referendum.

Visalli took issue with wording of the ordinance for being ambiguous when it came to existing debt and multi-year contracts.

“People don't know that. People might think next year we don't have to worry about a 20 percent increase,” Visalli said.

Corrado suggested that could be clarified in an explanatory statement that accompanies all public questions.

Corcoran said the ordinance as written is too vague. Corcoran said residents already have the ability to challenge bond ordinances through initiative and referendum. In Ocean City, voters struck down an ordinance to buy the former Fourth Street lifesaving station.

“That's the correct way to do it,” Corcoran said.

Better yet, voters can elect new representatives, he said.

Corrado noted that the City Council might never have to go to the public for a referendum on the budget if it decides to hold the budget within the annual cost of living increase.

“Mr. Corcoran has outlined a parade of horribles that will ensue if the TPO is approved,” he said. “It is an illusory claim.”

Visalli said he would issue his opinion within 10 days.

The defendants and Councilman Roy Wagner watched the lawyers from the gallery.

“I don't think the world will end if we put this on the ballot,” Somerville said after the court session. “This is the leading issue in New Jersey, reducing costs. The city acts like, ‘What are you talking about reduced costs?'”

To e-mail Michael Miller at The Press: MMiller@pressofac.com

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Sands of Time

Labor Day's still weeks away. Savor summer while it's still here
August 1, 2006
by Daniel McQuade - PhiladelphiaWeekly.com

When you hit the circle, you know you’re almost at Ocean City.
The circle is MacArthur Circle in Somers Point, N.J., home to a couple cheap motels and the Wal-Mart-sized Circle Liquors. Ocean City is dry, so there are plenty of liquor stores just over the bridge. They’re all packed just before closing.

Originally known as Peck’s Beach, Ocean City was founded by four Methodist ministers in 1879, who built a Christian retreat on the island. It’s a town rooted in simple, restrictive Christian tradition.

Ocean City businesses couldn’t open on Sundays until the ’80s. Men used to have to swim with their shirts on. Games of chance are still banned on the beach—which requires tags.

Ocean City’s reliance on tradition has made it the most family-friendly resort in South Jersey, a place that combines the boardwalk of Wildwood with the upscale beach houses of Avalon. Last year the Travel Channel named it the best family beach in the country.

The crowd in Ocean City is young, wholesome and largely Philadelphian. The shirts for sale on the boardwalk bear the names of familiar high schools: North Penn, Council Rock, Neshaminy and the Prep.

Jersey shore resorts have a familiar sameness to them that makes them feel like variations on the same repeated themes: the nicer one, the family one, the trashy one, the one for twentysomethings.

But Ocean City makes you feel like you’re 5 years old, like you should be excited about seeing a guy dressed up in a Mr. Peanut costume or about riding in the bumper boats.

You pass bronzed fathers carrying their daughters past the arcade, sunburned 16-year-olds trying to make sure their parents aren’t embarrassing them, families walking back from the beach, all of them struggling to hold towels and plastic buckets.

You see pairs of teens walking by, wearing “God Needed a Driver” Dale Earnhardt shirts. You see 15-year-olds running in the center lane of the boardwalk—reserved for runners during the day—wearing shirts comparing “terrorists” to “abortionists.”

All this, for some reason, makes you smile and shake your head. And you remember your own times at the shore as a kid, digging holes in the wet sand until you hit the water, getting into arguments over Frisbee games, spending all your dimes playing skee-ball, making out under the boardwalk.

Every trip down the shore is a mix of old memories and new ones, as you miss the people you spent other trips down the shore with, while figuring out how to make this time just as exciting as the other ones.

But the best times down the shore are the ones you don’t overanalyze, the ones when your whole mind and body are consumed with the task at hand—playing on the beach, swimming in the ocean, bullshitting with your friends in a pizza parlor, nervously waiting in line for a roller coaster, trying to convince a girl to go home with you.

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