Council Members Call For New Organizers For Debate, Forum: Report

OCEAN CITY, NJ — Ocean City Council members were reportedly critical of the way Fairness in Taxes (FIT) handled a candidates forum on April 24, and called for a new group to take over sponsoring those events in the future.

FIT sponsored a candidates forum at the library on April 24 that was advertised to include Council President Peter Madden, Councilman Keith Hartzell and Councilwoman Karen Bergman, who were all running for re-election unopposed.

At Thursday night’s council meeting at City Hall, Madden and Bergman said they never received invitations to the forum, ocnjdaily.com reports. Hartzell told the group ahead of time he had an out-of-state commitment for work, and was critical of the way FIT portrayed him as skipping the forum because he had “better things to do.” FIT President Jim Tweed said he sent out invitations to each candidate on March 16, but Hartzell said Tweed didn’t do enough to contact the candidates before advertising the forum.

There was a 33 percent turnout for Tuesday night’s non-partisan elections, and each council candidate received over 2,300 votes. There were also a total of 133 write-in ballots cast. By contrast there were a total of 29 write-in ballots cast in all four uncontested ward council elections in 2016. In 2014, there were 25 write-in votes in the contested mayor and three contested council races.

Suzanne Hornick, who received 38 of those write-in votes, said Ocean City residents aren’t happy with what they perceive as a lack of transparency and communication from local government.

She cited the candidates forum and Mayor Jay Gillian’s decision not to participate in the only scheduled mayor's debate as part of that anger. Tweed told ocnjdaily.com FIT used to sponsor the debates with two other organizations that don’t exist anymore, but that the group would be glad to see FIT not be the only sponsor of debates and forums in town.

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