Ocean View

Members of Ocean View’s Board of Adjustment told a town couple on May 18 that they can not extend their assisted-living business in its current location at 49 West Avenue.

The 1998-2000 dig at the Bear Trap community in Ocean View was just another chapter in Delaware’s archaeological history but not the most recent. In 2004, a dredging project off of the coast of Lewes uncovered a spectacular find.

Last Friday, on a bare lot just north of the Village of Bear Trap Dunes on Central Avenue, Ocean View town officials held a long-awaited ceremony. After a two-month-long debate about the project and a month of silence, those officials, along with Willow Construction representatives, broke ground on the lot that will serve as home for the town’s new police station.

Members of the Millville and Roxana volunteer fire departments responded April 25 to a noontime fire at a salvage facility on Substation Road near Central Avenue, just outside Ocean View.

An Ocean View special town council meeting on Tuesday turned into a “fiasco,” according to town mayor Gary Meredith, after new Councilman Roy Thomas brought a violation of the town’s code to the attention of the council.

Ocean View Board of Adjustment officials on April 20 did everything but tell a couple who owns property in the town that they couldn’t build an already-planned home on the piece of property they bought last year.

It’s not a secret. People come to this area to retire. From Pennsylvania, to Baltimore, to Washington, D.C., people flock to the Delaware Coast to live out their lives next to sandy beaches and with a considerably shorter drive to get to those shores.

Because of the extensive migration, the Delaware Coast boasts a larger elderly population than do most places in this country.

When the Giant superstore opened on Atlantic Avenue in Millville yesterday, it was not just new to Millville residents. Millville’s Super Giant – based on its sister company’s super Stop and Shop stores – opened as a prototype for all new Giant stores in the Virginia, Delaware, Maryland and Washington, D.C, region – the only states in which the company operates.

It was a moment John Turssline won’t soon forget. On Monday, the Ocean View resident lined up next to 10,000 people on the streets of Boston to compete, running in the first heat of the Boston Marathon. More than 20,000 ran in the 110th annual event, with more than 97 percent finishing.

A verbal altercation between two Clarksville-area teenagers on a four-wheeler and two Clarksville-area farmers fed up with crop damage turned into a physical altercation on April 13, as 77-year-old Merrill Gray’s car collided with an ATV driven by 14-year-old Chris Barnes, near the Beth’el Tabernacle Church of God, on Omar Road.

Ocean View town officials were to consider implementing Sussex County’s five-digit 911-friendly house-numbering system at Tuesday’s town council meeting, but Mayor Gary Meredith took to the microphone first and dismissed the idea.

Signs. Signs. Signs. Ocean View’s Route 26 design committee continues to focus its conversation on signs along the Route 26 corridor. Committee members spent about two hours talking about commercial signs along the main town road with no mention of its proposed tree ordinance at the March 16 meeting at town hall.

Sussex County officials started the process more than eight years ago. In all of the un-incorporated areas of the county, they have readdressed properties with five-digit street addresses and plugged them into a county-wide map. Once updated, that map is sent to the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), where it is used to screen 911 calls.

Officials from Ocean View’s Board of Adjustment made an example out of a pair of town residents on March 16, denying a variance application for a 10-by12-foot shed.

Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) officials once again rolled out preliminary plans for Route 26 improvements, from Clarksville to the Assawoman Canal (between Ocean View and Bethany Beach), on March 27.

The department’s made a few changes since the last go-round, and more than 160 people stopped by the Roxana Fire Hall for the update.

Since September, officials from the University of Delaware Center for Historic Architecture and Design have been surveying Ocean View properties for their historical significance.

A Tuesday-night workshop in Ocean View town hall proved to be the site of yet another argument about the town’s proposed 15,000-square-foot police station, which was approved by the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission on March 16.

In a special meeting on Tuesday, Ocean View’s town council voted 3-2 to narrowly approve a 2007 fiscal-year budget that has been a source of confusion and controversy in the town for weeks and could still prove misleading in the town’s bottom line.

Beebe Medical Center’s long-time emergency services location in Millville may be moving a few miles westward, expanding and staying open year-round, at least as a walk-in clinic.

Anyone who drives on Route 26 in Ocean View on a regular basis has surely noticed the two train cars sitting on the north side of the road about a half-mile from Bethany Beach.

Though Ocean View’s town council received overwhelming support for its new police station on Tuesday and awarded the construction contract, town officials said that the floor plans of the building — but not the size — might change.

Ocean View’s public safety, administrative and public works departments took another hit on Tuesday before the town’s Long Range Financial Planning Committee voted 5-1 to approve the new, top-down budget it will present to council on March 14.

On Feb. 27, Cliff Mitchell and Roy Thomas — members of Ocean View’s Long Range Financial Planning Committee — sent a letter to the mayor and council, asking, among other things, to postpone awarding a construction contract for the new police station.

As a business man in suburban Philadelphia for most of his life, Roy Thomas admits that he never had any intention of getting involved in town government.

Ocean View’s Long Range Financial Planning Committee voted 6-1 on Tuesday to approve an alternative version of the proposed 2007 budget about three weeks before it will have to make a budgetary recommendation to town council.

Ocean View resident Laura Hattier and the 24-Seven Youth Ministry at the Dagsboro Church of God (DCOG) will hold the second in a continuing series of “Mission Possible” women’s issues discussions on Sunday, March 5.

The conferences are chiefly for teens and young adults — adults are welcomed to attend, but their participation will be primarily limited to bench support.

When town officials opened the six bids to construct Ocean View’s new police station about two weeks ago, they were legitimately excited. The bids ranged from $1.9 million to $2.3 million, when they had expected a number closer to $4 million. And it seemed like a much-needed break in a financially uncertain time for the town.

Fifteen minutes of fame sure can last a lot longer when it’s captured on glossy pages.

On Feb. 10, a Superior Court judge in Georgetown sentenced an Ocean View man to one year in jail, followed by a year of home confinement, after he pleaded guilty to stealing boats, motors and supplies.

Real estate transfer taxes again emerged as an issue on Tuesday,Feb. 7 at Ocean View’s Long Range Financial Planning Committee meeting.

Last week, town officials took about $600,000 out of the forecasted revenue budgets of 2010 and 2011 and looked for ways to generate revenue to close the gap on rising deficits in the town.