Local News

Our featured pro this month is Rick Oliver, president of RTO Sports Management and a baseball sports agent.

Very, very, few developments — anywhere — offer private pedestrian access to both the ocean and the bay. But Salt Meadows, south of South Bethany and north of Fenwick Island, is one.

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.

Longtime area newspaper reporter Jim Cresson, 60, died on Monday when his vehicle collided head-on with a delivery truck near Centerville, Md.

According to Maryland State Police, Cresson was driving on the wrong side of the road on U.S. 301 at about 7 p.m. on Monday when he ran into the 10-wheeler. Cresson was pronounced dead at the scene.

Millville town council voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve the final site plan review of Phase I of the Millville by the Sea development, which, when finished, will add 2,495 homes to the town on a 606-acre plot on Route 17.

Having spent the winter as most chlorophyll junkies do — touring the trade shows and reading all the new catalogs — I have realized that the biggest trend of the season can be summed up in one word: foliage.

Sussex County Administrator Bob Stickels publicly announced his retirement – effective Nov. 1, 2006 — at the March 14 County Council meeting and earned a bit of an early roast from his colleagues in the process.

According to the Alzheimer’s Association — a national organization that raises money and awareness for the disease — 59 percent of people diagnosed with the disease will eventually wander off.

When Pat Griffiths and her parents, Steve and Audrey, opened the Shamrock Shanty in West Ocean City about 15 years ago, the family-oriented business sold merchandise for people of all ethnic backgrounds.

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.

Millville Mayor Gary Willey says that after 24 years on the town council he’s about ready to take a break and settle down to live quietly for a while in his new home — just outside the town’s limits. Willey said Saturday that he wasn’t prepared to foreswear bringing the property into Millville town limits over the long-term future, but for right now, he has no plans to do so.

With a moratorium in place on commercial construction in Bethany Beach and no ability to extend that measure, town officials pushed forward this week toward developing a set of design guidelines and related zoning ordinances that they hope will encourage architecture in the town’s commercial district in a desirable direction.

The Dagsboro Planning and Zoning Commission wants results — not talk — from representatives for the General’s Green development. Frustrations bubbled at a March 14 meeting when representatives from the General’s Green community failed to meet the expectations of town commissioners.

The ‘Sedona’ Coleus is a deep, coppery orange leaf, touched with magenta on new growth.

The Route 26 “SR 26 Mainline” project — temporarily shoved off the drawing board after last year’s Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) budget shocker — is back on track. DelDOT has announced a public workshop for Monday, March 27, from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Roxana Volunteer Fire Hall, to present preliminary plans.

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.

Fenwick Island Beautification Committee members are ready to move forward with their latest project designed to improve the looks of the beachside town: a series of decorative banners to add a splash of design and color to Coastal Highway year-round.

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.

Selbyville town officials read a draft of a changed ordinance at Monday’s council meeting. If adopted, the ordinance would prohibit people from parking on both sides of four streets in the town for safety reasons.

“There’s just not a lot of room to park on both sides,” said Clifton C. Murray, Selbyville’s mayor.

When the local development company Miranda & Hardt built the Bridle Ridge Estate development in Ocean View, it added a modern feature in each of the homes. Instead of building the homes with a standard air source heat pump system, the company’s employees installed geothermal technology.

What is newsworthy?

A group of local media professionals converged on the Cottage Café on March 2 for the Bethany-Fenwick Area Chamber of Commerce’s monthly breakfast meeting to answer that question.

As voters in the Indian River School District weigh the pros and cons of increased financial support for the school system — and increased financial burdens on themselves — leading up to a March 28 referendum, voters in the neighboring Cape Henlopen School District are doing much the same, in preparation for a two-part referendum vote this week, on March 16.

Dennis Spivack, the Democrats’ candidate to challenge long-time Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike Castle, stopped in Georgetown on March 7 to visit with local supporters.

Local electric delivery company Delmarva Power will likely have a bit of a suntan — from the spotlight — before summer 2006 ever gets here. Concerned citizens, public officials and the media have been peppering company representatives with questions about pending rate hikes for a couple of months now.

Fenwick Island’s search for a town manager proceeded this week with a March 6 meeting of the first of two committees tasked with the project.

Former Town Council Member Edward “Buzz” Henifin chairs the committee and led off the meeting with a review of where the committee’s early-stage research on the position stands.

Representatives from various state and local agencies and charitable organizations, and utility company personnel, congregated at Delaware Tech in Georgetown on March 2, joining forces to shed the light on as many energy-related conservation, and assistance, programs as they could cram into one place and one time.

While Ocean View has been working on its fiscal year 2007 budget since the fall, neighboring Millville just started the unfamiliar process this week. In a Tuesday workshop, a committee made up of mostly council members discussed the budget, which was hardly an issue before the recent development boom in the town.

Dagsboro Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) members continue searching for ways to better regulate development in their highly popular town, and took a first look at a draft Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO), at the March 1 meeting.

There I was, a newly-minted second-lieutenant, reporting for my first active-duty assignment. The time was October, 1956, and I had just been ordered to join a corporal-guided missile battalion outside the Rhineland city of Mainz in what was then West Germany.