On City Council’s agenda today is introduction of the municipal budget for 2025. The details of the budget were reviewed with Council at the public workshop held on March 13. The budget properly funds all city services, including police, public works, recreation, community services, and administrative functions. It has provided for negotiated contracts with our various unions, the provision of around the clock duty crews for the fire department, all of the special events, activities, and programs offered by the city, and all costs necessary to continue to keep the city clean, safe, and well maintained. As I mentioned in my state of the city address at the last meeting, the budget has a solid surplus position, in which we started the year with over $8 million in surplus, and used $3.65 million of that surplus in this year’s budget. As I also mentioned, our budget includes economies achieved through shared services – for which we will receive over half a million dollars from several of our neighboring municipalities.

Apart from today’s agenda, there’s a couple things I want to mention.

There have been a number of anonymous complaints about the digital sign that City Council authorized the administration to purchase at the last Council meeting. For the record, the sign was a topic of discussion for over a year internally, as we researched the available technology and the various designs which were proposed; it has been endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce; and it will provide a great visual informational display as you come into town. For several years we’ve used various mobile signs at the corner of JFK and Central, and we wanted to greet our visitors as well as our residents with something that was permanent and first class. The sign will be double-sided and positioned so that anyone entering town over the bridge will see any of the displays; and folks heading north on Central at the intersection with JFK will have a clear view of the sign. The administration believes this is an absolutely appropriate investment for a resort city such as ours, and obviously City Council agreed as evidenced by their vote in favor of this acquisition.

The other thing I wanted to mention was an item also included on last Council meeting’s agenda – a resolution approving a grant application to the office of Congressman Van Drew for playground shade structures at the JFK Recreation complex. As Council is aware, our city engineer has prepared concepts for various shade structures, with the estimated costs for these structures in the half to three-quarters of a million dollars range.

The high costs are driven to a large degree by the foundation necessary to support the shade material at a height over the playground equipment. Before considering the expenditure of city taxpayer funds to bear the full cost of this project, we believed this was an appropriate grant request to make to the congressman. I bring this up because I know there’s folks who would like to see something done, and I wanted to make it clear that we are still looking at options to make this happen. As Council knows, there are many projects that we’ve considered over the years – many of which were advanced to completion and some that were delayed or shelved for various reasons. If money were no object, it would be easy to do all of the projects that everyone wants.

I wanted to talk about these things because I know the planning, analysis, and consideration that takes place before we expend city taxpayer’s money, and while I know City Council is aware of the administration’s efforts to perform due diligence, I thought a brief explanation could be informative.

As always, please remember, we are one Sea Isle City and together we’ll be stronger than ever.

Smile…You’re in Sea Isle!

Mayor Leonard C. Desiderio