OCEAN CITY – Resort officials agreed to review some elements of a new special event fee structure following a lengthy discussion this week.
On Tuesday, Special Events Director Frank Miller presented the Mayor and Council with proposed revisions to the town’s special event fees and processes. He said the overhaul was meant to cover staff costs associated with special events and bring costs more in line with demand and value, among other things.
“Really what prompted this was twofold,” he said. “One was that we have seen a major step in the number of events and size of events we host here in Ocean City, Maryland, and that has opened the floodgates on us considering new elements and taking a much finer look at individual details on these larger-scale events. The other was we had done a familiarization trip to Virginia Beach and found out there are opportunities we could be using in terms of how we structure our fees here in town compared to how some of our competitors maybe doing fees.”
In his presentation this week, Miller said the new fee structure would divide special events into tiers. Tier one, for example, would include gatherings of up to 1,000 people and would only require a permit, while tier four would include multi-site events of more than 6,000 people with a higher impact on city resources. Tiers three and four, he noted, would not only require council approval, but would include negotiated agreements.
“We used to do a lot of memorandums of understanding, MOUs,” he said. “That is in the past. We have moved to a much more legal format agreement framework to protect the town and user.”