Four candidates run for three seats in Dewey Beach

Three incumbents and one newcomer are running for three seats in Dewey Beach’s 2019 Municipal Election: Mayor TJ Redefer, Commissioners Dale Cooke and Paul Bauer, and challenger Phil Rowe.

The election will be held 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 21, in the Dewey Beach Life Saving Station, 1 Dagsworthy Ave.

For election information, contact Dewey Beach Town Hall at 302-227-6363 or townofdeweybeach.com.

Candidates:

Name: Paul Bauer
Age: 60
Occupation: Commercial business development manager for Staples, Atlantic Coast Region - Delaware, Maryland and Virginia
Relevant experience: Dewey Beach Commissioner for the past two years; long-time business executive working with large-scale state and commercial organizations; active in Sussex County Association of Towns, Dewey-Rehoboth Chamber of Commerce, Dewey Beach Civic League and Dewey Beach Lions Club. 
I have owned property for 17 years; full-time resident.

Name: Dale Cooke
Age: 73
Occupation: Retired
Relevant experience: I attended leadership schools and management academies in the Marine Corps, Postal Service, AFL-CIO and Boys’ Clubs of America. For the Town of Dewey Beach, I have taken numerous courses in town administration, planning and zoning, and emergency management. Since coming to Dewey, I have volunteered for almost every town committee, have been an elected town commissioner for 10 years and the mayor for one year. I am a member of the Dewey Beach Lions Club and chairman of Maryland Postal Federal Credit Union.
I have owned property in Dewey Beach for 20 years.

Name: John E. Redefer (TJ)
Age: 58
Occupation: Real estate broker
Relevant experience: Current mayor of Dewey Beach, I have served in volunteer leadership roles for over 20 years. For me, volunteering, attending public meetings and protecting property values has been part of my core for as long as I can remember.
I have owned property in Dewey Beach my entire life. 

Name: Philip Rowe
Age: 60
Occupation: Retired entrepreneur 
Relevant experience: Expert in organizational management and performance. Led multiple organizations with budgets up to $45M and employee count to 845 people at the highest levels in marketing, finance, legal, benefits, compensation and training. 
My family has owned property here since 1959, and my wife and I relocated here three years ago, in early 2016.

How would you prioritize recommendations cited in the recent organizational analysis of the police department?

Bauer: At our last town council meeting we agreed to send these recommendations to our town manager, chief of police and his team to solicit feedback on what they believe are the most pressing. Our town manager is assessing approximate costs associated with implementing these recommendations. I believe our best path forward is to be diligent and pursue this systematically, checking off each one as we get them done, all while living within our means. 

Cooke: Along with the other incumbent town commissioners, I have already requested that the town manager and the police chief at the next town meeting report on their suggested list of priorities and recommended solutions, along with a projected timeline. The town council will then discuss the issues and set final action requirements for remediation and solution by the town manager.

Redefer: The Warren Report was promised to the stakeholders of Dewey Beach since 2016. Thanks to Commissioner Dale Cooke, we were able to have it completed this year. Our police cooperated fully with Dr. Warren so that we could assess our strengths and weaknesses. I am proud to say that the commissioners have already taken steps and action to address some of the issues in this report. We still have more hard work to accomplish. There are some difficult conversations the commissioners need to have to address what is mostly prioritized in this report. There are several items that we can start working on immediately, while other items will require more intense work, conversations with all the stakeholders of our town, workshop meetings and brainstorming to address these issues. Dewey Beach must live within its means and keep public safety as our top priority.  The commissioners, in our last meeting, have asked the chief of police with the town manager to outline their priorities and give written feedback with a report to be given to the commissioners at the next town meeting. We continue to keep this topic as a top priority. 

Rowe: There are two issues at stake when addressing this problem. First, safety must be the paramount consideration, because if Dewey comes to be known as “unsafe” we suffer enormous financial repercussions. Second, and somewhat ironically, we do have financial problems in accounting and revenue. So, we must find a way to pay to fix the most egregious problems we have and develop a longer-term plan for the infrastructure and personnel issues. Still, one of my opponents claimed we must act on this monster problem “one item at a time.” I have no doubt that is a recipe for complete failure and is the kind of thinking one would expect from an inexperienced manager.

Would you vote for the implementation of a lodging tax on Dewey Beach hotels, motels and rental homes? If so, why, and at what percent? If not, why? Where should the revenue be allocated? 

Bauer: No one likes taxes. As an anti-tax person by nature, unless I know why we need the tax, I will not vote for it. No one has made the case for the need to create additional taxes other than saying Dewey needs more predictable revenue streams. We could apply that argument to many taxable revenue streams that I am confident the property owners of Dewey do not want. The town has existed for 38 years unlike any other town. We do not share the idea of big government tax-and-spend policies. As I stated in last week’s debate, here are the facts. If you rent your property, your visitor pays a 3 percent lodging tax that goes to the town. If you rent a hotel room, your visitor pays 8 percent, of which 6 percent goes to the state, 1 percent goes toward tourism and 1 percent goes to beach replenishment. Some argue no tax dollars come to the town directly, which they say is unfair. However, raising the 8 percent to a higher number may seem like a good idea, but it also may create a competitive disadvantage to the hotel industry. More public input is required, and I am open to hearing both sides of the argument.  

Cooke: I am not in favor of the town raising taxes unless it can show a serious lack of revenue and/or a demonstrated need for new revenue. Once the town has proven that there is such a need, I believe the businesses, along with property owners in general, will be willing to step up and support an increase - so long as such an increase is dedicated to that specific and demonstrated issue and not to increase the surplus line item. If such an increase is needed, it could be phased in over a number of years. In the not-so-distant future, I believe the consistent tidal flooding from sea level rise and from storm drainage issues will become so problematic that the town will likely need to seriously increase funding to help abate those problems, along with obtaining any available governmental matching grants.

Redefer: Hotel and motel accommodations tax are a new source of revenue for Sussex County and for the City of Rehoboth. As one of the stewards for Dewey Beach’s revenue and the residents’ trust, it is my opinion that no clear case has yet been made that we need additional taxes at this time. My concern is that supporting a new tax will lead to demands for other new revenue sources like property taxes and increases in current sources like accommodation taxes. That said, Dewey Beach has an accommodations tax but only on short-term vacation rentals. At 3 percent, we are by far the least expensive of all the other coastal Delaware towns. However, if the case is made that we need this additional revenue, I would be in favor of an accommodations tax for our hotels and motels, but only if it is phased in over a period of three or six years. I want our hotels and motels to have a competitive edge. By proving our need for this revenue and by phasing it in over time, it will be less painful to guests who select our town over others. I would also like our town to find a way to make sure we acknowledge this partnership with our guests by always looking to give back to vacationers who come to Dewey year after year. 

Rowe: I’ve been clear that I have not had access to the total financial picture, as a non-incumbent. However, in a hypothetical scenario, it is not beyond the possibility that a majority of commissioners would consider a lodging tax reasonable. In my mind, anything above 1 to 1.5 percent would be a very tough sell. How we allocate such revenues, should they become available, is a council decision, and as I say in respect to all revenues, must be part of the budgeting process. This idea of deciding how to spend an undefined amount of money, available on an unknown date, is a fool’s errand.

Commissioners have discussed the town’s lack of enforcement of conditions imposed on businesses. Should the town enforce conditions or not? How should they be enforced?

Bauer: The answer is of course yes, but over many years, different sets of conditions were applied to each separate business. Our rules are all over the map and need legal clarification. Each business must be treated fairly, equally and have the same set of rules. The commissioner discussion at our last town council meeting was regarding the time that eateries close. Some commissioners think 11 p.m. is a good closing time. Others think 1 a.m. exactly and everyone out the door is good policy. My position is, if people want to eat, let them eat. Many of our small businesses rely on guests eating. Some of these small businesses would lose 50 percent or more of their revenue, plus I can assure you, our visitors will dislike it as well. We need to promote Dewey as a vibrant town.

Cooke: After two separate planning and zoning and town council public hearings, conditions are placed on new or expanding businesses that don’t fit the requirements of their surrounding districts. Those conditions are intended to protect residential and town interests, and are agreed upon by the requesting business before they open. In a few situations for numerous years, the town has failed to enforce or poorly enforced those valid conditions. A few businesses have drifted outside of those legally mandated requirements, some deliberately but most unintentionally. Businesses have a very limited summer season to make their income in order to survive, and the town should not go out of its way to hinder any business that is trying to follow the town regulations. But, the town also cannot continue to fail to enforce those regulations. Failure to enforce is unfair to and simply hurts those businesses that follow the letter of those regulations while others don’t. Because those conditions are for the betterment of the surrounding residents and the town, the answer is not to just give up enforcing the conditions on all affected businesses. The answer is to fairly enforce the given restrictions equally on all. Draconian raids and immediate fines are also not the answer. The list of those conditional businesses is readily available to the soon-to-be-hired building official. The new employee should be directed to send notification letters to all businesses with conditions in their business licenses. The town employee along with the town manager should then visit all those businesses to introduce themselves and discuss any issues. Most of the problems will likely be solved, and the town can then go further with anyone who cannot be persuaded to follow the regulations. The conditions are there for legitimate reasons. We need to either properly enforce them or not have them.

Redefer: There is a clear issue in the Town of Dewey Beach with the lack of code enforcement as it relates to some restaurants and businesses in town. There is also lack of clarity in our town code. We are fast approaching a new day in Dewey Beach, and it is time to look at both enforcement and making our code clear so that it serves all our residents, guests and business owners. With the hiring of the new building official who we are close to bringing on board, we will demand that this new official look at both code and enforcement while keeping in mind some of these long-standing establishments have been serving the people and visitors of Dewey Beach for a very long time.

Rowe: This is a no-brainer, to me. The cost to staff the enforcement is well below what I would anticipate the revenues gained to be. So, I would be for this, because right now, it’s sort of a joke that so many things are being ignored and perhaps even setting bad precedents. 

Should the town continue its involvement in the federal military surplus program? Why or why not?

Bauer: We have effectively suspended our participation in the federal surplus equipment program until years of accumulated equipment is cleaned out. This equipment will be sold by Emmert Auctions on Saturday, Sept. 14. We now have tightened procedures and financial controls that previous administrations did not have in place to prevent any future mismanagement. I want to see all the surplus equipment cleaned out and then evaluate the benefits of the program. The town had received significant benefits such as having a building bulldozed and police vehicles purchased that Dewey residents didn’t have to buy, which is a good thing. The fiscally responsible side of me asks why we would spend town money when we can get something that we need for free, but I also believe the program must be managed correctly. This federal surplus program is used across the country by many state and local municipalities and it saves taxpayer dollars, but professional management is the key.

Cooke: Because of my previous work with the Boys’ Clubs, I am familiar with the LESO/military surplus equipment program. Organized properly, the program can be a major benefit to various departments and the town as a whole. Through it, the town can acquire much-needed equipment that it otherwise would have to buy, if the town could afford it. I wholeheartedly recommend that the town stay in the program, with the added oversight of the town manager. 

Redefer: The way Dewey Beach ran the program in the past was not good. Unfortunately, the lack of oversight and full transparency existed for years prior to my time in office. We have completed a review of Dewey police department involvement, and implemented necessary checks and balances and completed several audits of the program. That said, the program did provide the town with a way to have an unwanted building demolished for free, and it did help raise funds that allowed the police department to purchase several new police vehicles for free as well, but it was not well managed. The lack of controls has left a stain on our town that will take time to move beyond. Still, I support a well-managed approach, like we have now, that includes our continued use of the LESO program. Free equipment from the federal government can be very useful to our town. Currently we have a clear policy and procedure as to how we can continue to use the program and there will be no more looking the other way pretending we don’t know where the Humvee came from. It came from our Uncle Sam to help our police do their job and keep us safe. The town needs to do a better job managing our assets, and with our new management team we can do this and we can do it right.        

Rowe: Yes. This is not a town in a position to turn down “free.” However, there are new guidelines for participating, and if they are followed and overseen and the need for each item is justified, we should continue to participate. I understand no one wants a repeat of the LESO debacle, but I can assure everyone that I will not let that fiasco be repeated.