OCEAN CITY – City officials discussed installing center armrests on benches this week to prevent individuals from sleeping on the Boardwalk.

At the request of the Ocean City Police Department (OCPD), Terry Steimer of the city’s Public Works Department presented the Mayor and City Council with cost estimates to install center armrests on benches to deter extended slumbers.

According to Steimer, the OCPD has expressed concern over individuals sleeping on the benches on the Boardwalk.

“They feel it interferes with the merchants, residents and tourists, so the idea is to put a center armrest on the bench that will prevent people being able to stretch out,” Steimer said.

According to Steimer, the bench manufacturer would provide galvanized steel armrests and install them on the city’s current order of 50 benches at the cost of about $170 each or send the armrests and have the city install them at the cost of about $220 each.

Steimer furthered OCPD has indentified 15 benches in the area of the Caroline Comfort Station, which has attracted a small homeless population in recent years. However, Public Works has identified about 43 benches in the area of all comfort stations along the Boardwalk, not including 23rd Street.

Steimer asserted Public Works does not support the installation of center armrests on Boardwalk benches.

“It is going to be an additional maintenance issue for us. There are 140 benches up there now. There will be 190, and we feel like we should not extend the level of maintenance over and above what we have right now,” he said.

Council Secretary Mark Knight clarified the discussion was initiated not only to prevent individuals from sleeping on benches but it would also deter skateboarders.

“We are not singling out a group. We don’t want anybody to sleep on the benches,” she said.

Knight added, in conducting research she found that center armrests have not prevented individuals from sleeping on benches in other locations as they will sleep sitting up or put their feet over the divider instead.

“Benches are used to be sat on, and if someone is laying there it prevents three to four other people from enjoying the bench,” Councilman Wayne Hartman said. “My thought is a local company could design something that would retrofit the benches at a lower cost. We could run a trial to see if it does prevent people from sleeping on benches.”

Councilman Tony DeLuca was also not in favor of the center armrests.

“The center armrest project is esthetically not pleasing, a maintenance nightmare and it doesn’t deter the homeless,” he said.

Councilman Doug Cymek, who serves as the Police Commission chair, offered for the commission to discuss the topic during a commission meeting scheduled the next day. The Mayor and City Council voted to defer the subject to the Police Commission.

“I am not in favor of the dividers because I believe it will just push people who use the benches for sleeping to a different bench and it is costly. We need to find a different way to enforce people from sleeping on the Boardwalk. I know we have an ordinance that addresses people sleeping in cars,” Cymek said, initiating the discussion with Police Commission on Wednesday morning.

Mayor Rick Meehan questioned if center armrests would really solve the issue and responded armrests are not viewed as a tool for the police department to deter people from sleeping on the benches.

Councilman Dennis Dare disagreed with his colleagues.

“I don’t see any harm in it. It is not going to solve the problem but it at least addresses the problem by making it more difficult to lie horizontally on the bench,” he said.

Dare suggested buying the 50 new benches with center armrest and position them in the problem areas.

“I see it as a $10,000 roll of the dice. Research shows it wasn’t effective in other locations, and Public Works doesn’t support it as well,” Cymek said.

The mayor made a motion that the remanded discussion by the Police Commission result in an unfavorable recommendation to the Mayor and City Council to approve center armrests on Boardwalk benches. The majority of the commission voted to approve the motion with Dare in opposition.