By Donald Wittkowski
City Council is expected Tuesday to approve the reappointment of a handful of senior administration officials and will also introduce a salary ordinance covering all municipal employees in Sea Isle City.
Council has scheduled a vote on a series of resolutions authorizing Mayor Leonard Desiderio to execute contracts between the city and five top members of his administration.
They include Business Administrator George Savastano, Police Chief Tom D’Intino, City Clerk Cindy Griffith, Tax and Utility Collector Paula Doll and Public Information Officer Katherine Custer.
Information about their salaries and the length of their terms is expected to be released at Council’s meeting 10 a.m. Tuesday at City Hall.
Also on Council’s agenda is the introduction of an ordinance setting the salaries, wages and overtime pay for all city officers and employees.
The salary ordinance, along with the reappointment of senior members of the administration, follows the settlement of the last in a series of union contracts with city employees.
“They finished the last round of labor contracts, so that’s why all of this is falling into place,” Custer said.
In other business Tuesday, Council will be presented with a miniature version of the statue of a Vietnam War hero from Philadelphia who spent his summers in Sea Isle and has a local street named in his honor.
Cpl. Michael Crescenz, a Medal of Honor recipient, has been immortalized in a bronze statue that was unveiled last April at the Philadelphia Veterans Memorial at Penn’s Landing.
Members of the Michael J. Crescenz Foundation, the fund-raising arm for the statue, will give Sea Isle officials a “modello,” or small-scale version, of the sculpture. Some of the fund-raising for the statue was done in Sea Isle, Custer said.
Sea Isle recognized Crescenz’s heroism by renaming a portion of 46th Street after him during a Veterans Day ceremony in 2014. It was at the 46th Street beach that Crescenz and members of his family spent much of their summer vacations.
“It was his second home,” Custer said of Crescenz’s ties to Sea Isle.
Only 19, Crescenz was killed in battle in 1968 when he charged up a mountain to attack enemy bunkers that were spraying his platoon with machine gun fire. He knocked out three of the bunkers, but was killed while storming the fourth.
He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, becoming the only Philadelphian to receive the nation’s highest military honor during the Vietnam War.
Last year, the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia was named in Crescenz’s honor.
