Letter to Editor: City Officials Are Looking for Ways to Help

To the editor:

I'd like people who find themselves in the same situation that I did to know there's a solution and that it came from the same city officials I thought were clueless three weeks ago after I read city ordinance 13-07.

In order to get a certificate of occupancy after raising your house, if your crawl space ends up being 5 or more feet high, city ordinance requires you to record a deed restriction prohibiting that crawl space from ever being turned into living space.

The county clerk's office says you have to hire a lawyer to record a deed restriction, but I can't afford one. So, in frustration, three days ago I sent an e-mail to City Council members whose names I found online, asking them if the city solicitor or a council member, if one was a lawyer, could do the paperwork for all of us in this situation and leave the name and address blank so we could just fill it in and then go file it ourselves.

I was fairly impressed when Keith Hartzell (at-large City Council member) replied first thing yesterday morning that he would talk to "Dottie" about it (whoever that is) and get back to me.

I was downright shocked when he and Anthony Wilson (Third Ward councilman) walked up my driveway today, introduced themselves and gave me the good news that "Dottie" (Dorothy McCrosson), who it turns out is the city solicitor, agreed to write a template for us to use. That's three city officials, whom I had never heard of before three days ago, who not only seemed genuinely happy to help, but did so without delay.

Kathryn Thomas
Ocean City