Pip: Downbeach Today is opening the summer season with the full range — memorials, missing swimmers, scholarship endowments, and a farmers market turning ten. Downbeach staffer Nanette LoBiondo Galloway has been busy covering those stories.
Mara: That’s right. We’re covering Memorial Day ceremonies across Ventnor, Margate, and Longport, a stretch of public safety stories that runs from beach patrol to seat belts, education news from Stockton to culinary school, and a wide sweep of local government and community updates. Let’s start with how the Downbeach communities are marking the holiday — and the heritage work happening alongside it.
Honoring the Fallen, Preserving the Past
Pip: Memorial Day in Downbeach isn’t a single event — it’s three separate ceremonies across Ventnor, Margate, and Longport, each with its own character, and all of them happening the same Monday morning.
Mara: The Longport ceremony sets the stakes plainly. This year’s military guest of honor is Wounded Warrior 2025, U.S. Army SFC Chase Tanton of Provo, Utah, and the event also honors WWII veteran Herb Stern, who turns 100 in September.
Pip: A century of living, and still being called to stand in a parade. That’s the through-line these ceremonies are trying to hold.
Mara: The Jewish War Veterans Post 39 flag placement at Beth Kehillah Cemetery on May 24 extends that same impulse — volunteers placing flags for veterans buried there, reflecting what the post calls “the continued commitment of the Jewish community to remembrance.” And the Roth family endowment at Stockton University works in the same register: a $25,000 commitment establishing the Sam and Elizabeth Roth Endowed Memorial Scholarship in Holocaust Studies, so their parents’ story of deportation, survival, and rebuilding a life in New Jersey stays part of the curriculum. The book “Seventy Shuls” — Josh Cutler’s history of seventy Jewish congregations across South Jersey — rounds out the heritage picture, tracing more than 150 years of regional Jewish life from the Pine Barrens to the Boardwalk.
Pip: Memory as infrastructure. That’s the thread connecting all of it — and it leads straight into what happens when safety infrastructure fails.
When the Water Turns Dangerous
Pip: The Memorial Day weekend beach coverage carries a shadow this year — a search-and-rescue operation off Ocean City’s 10th Street that shifted from active search to recovery mission before the holiday even arrived.
Mara: Lt. Dan Lancaster of the Ocean City Police Department said it plainly: “Both the police and fire departments thank all the agencies and personnel that responded and assisted in the search over the last four days.”
Pip: Four days. That’s the weight behind the beach patrol chiefs’ guidance, which isn’t boilerplate this year.
Mara: The Beach Patrol chiefs post names specific guarded beaches for Memorial Day weekend across Ventnor, Margate, and Longport — limited staffing until the Fourth of July, open ten to six — and leads with a direct warning: swim only at guarded beaches, and parents, watch your children. On the road side, the “Click It or Ticket” campaign runs May 18 through 31, with Ventnor and Longport among the grant recipients funding extra patrols. And Margate Police issued e-bike guidance after a nine-year-old was struck at an intersection — new state rules taking effect in July set a minimum age of fifteen and require a license for all e-bike riders.
Mara: The pattern across all of it is the same: the risk is real, the rules exist, and the gap between them is where people get hurt. Which connects to what’s being built to close other kinds of gaps — in education.
Pathways Built and Credentials Earned
Pip: The education news this week is less about a single institution and more about a regional architecture taking shape — who gets in, how they move through, and what they leave with.
Mara: Stockton President Joe Bertolino framed the South Jersey Higher Education Alliance signing directly: “Today is not simply the signing of an agreement. It is a commitment to build a more connected, student-centered higher education ecosystem for our region.”
Pip: Five institutions, one memorandum, and the explicit goal of replacing what Camden County College’s president called roadblocks with roadmaps.
Mara: The alliance links Stockton with Atlantic Cape, Brookdale, Camden County, and Ocean County colleges, expanding transfer pathways, dual admission, and shared advising. Meanwhile, ACIT cut the ribbon on a $53.5 million Career and Technical Education building — a 130,000-square-foot facility adding capacity for 450 students across sixteen programs, funded by the state’s largest bond-act grant of its kind. Atlantic Cape’s Academy of Culinary Arts held its 44th annual medal ceremony, graduating thirty-three students. And Stockton’s own Class of 2026 — more than 2,300 graduates — filled Boardwalk Hall twice. Haiti has also selected Stockton as its FIFA World Cup 2026 training base, arriving June 8. A Stockton-hosted congressional debate for the 2nd District Democratic primary rounds out a week in which the university appears in nearly every story about the region’s future.
Pip: From transfer credits to World Cup training pitches — the campus is doing a lot of work. Speaking of things doing a lot of work, local government has a full docket.
Rates, Parks, Courts, and Community
Pip: Ventnor’s commissioners introduced ordinances this month that touch residents directly — utility rates are going up, and two city-owned lots are going to auction.
Mara: The post lays out the numbers: water service increases to $400 annually, up $35 from $365; sewer service increases to $425, up $40 from $385. The rate increase is tied to long-term infrastructure work, including replacing lead service lines over the next decade. A public hearing is set for May 28.
Pip: Thirty-five dollars a year for lead-free water is not an unreasonable ask, but it’s still an ask — and the bond ordinance for the Winchester Avenue water main replacement adds another $1.5 million to the ledger.
Mara: Also in Ventnor, the brand-new pickleball courts at Suffolk Avenue were vandalized before they even opened — someone threw landscape rocks over the fence onto the freshly painted surface. Minor damage, but extra contractor costs. The courts opened anyway for the holiday weekend. Across the bay in Longport, Point Park is drawing visitors before its official June 13 ribbon cutting — a $525,000 beautification project at the tip of Atlantic Avenue, funded partly by $82,700 in resident donations. In Margate, a memorial bench dedication and pickleball tournament honoring Dan Gottlieb, the man who brought the sport to the city, was rescheduled to May 30 due to weather.
Mara: Beyond the shore communities: Atlantic County is holding public hearings on the proposed sale of Meadowview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, with a minimum bid of $23.5 million and County Executive Dennis Levinson’s assurance that no resident will be displaced. The ACUA is running a household hazardous waste drop-off May 23. The Atlantic County Clerk launched an updated website. The Arc of Atlantic County marks 65 years of service with a Golden Nugget fundraiser on May 28. The Ventnor City Farmers Market opens its tenth anniversary season May 22 with more than eighty vendors. The Jersey Shorecast panel convenes May 27 at Stockton’s Atlantic City campus to preview the summer economy. Visit Atlantic City named a new national account director. Longport Police held a senior cybersecurity luncheon. Stockton’s K-9 unit won a national explosives detection title. The Atlantic County Animal Shelter waived adoption fees for National Rescue Dog Day. And the PR Council of Greater Atlantic City announced it will disband after a final meeting in June — closing a chapter for regional communications professionals.
Pip: A lot of endings and openings in the same week.
Mara: Memory, safety, education, community — it’s the full shape of a shore town heading into summer.
Pip: Next time, we’ll see whether the summer delivers on any of it. Stay guarded.
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