PIC Spending $25,000 for P-R Effort

By JOE ZELNIK Cape May County’s Private Industry Council (PIC) will spend almost $25,000 on marketing and public relations in the next three months to gain public understanding. "If you asked 20 people what PIC was, they probably couldn't tell you," said Peter Berkowitz, PIC’s advertising committee chairman and manager of Group W Cable in Wildwood.

What’s PIC? Nobody Knew Give Peter Berkowitz a cigar. In explaining the need for a $25,000 public relations campaign for the Cape May County Private Industry Cduncil (PIC), last week Berkowitz said, "If you asked 20 people what PIC was, they probably couldn't tell you." The Herald and Lantern conducted a random telephone poll last Wednesday, from 8:45 to 9:15, and asked 20 Cape May County adults if they knew what the Private Industry Council (PIC) was. Not one did. Eighteen said they didn’t know, one guessed it had "something to do with advertising?" and one said ‘Tve heard the name, but I don't know what it does. Now I'm going to have to find out,” the woman added.

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Protest Ride

CREST HAVEN - Local school officials will board a bus here tomorrow morning for a trip to Trenton to protest a bill (S-1235) at a Senate Labor Committee hearing. If either the Senate or Assembly version of the bill (A-585) is approved, teachers’ unions would be able to negotiate matters now considered management prerogatives. Right Hook

SEA ISLE CITY — In April, Commissioner William VanArtsdalen argued that! city officials were being illegally paid | since their salaries were approved by I budget resolutions and not by ordinance ^ as required. A salary ordinance has now been drafted. As proposed, Mayor Dominic Raffa will be paid $15,000 a year, Commissioner Alan Gansert, $8,000, and VanArtsdalen, $6,000. Left Jab SEA ISLE CITY — Superior Colirt Judge Philip Gruccio has denied city Commissioner William VanArtsdalen’s request that the court order him reinstated to the departments and authority which his fellow commissioners stripped from him earlier this year.

Affirmative What? WILDWOOD — The school district last year adopted an Affirmative Action Plan on minority employment policy, making it eligible for federal and state funds, but its board of education couldn't tell critics who’s on the required Affirmative Action Committee last week. (Page 16 Please) Fired Guard By E.J. DUFFY VILLAS — Wanda Lee Rogers, a county Jail guard fired last year for sleeping on duty, is asking the state Civil Service Com mission to investigate the county Sheriff's Department proceedings against her and two other corrections officers. Through her attorney, Mary M Maudsley, Rogers, 49, argues that, while she had pleaded guilty to the charge of sleeping at her jail post, dismissal was too harsh a penalty to pay for that offense and two lesser charges lodged against her Sheriff Beech Fox. who said he welcomes any CSC probe, fired Rogers after personally hearing those charges His decision was affirmed by an administrative law judge assigned to the case by the CSC.

PIC will spend $1,400 with Group W for advertising. The no-bid contract to handle the P-R program was awarded by the county Freeholders last week to Coastline Advertising of Erma. It will receive more than $6,000 of the $24,831 total. That will include a $1,250 fee for placing and scheduling newspaper, radio, and TV ads, $4,200 for "public rela tions and publicity," and $600 for photographs. COASTLINE’S principal partners are Warren Garretson, and Robert Laws, owner of Laws Color Litho Inc. in Erma and a PIC board member. Laws abstained from voting when PIC’s executive committee approved the program in a private session last month, according to PIC administrator Nan Mavromates. In favor were its chairman,

Gregory Willis, Berkowitz. Armand Gagnon, Robert Davenport, and Joseph W Meadowcroft, she said. The program was received without com ment by the PIC board at its monthly meeting in the Tiki Lounge of the Ixidge in North Wildwood last Tuesday Berkowitz called it "an aggressive plan to put the name of PIC before the public and make it synonymous in the county with putting employers and employes together." PIC IS A federally-funded agency with a budget of "close to $1.9 million" in the cur rent fiscal year, according to Mavromates Its purpose is to help youths and unskilled adults get jobs and it does this with classroom and on-the job training programs. PIC comes under the jurisdiction of Freeholder Director Anthonv T)Catanoso

Coastline's first two news releases for PIC went into the mail last week. One an nounced the new public relations program, which it called "Op9ration Awareness " The other was a report on PIC's mfinthly meeting. * •' The program to promote ('ape May County PIC comes about three months before it is scheduled to be merged with Atlantic County PIC Mavromates said that this was no problem "This program will still exist," she said. "I ALWAYS DID the public relations myself." she said, "but we're getting too big " She said Garretson would "be here on a daily basis, picking our brains. He’ll know the job as well as I do ” Garretson. whose Coastline Advertising (Page 16 Please*

Dorn Ward

CAREFUL! — Daniel Cusella 3rd finds the best way to remove a blue claw crab from a trap Is — very carefully. The 10-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Cusella of Goshen was crabbing at Gant’s Marina on Bidwell's Greek, Rt. 47. Middle Township. Correctional Officers Settle for $147,911 A state arbitrator has awarded 58 Cape . tially smaller salary increases than their

May County correctional officers in the Sheriff’s Department a 27-month wage

package that totals $147,911.

The members of the Policeman's Benevolent Association have been working without a contract since Dec. 31, 1982 The compulsory interest arbitration award from Ernest Weiss gives senior officers cash bonuses of $1,400, but substan-

Appealing

MAUDSLEY has filed exceptions to the judge's recommendation that the dismissal be upheld. She has also asked for Rogers' reinstatement and the

investigation.

The lawyer contends that such a probe is warranted because Fox took disciplinary action against two correction officers who had testified during Rogers' hearing Officer Joseph Fulginiti was fired, effective May 16, while Officer William Aber will resign This Friday, "although he probably would have been dismissed" other-

wise, noted Fox.

Both men had told the judgf they knew of other correction officers who fell asleep

on duty.

Fulginiti's attorney, Bernard Paul

(Page 16 Please > (Page 37 Please >

junior counterparts

County negotiator Lawrence Pepper said that "compressed maximum pay" was a goal of the PBA that the county was "willing to.accommodate. We were happy to get a handle on the upper level of

salaries."

Pepper called the award "a reasonable decision that took into account the county’s concern with rising maximum salaries

and its 1983 budget."

It will cost the county $61,890 for 1982, $53,521 for 1983, and $32,500 for the first three months of 1984, Pepper said. FOLLOWING ARE details of the salary award, which Pepper said will amount to a total of 7.16 percent for 1982.5.7 percent for 1983, and 3.26 percent for the first three

months of 1984

Four officers who started in 1977 and were making $15,609 a year at the end of 1981 received wage hikes of $1,654 effective Jan. 1. 1982, and $500 on Jan 1, 1983 and 1984 to reach a salary of $18,263 Five officers who started in 1978 and were making $14,656 will receive a hike of $953 effective Jan 1, 1982. $1,654 effective July 1, 1982, and $500 on Jan. 1. 1983 and 1984 to reach a salary of $18,263. FOUR OFFICERS who started in 1979 and were making $13,704 will receive a hike of $952 effective Jan. 1, 1982, $953 ef-

Governor: Dredging Help Due Gov. Thomas Kean has notified County Freeholder James Kilpatrick that the county's commercial fishermen can expect some state help to alleviate their dredging problems in the near future In a recent reply to Kilpatrick's March letter urging state assistance for the in dustry, Kean wrote that he has iastructed his staff to "perform engineering and economic studies." He assured the freeholder that "something will be done this upcoming fiscal year." which begins July I Kilpatrick's letter to the governor preceded an April meeting with state of ficials about the financial needs of com mercial fishermen and dockowners. and a meeting last week in which both state and federal officials pledged closer codpera tion and better communications with the local industry on the dredging issue ALTHOUGH Cape May Harbor has not been dredged beyond the U.S. Coast Guard base fof the last 10 years, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official said the corps plans to dredge as far west as the commercial Cold Spring docks this year but plans no dredging toward the docks on the north side of the harbor ' Kean's reply to Kilpatrick arrived while the county freeholders were preparing a grant application for $500,000 in stateadministered Small Cities money, to establish a revolving loan fund for commercial fishermen, (see related story, page) and just before an even greater state commitment to the industry was proposed in Atlantic City. Speaking at a commercial fishing conference at Harrah’s Marina Hotel Casino, U.S. Rep Edwin B. Forsythe, R-N.J., pro^ posed that the federal government establish an American Fisheries Corporation to upgrade the U.S. fishing fleet and make it more competitive with foreign competition. A 1976 territorial law. that limits foreign fishing within 200-miles of the U.S. coast, is insufficient protection for American fishermen who compete against sophisticated and sometimes government subsidized foreign factory ships from their often outdated vessels, the congressman argued. BY ESTABLISHING the federal cor poration he proposed, the required amounts of money could be channeled into maintaining and overhauling the domestic fishing fleet.