Ocean City takes hands-off, gentle approach to enforcing its beach rules

On a brilliant Sunday morning in Ocean City, two hours before lifeguards go on duty, code enforcement officer Tim Miller drives an ATV up beside a pair of canopies pitched at 99th Street.

A family of New Jersey tourists sits beneath the side-by-side sunshades at the water’s edge.

Miller greets Justin Moyer and tells him, kindly but directly: Separate those, please — it’s the law.

After some banter about buying the Salt Life-branded canopies at Costco, Moyer politely inquires: “So, you want us to move it now, or just, like, when we set up tomorrow?”

“No, no,” Miller replies, “needs to be moved now. Right now, it’s not with code. But good question.”

This is how Tim Miller, 64, is spending his summer: working for the town of Ocean City as a code enforcement employee, checking on canopies to see if anyone’s under them, and enforcing other rules. Riding a cherry-red quad bike up and down the beach, he covers the stretch from 60th Street to 100th Street, rain or shine.

It’s part of Ocean City’s response to the summer of 2025, when visitors pushed the limits of seaside etiquette: setting up canopies on the beach at daybreak but leaving them empty for hours, claiming the highly sought-after front row.

The longer it went on, the more elaborate the tent cities became, with grouped-together canopies blocking parts of the beach for lifeguards, first responders and other beachgoers. Resort leaders decided to act.

Butch Arbin, captain of the Ocean City Beach Patrol, pushed for the initiative to prevent his lifeguards from needing to police canopies and other nagging code violations. The town gave Arbin a budget, and Miller and five others got hired before Memorial Day to serve in a brand-new role for the town: beach code enforcement.

Miller primarily enforces a resort law that says canopies can’t be left unattended before 10 a.m. Violating canopies get marked with an orange tag. The idea is for Miller to circle back to tagged canopies, try to connect with the owners, and explain how the law works.

Sometimes, as he’s tagging, people run up to him from a great distance, like panicked drivers spotting their car being towed. He explains that, under the law, someone has to stay with the canopy until 10.

“After 10 o’clock, you can do whatever the heck you want,” he said, a phrase he repeated several times that Sunday.

He’s also authorized to write municipal citations of up to $5,000. So far this year, he hasn’t written any. He calls it a hands-off approach, one backed by town officials for the summer of 2026.

“Ninety-nine percent of the people are very nice. They understand that I’m here to do a job,” Miller said. “They’ve been affected by people setting up these canopies and sometimes they don’t come back until 12, 1, 2 — especially where all these high-rises are, where real estate’s kind of tight.

“That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing, because people don’t believe it’s fair.”

A federal retiree from Hyattsville, Miller has been an Ocean City tourist for decades; this summer he and his wife are staying at their beach house. He described the gig as less stressful than his job as an auditor with the U.S. Treasury Department, where he worked for 21 years.

“I like the sun, I like the water, I like the sand,” said Miller, his face slathered with sunblock. “I like talking to people like me. I guess I’m an extrovert to a certain degree. It fits my thing. I wanted something fun to do, and also make a little difference.”

Working from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., the code enforcers are also watchful for other violations across Ocean City’s 10 miles of beach, like drinking, smoking, playing music too loud, digging deep holes, or having a dog on the beach. They also police enclosed tents, which are allowed but can’t exceed a height of 3 feet.

Every encounter gets documented. Through Aug. 15, Arbin said, the code team had written 2,810 canopy tags and explained the rules to 5,191 people. They had also come across 542 dogs and addressed 1,574 other violations.

Four citations had been issued, Arbin said: three for improper canopies and one for a dog on the beach.

Since code enforcement efforts have picked up steam, Miller said he’s been seeing fewer canopies, but he’s also noticed tourists are now using beach chairs or umbrellas to claim their front-row spots and “avoid a talking-to.”

At 87th Street, Miller introduces himself to a man with a bulldog on a leash. Dogs are allowed on the beach only between May and September.

“If you could take him off the beach, that’d be awesome,” he says.

Casey Musick, from Catonsville, replies that he only came out onto the sand to greet his son, who was fishing, and decided to bring along his dog, Ronin.

“Tell ’em I was breaking the law,” Musick says cheekily.

Ronin lets out a snarly bark as Tim fires up his ATV and wheels away.

Miller recalled seeing a woman with a dog on the beach who broke into a sprint to escape his oncoming ATV. He caught up to her at the dune line at 90th Street.

“I was shocked. She was a grown woman. I said, ‘Next time, it’s gonna be a fine.’ Usually when I cut people a break, they don’t know it. But the people that are locals, they know,” he said. “She basically got her hand caught in the cookie jar.”

Riding north on the beach, Miller zigzags his noisy ATV to avoid seagulls, beach blankets and charred bonfire remains. The faces of small children light up when the ATV approaches; sometimes he’ll let kids sit in the driver’s seat as their parents watch.

“It’s good PR,” he said, “especially after I talk to someone about a canopy.”

At 78th Street, there’s a red-and-blue canopy, half-raised, with nobody inside. This one is Buffalo Bills-themed — so it sticks out like a sore thumb to Miller, considering most he sees are the same cheap blue-and-white-striped model from Amazon.

This canopy is not unattended. Walking from the water to greet Miller is its owner, Vince Springer, from Vestal, New York. Miller jokes that he’s used to seeing mid-Atlantic football teams represented. The two share a moment of repartee at the expense of Pennsylvania NFL fans.

“I play by the rules and I think it’s a great idea,” Springer said. “Get your canopy up, but don’t abandon it for 10 hours, you know? I’m all about that. I’m cool with that.”

That Springer knew the canopy rules, Miller said, is “music to my ears.”