CG Community Festival May 8-9 Will Mark County’s Designation

CREST HAVEN – Cape May County will celebrate its Coast Guard Community designation May 8-9 with a festival, according to Freeholder Will Morey at the Jan. 5 reorganization meeting.
The designation as a Coast Guard Community will formally recognize the ties between the county, municipalities and the service. The county has worked to acquire the recognition by compiling supporting documentation of the worth the area places on the service.
The thick document package was presented by freeholders to outgoing Coast Guard Commandant Robert J. Papp, Jr. in May 2014 when he visited Cape May and the Training Center. At that time Papp assured officials he saw no problem in the service granting the designation.
“This is a very special and important relationship that the county now shares with a very few cities and only one other county in the country,” said Freeholder Will Morey at the Jan. 5 meeting. “The (Coast Guard Training Center) comes upon its 100th year anniversary as a facility; really just a super special relationship with the county not only from an economic from a social and community fabric standpoint. The proclamation should be received during that time on the eighth.”
Morey said he and Freeholder E. Marie Hayes will be working together on that project.
The board hired Kristina Ranalli of Court House Dec. 23 to oversee the festival. Her term ran from Dec. 10 through May 30, 2015. Her fee will not exceed $10,000.
Ranalli will, according to the resolution, “Coordinate and facilitate planning, field and administrative work relating to the three-day festival to be held in or around May 2015, including identifying and coordinating the interests of multiple stakeholders in a manner that promotes and develops the interests of all residents of Cape May County and their Coast Guard neighbors, colleagues and friends.”