CAPE MAY – When the current City Council took office in January 2021, it did so after an election campaign dominated by the issue of public safety facilities. The issue had even come down to a referendum on two opposing plans in November 2020.
When the new mayor and council took office the following January, movement on new facilities for the fire and police departments was priority one.
Mayor Zack Mullock, with the support of the governing body, promised speedy movement on a new firehouse. It is currently under construction. The second part of the promise was that new facilities for the police department would not be far behind.
Cape May City hosted a required public scoping meeting with officials from the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) April 18. The purpose of the meeting was to hear public comment on the city’s plan to swap 4.6 acres of city-owned Sewell Tract land on Pittsburgh Avenue for 0.14 acres of parkland at the corner of St. Johns and Lafayette streets.
The plan places significantly more land under environmental protection in the state’s Green Acres Program in exchange for a much smaller but centrally located parcel on Lafayette Street that will be used for a new police station.
Cape May City Police Chief Dekon Fashaw Sr. presented a strong case for the proposal, making clear the important public purpose served by a police station located in the center of town.
He explained the easy access routes from the proposed location to the city’s business district, the beachfront, and the municipalities of West Cape May and Cape May Point, which receive their police services through arrangement with the Cape May department.
Fashaw also explained each of the other sites that had been considered as a home for a new police facility, the pros and cons of each site, and the reasons why the proposed location at St. Johns and Lafayette streets represented the best option.
The members of the public who spoke at the scoping meeting were uniformly supportive of the swap. One speaker, James Testa, is the president of the Concerned Citizens for Sewell Tract Preservation, a citizen nonprofit that fought for years to preserve the large portion of the tract that had been owned by a real estate developer. The opposition to the Concerned Citizens for much of that time was the DEP.
Calling the proposal “sound environmental policy,” Testa read from a support letter that the Concerned Citizens had already sent to the DEP.
A point made more than once in the discussions was that the proposed location for the new police facility was among the few potentially available spots that is not located in a flood zone.
Following an executive order by Gov. Phil Murphy, DEP has been actively developing regulations that, among many other things, seek to locate essential service facilities outside flood zones wherever possible.
Fashaw expressed the hope that the DEP could move expeditiously on the proposed swap, allowing the city’s governing body to continue the momentum on the new police station.
Public comment on the proposal is open until May 2. Comments may be submitted in writing to the DEP and the Cape May City Clerk. Addresses and information on how to submit comments are available on the city’s website.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.
