CAPE MAY – The Friends and Neighbors of East Cape May (FAN ECM) has filed its answer to a lawsuit brought by the City of Cape May seeking to exempt two recently passed parking meter ordinances from voter referendum.
The response filed in Superior Court late last week denies the city’s allegations and asks the court to dismiss the lawsuit. The group contends that settled law in New Jersey makes it clear parking meter ordinances lack the specific statutory authority necessary to be exempt from a voter referendum.
In addition to upholding the referendum, the group’s answer asserts separate, independent counterclaims to have the ordinances struck down on a variety of statutory and constitutional grounds, including that they are arbitrary, capricious, unreasonable, improper and invalid for lack of due process and equal protection.
A spokesman for the East Cape May neighborhood group, Jim Testa, stated, “This answer demonstrates our determination to defend the rights of Cape May voters to have the final say on local revenue measures that will blight a historic neighborhood and degrade the quality of life for those who live there. Although we thought the ordinances were arguably illegal when passed, nevertheless, we first took the high road of voter democracy and obtained the support of 22% of the voters in the last election for a referendum. However, instead of accepting a fair vote, the City responded with a lawsuit that wastes public funds, snubs voters and confuses the issues.”
Testa added, “The City continues to mischaracterize the ordinances in the press as a smokescreen to mask its weak case. This is not a lawsuit over whether the voters should decide traffic control and public safety measures properly left to comprehensive planning coordination. It is a case about voters’ rights to decide if Cape May will abandon preserving historic, residential neighborhoods and their quality of life by stuffing them with parking meters for more revenue. Everyone who has followed the passage of the two ordinances knows they were never advocated or considered as necessary for safety or traffic, but only to raise material amounts of income– just like beach tags, vendor licenses and other user fees. The ordinances themselves concede that traffic in the East End is so sparse that meters are not needed for parking space turnover–in fact, there are no time limits or turnover requirements– just the need to feed meters continuously with cash. Further, even ignoring the unfortunate statistic that angled parking actually has a higher accident rate than parallel parking, the city has never claimed it needed to install angled parking for safety reasons. Angled parking is just a pretext to configure more spaces to locate more revenue generating meters in the same area. We expect the court will see through the City’s diversionary attempts to make the substance of the ordinances into something they are not.”
“Likewise, recent claims made on behalf of the city that it isn’t suing anyone to get a declaratory judgment are just false. In fact, five individual voters who sponsored the referendum petition have been sued individually. Just because the city isn’t seeking damages doesn’t mean that taxpayer funds aren’t being used to bring proceedings against individual voter defendants causing them to spend their own personal resources to defend themselves. Regrettably, the city had every opportunity to reach a solution here, but it chose the hard line of taking the voter petitioners to court. That speaks volumes about the current City leadership’s lack of respect for the democratic process. ”
“The FAN-ECM is vigorously opposing the city’s declaratory judgment attempt and expects to prevail in court,” Testa added. Now that it has filed counterclaims against the ordinances, the group has preserved a legal alternative already chosen by the city–that is, formal court proceedings– to nullify the ordinances as unlawful. “Since we also think these ordinances should be struck down on other grounds, if the voter referendum is not upheld, we can now challenge them directly as part of responding to the City’s case. When you make claims in court like the City has, you have to expect counterclaims.”
The referendum petitioners are represented in the suit by Sandford Schmidt of the firm of Schmidt & Tomlinson of Medford and Steven J. Tripp of the firm of Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer, P.A. of Woodbridge.
The group’s Web site is www.eastcapemay.org .
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