CAPE MAY – In its first meeting since the elections, Cape May City Council Nov. 14 followed its custom of seating the new members-elect with the council. Intended as a transition aid, the joint seating of current and newly-elected members will continue until the reorganization meeting in January. At the table was newly-elected Mayor Clarence “Chuck” Lear who defeated Edward Mahaney who has served as the city’s mayor since 2008, and Patricia Hendricks who won Terri Swain’s seat on the council. Swain did not run for reelection.
The agenda for the meeting was briskly attended to with none of the controversies that characterized some of the pre-election council meetings. Among the actions on the short agenda was the promotion of two police sergeants to lieutenant as the city continued to fill in the command structure of the police department where a number of positions for command officers had been vacant for more than a year.
The department now has a chief of police, recently-appointed Anthony Marino, a captain, Robert Sheehan, and two newly-promoted lieutenants, John Bobik and Dekon Fashaw.
City Manager Bruce Macleod noted that this is one of the few occasions when the city has elected to have two lieutenants on the force together. Both Bobik and Fashaw have been long-serving members of the department. Bobik began as a summer officer in 1991 and Fashaw, a native of the city for over 40 years, has been a member of the force for 19 years.
The promotions were announced as Lear, the department’s previous lieutenant, sat at the main table as the mayor-elect. Both newly promoted officers were welcomed warmly by the public in attendance.
Beach Tags
The city announced the winners of their annual contest to design beach tags for the upcoming season. Young people from the surrounding schools have an opportunity each year to submit designs for the seasonal, weekly and veteran’s tags.
This year’s winners were Deana Mustafa, seasonal, Colin McMullin, weekly, and Christina McCann, veterans. Each winner received a document from the council with their winning design superimposed in the center along with a $50 gift card. The tags with the new winning designs will be ready for sale when the early purchase period begins in the spring. In addition, the winning student’s name will appear on each tag that is sold in 2017.
Other Business
Council adopted a bond ordinance providing $1.5 million for continued work on the Lafayette Street Park project. Macleod noted that the resolution was silent on what phase of the work the funds were designated for so that the money could support any of the work that remains including returning to the phase one area of the project, recently completed, in order to provide restrooms for park users.
The city’s open space fund will be supplying $1 million of the funding covered by the resolution with only $500,000 representing new debt.
Macleod also announced that the city’s dividend from the Joint Insurance Fund (JIF) this year is just over $70,000, up from $50,000 last year. The city intends to use the dividend toward its annual JIF premiums.
Mahaney reported on a recent meeting concerning the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) maps for region two, which includes New York and New Jersey. Consideration of a New York City appeal which centers on calculations used for FEMA projects in the working maps could delay the final approval of new maps from the expected 2017 date to 2020.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.
Cape May – Governor Murphy says he doesn't know anything about the drones and doesn't know what they are doing but he does know that they are not dangerous. Does anyone feel better now?
