Lafayette Street Park Committee Revamped

CAPE MAY – Cape May City Council restructured its Advisory Committee on the Lafayette Street Park including the appointment of a new chairperson. 
The April 17 resolution passed on a split vote, 3-2, and once again put on display the rift that exists between Bea Pessagno and Roger Furlin on the one hand and Mayor Clarence Lear, Shaine Meier, and Patricia Hendricks on the other.
Resolution 126 came at the end of the agenda and was not included in the documents available to the public before the meeting, documents routinely published on the city’s website along with the council agenda.
The resolution appointed Michael Jones as the new chairperson, altered some of the membership, and made Meier the council liaison to the committee.
Lear spoke to the reasons for the changes at the meeting, citing the fact that the committee, as earlier composed, had met only once since fall 2017.
Stating that the park project needed more energetic leadership, Lear praised Jones, saying that he had met with the new chair “who is excited by the project.”
Pessagno said that she asked to be removed from the newly constituted group. At the meeting, she said the restructuring of the committee was not done with transparency. There were arbitrary decisions to remove citizens from the committee, and some were not even told, she said.
Lear said individuals were given “bad information that they were being removed.” Lear added that the council wants to see “this project move forward.”
Almost lost in the exchange was an attempt by Furlin to table the resolution.  Furlin said he was concerned that the moves being made might endanger the existing $1.2-million grant from the county Open Space program. 
His concern was that the change in membership was coincident with city plans to alter the established plan for the park and thus endanger funding.
Lafayette Street Park Plan
Planning for the creation of the Lafayette Street Park goes back almost a decade. 
The concept finally presented to the public in 2015 included four phases with a playground, garden area, refurbished athletic fields, a dog park, nature trails, and some additional parking.
The Cape May School Board became a partner in the process creating what then-mayor Edward Mahaney described as a modern approach to education with “outdoor classrooms and nature trails” that would help bring classroom concepts to life for students.
The state Economic Development Authority (EDA) contributed $1.5 million in grant funds for Phase One which included the playground already completed. 
Almost $1.2 million in Open Space funds have been secured for Phase Three, a series of recreation fields running from Dellas Field to St. John Street.
Dellas Field would be refurbished in Phase Two. The nature trails along Cape Island Creek would be the subjects of Phase Four.
The multipurpose park concept was warmly embraced by the public. Grant funding was secured, and a city bond issue was adopted in November 2016 for $1.5 million.
At that time, Mahaney said the bond issue “put funding in place so the new council can proceed with the park plan.”
Mahaney had already lost the 2016 election to Lear.
Parking
Parking has long been a problem in Cape May. It remains a frequent stumbling block for commercial or recreational development efforts. A parking garage was at the heart of one recent plan for establishing redevelopment zones in the city, a plan that aroused considerable public dissent.
Efforts to expand the parking component of the Lafayette Street Park plan may be a source of discord in the future of the park.
Both Furlin and Pessagno have alluded to earlier efforts to test the feasibility of the park site as a home for a new firehouse, freeing up space in a reorganized block at Franklin and Washington streets and thus creating room for a parking structure as part of the earlier redevelopment plans.
Pessagno said in the meeting that no structure could be placed on the land. She claimed that confirming that fact cost the committee two months last summer.
The parking problem continues to grow, and the available spaces to which one can look for solutions are shrinking. 
Recently, the city has confirmed contracts to study the feasibility of locating a public safety complex on the site of the current firehouse and museum. 
On April 18, the county released an RFP for a feasibility study to relocate the county library branch to the Franklin Street School, a move that would certainly complicate the parking situation in a key part of the city.
Some advocates of the original Lafayette Street Park plan have resisted expanding parking at the cost of a reduced Dellas Field or some other accommodation.
Whether the newly formulated committee sees its mission as moving more aggressively on the original plans for the park or whether it advances some modifications to those plans remains to be seen.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.