Public Safety Bldg Debate Divides City

CAPE MAY – The City of Cape May dedicated its March 11 town hall meeting to the on-going controversy over a proposed Public Safety Building (PSB).  
There appeared to be a consensus that the city’s public safety departments are housed in deplorable facilities in need of being replaced. Yet the debate on how to provide new facilities has made a solution to the problem elusive.
The city has tried and failed to pass a bond ordinance allocating up to $15 million for construction of a facility on the site of the firehouse and fire museum on Franklin Street to Washington Street.
A bond issue requires a super-majority of the votes of the governing body. In Cape May that means it must have four affirmative votes to move forward. 
The City Council has been deadlocked at three votes for and two against the bond ordinance for months. 
Direct Appeal
The town hall meeting on the issue was an effort to appeal directly to the public to break the deadlock.
All members of council say they agree that the outcome will be a referendum, but even the best way to achieve that result lacks consensus.
While public health officials urge counties, local governments, and school boards to limit the use of large gatherings due to the outbreak of the coronavirus increasing its presence in the state, over 130 Cape May citizens gathered at Convention Hall to try to resolve the impasse among their representatives.  
The $15-million Design
The city’s architectural firm, USA Architects, presented first at the town hall. 
Architect Andrew Adornato presented artist renditions of the proposed three-story building which would total 34,982 square feet. Much of the building would present as a two-story structure with a small 4,000 square-foot third floor.
The design has the proposed firehouse section of the complex along Franklin Street with the police department component facing Washington Street. 
The Colonial House would not have to be moved, but the existing fire museum would be taken down.
Adornato said that 53 of the existing parking spaces would be preserved.
The presentation pointed to some safety features in the design, features that would remedy areas where the current facilities violate standards.
Although the design showed some common areas for joint use of the fire and police personnel, for the most part, the design attaches as one complex two buildings that would serve as a firehouse and police department.
With two full floors and a small third floor, the building would run for 124 feet along Washington Street and 182 feet on Franklin Street.
Adornato spent time on the exterior design of the building to show that the complex would fit in with the city’s Victorian architecture and historic district. 
Space to display the museum’s collection has also been allocated in the proposed building.
The budget estimate for the building is $15 million, with $14 million for construction, $400,000 for furniture and $600,000 for “soft costs.”  
The estimate was not a product from the same firm that had earlier estimated costs for the first designs at over $20 million.
Can the City Afford it?
Next on the agenda was the city’s outside auditor, Leon Costello, who presented a spreadsheet model of long-term city debt levels and debt service payments if the $15-million bond ordinance is adopted.
According to Costello, the $15-million price tag for the complex would probably mean an increase in the local purpose property tax rate of about one cent.  
His calculations took a conservative approach to estimate the rate the city would pay on any bonds, its ratable base and the need to preserve the city’s bond rating.
Costello’s spreadsheets showed a 20-year payback on the proposed bond issue at 3% would cost the city $20.3 million or $67,445 per year, per million borrowed over 20 years.
The nature of the analysis was to show the potential impact of a $15 million bond issue on the city’s debt levels and projected debt service. It was not intended as a model of other options.
The Argument for a PSB
In 2017, the city appointed an advisory committee to look into the need for new quarters for the municipality’s public safety departments.  
The committee, a mix of private citizens and municipal employees was chaired by ex-mayor Jerry Gaffney.
The life-span of the committee has crossed over the sitting terms of two different city councils in its three years of operation.
After many months and hundreds of hours of deliberation, the committee recommended a combined public safety complex on a location adjacent to the Franklin Street School, a historic building that will serve as the city’s new branch of the County Library system.
The committee argued that the combined complex allowed for synergy among the public safety departments, that the location was well placed for the response to emergencies across the municipality and that exploration of other sites for a combined police and fire department facility had shown the existing site to be the best.
The council members who favor the combined PSB on the Franklin Street site are Mayor Clarence Lear, Deputy Mayor Patricia Hendricks, and Councilman Shaine Meier.
Central to the argument for moving ahead with the proposed building is the perception that this cannot be delayed any longer.
Argument Against the PSB
Council members Zack Mullock and Stacy Sheehan were given time next to present their case in opposition to the proposed building and the $15-million bond ordinance.
Mullock and Sheehan argue that the location for a combined building is too small, forcing the construction of a building whose “streetscape is overpowering for the area.” 
They see the proposed complex as out of place in the heart of the city’s historic district.
Mullock, the council liaison to the Historic Preservation Committee (HPC), said that the HPC has repeatedly stated that the building’s scale would be too large, harming the historic nature of the area. 
Hendricks maintained that the HPC had played an important part in setting the design standards for the exterior of the building, coming to accept the design as the best option given the functions that had to be served.
While that debate ensued, no one explained why the HPC did not have a representative at the town hall to give its opinion rather than have others debate what that opinion is.
Mullock and Sheehan pointed to too little parking in the area especially with police officers from the West Cape May substation relocated to the complex and with the Franklin Street School in operation as a library.
The two said that the price was too high and that the city would probably end up paying more than the $15 million given that earlier estimates by a professional outside firm had put a price tag of $20 million on very similar designs.
What Mullock and Sheehan offered as an alternative was a firehouse on the site of the current one and a separate police department building on city-owned property at Broad and Elmira.
Public, Council Comments
Twenty different individuals took to the podium during the question-and-answer period, some more than once. The questions also brought city officials to the podium to respond. 
The unofficial scorecard was that support for the complex was expressed three times as much as opposition.
For many the central issue was time, the debate has run long enough. Conditions under which the public safety departments operate are deplorable, no more time can be wasted.  
William Murray urged the council to find a way to compromise and get the project done. 
“We are on the two-yard line,” he said. Dennis DeSatnick told council members it is “your responsibility to make this work.”
Several suggested that the compromise needed is one that gets the issue before the people in a referendum. Even here consensus seemed elusive with Mullock arguing for a referendum that would offer citizens a choice of plans, which by law would have to be non-binding. 
Supporters of the current plan want a quicker binding referendum on the bond issue.  
In the end, Lear urged citizens to make their voices heard.