How Are We Going to Get Some Jobs Here?

Year after year folks scratch their heads and try to figure out how to get some year-round, decent paying jobs in this county and never seem to find a solution. Pull out old editions of the Herald and you find meetings and politicians making speeches dating back 30 years or more on the topic of what to do with this county’s job situation.
The question is always how can we get manufacturing to locate here or anything not re-lated to our short tourist season. I’ve thought about this for 12 years. The answer is “We cannot.”
Let’s face facts. No company is going to open some sort of factory here to make products no matter how cheap the local people here are willing to work, and the truth of the matter is they probably won’t work as cheap as the folks down South or in Korea or Mexico or Vietnam.
If you need to bring in some sort of raw materials for manufacturing, whether it is the ingredients for creating plastic or engine parts or whatever, we have no railroad service and only two major roads in and out and they are jammed with tourists coming and going four months of the year. Our county is flood prone and in the path of winter nor’easters and summer hurricanes.
Now tell me why on earth would anyone locate a manufacturing business here?
Something related to the seafood industry would make sense since the product is already here. I notice so many brands of frozen dinners in the grocery store from Stouffers to Healthy Choice. It would make sense to produce frozen seafood dinners in our county.
One glimmer of hope for the county is some corporations are relocating call centers sent overseas back to the U.S. You may have had frustrating phone conversations with the cable TV company, your credit card provider, the phone company or a help desk with someone in India or Malaysia or somewhere else where English is their second language.
Last month, U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY) proposed a bill that would encourage companies to move overseas call centers back to the U.S.
According to a story by David Delony for Call Center Services, “The U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act (H.R. 3596) would bar companies from receiving federal grants or guaranteed loans if they used offshore call centers. The Department of Labor would maintain a publicly available list of companies that use offshore call centers. People who answer phones at call centers would also be required to disclose the fact that they were outside the U.S. and transfer any callers to a U.S.-based representative on request.”
“We believe we’ve lost 500,000 good paying jobs,” Bishop said.
According to the story, “the biggest threats to jobs are India and the Philippines. The fact that the Indian government and the Filipino government are both mobilizing their lobbying forces so as to fight this bill underlines for me just how important it is that we pass this bill,” he said.
Other than opening call centers in this county, what else could we do to diversify? Maybe, we should just be what we are, a tourist and second-home destination. This county has always needed “rainy day attractions” since the beach is the major draw and when it rains, there is little to do.
The two museums at the county airport are a good idea. Maybe the entire airport should house museums other than a few small businesses and the new brewery.
It would be the logical spot for a Coast Guard Museum as suggested by Dr. Joseph Salvatore of Naval Air Station Wildwood. What other indoor attractions could be built at the county airport or near the ferry terminal?
Someone proposed an IMAX theater at the ferry a few years ago. It couldn’t hurt to have another movie theater, we’ve lost two. Someone else proposed a treasure/shipwreck museum at Schellenger’s Landing some years ago. I suspect the Morey organization could carry that off in grand style.
Personally, I would love to see a planetarium here, perhaps near to the zoo and college.
Whatever happened to the proposed dinner theater in Middle Township? Perhaps we need a firefighters museum here. We could certainly find volunteers to staff the building. I’d love to see antique firefighting equipment on display.
Television crews are in and out of Cape May almost weekly during the tourist season. We lack a facility here for television editing and production. I loaned my office to a reporter from a north Jersey television network earlier this year, so she could edit her story.
What happened to the idea of turning the old Everlon building at the airport into a school for filmmakers and studio?
I realize more tourist industry jobs are not going to be year round or pay much but that’s more than likely the best we are going to do here. I think the best solution for the unemployed or underemployed is to explore moving out of Cape May County.