In the 10 years between the 2010 and 2020 census, assessed property values went up by over 35% in Cape May County. The island communities continued to lose permanent population, but their assessed property values rose by over $10 billion.
We all know why. The island communities have continued the trend that has made Cape May County the state’s leader in second homes. These are homes that have driven up property values and caused a continuing migration of permanent residents away from the islands.
There has been a concomitant decline in the population of residents who can vote for municipal leaders. The 2020 census shows the two communities of Avalon and Stone Harbor with just about 2,000 total combined permanent residents, or just about 2% of the county’s population. The communities hold roughly 28% of the county’s total assessed real estate values.
We find the pattern across the county. With nearly 50% of the housing units as second or vacation homes, heavily concentrated on the county’s five barrier islands, we have an increasing population of individuals who have made major investments in the county with no effective ability to influence the election of municipal leaders.
Sure, they knew the rules when they competed for property in what recently has been a frenzied market, but that makes the behavior of some of those elected leaders all the more problematic. Not only are the second homeowners whose investments have made the county richer by the year denied the vote by state law, they are often denied effective voice in the machinations of local government.
At a time when it is increasingly obvious that large sums of money are going to be spent to defend the island communities from the onslaught of sea level rise and more frequent and more powerful storms, second homeowners are going to be asked to pay the lion’s share of the increased taxation while having occasional and periodic ability to even participate in local government.
In Avalon, the council president reads an unbelievably long legal statement at the start of every council meeting, making the remote video access to the meeting something the borough does for the convenience of the public as a “trial.” She later notes that the resolutions up for a vote are available to the public on a clipboard at the back of the room, a clipboard that is obviously not available to anyone who is remotely accessing the meeting. It is condescending and dismissive of the municipality’s obligation to do everything it can to promote access to and participation in public meetings.
In Cape May, once a pioneer in remote access to government meetings, property owners who may not be in residence much of the year have the ability to watch council and other public meetings but not to participate in them. With the ebbing of the Covid threat and the relaxation of state rules for remote access and participation, the city did away with remote participation completely. If you wish to make a comment or ask the elected governing body a question, you must make the trip to City Hall and do it in person, even if that means coming from two states away. That is certainly not because the technology will not allow any other option.
Middle Township, the largest in area and second largest in population, refuses to give residents an option for remote access. There had been talk during the Covid scare of maintaining some form of remote access permanently. That talk died. A resident can travel to the meetings or miss them completely. Remote live access, the possibility for asynchronous archival access at a convenient time for the resident, these are not priorities for the township.
Across the county, the basic pattern is the same. Governing bodies, planning boards, and other essential elements of local governance are conducted to meet the letter of the state’s Sunshine Law. They are not conducted in a spirit of outreach, seeking to ease and even encourage greater participation in their actions. Documents are often not available online, presentations are made away from the camera, even when video access is provided, participants, including elected officials, don’t speak into their microphones and ignore public comments when they are told they cannot be heard, topics come up for discussion that clearly the council members have knowledge of, but no one takes the time to explain them to the watching public.
In Stone Harbor, the property owners association presented to the council a financial analysis of what will need to be spent to make the community more resilient in the face of climate threats. That analysis included a projected 46% increase in taxation. In several meetings since that was presented, it has not been discussed once by the governing body in a public meeting. There may have been discussions elsewhere with leaders of the association, but those, if they occurred, have not been shared in a public meeting, even though two thirds of the homeowners in the borough do not belong to the association.
We are currently faced with a need for planning, careful execution and large expense related to flood mitigation, land use rules, commercial and residential development and other issues that take on added importance in the face of environmental challenges. Yet, many of those with significant investment in the county have little practical say in what is done.
If the actions of many municipal governments are not rooted in disdain for public participation, there is, at the very least, an obvious lack of concern. Success in meeting the challenges we face depends on public support and that cannot be limited to the small pockets of permanent residents in many island communities.
If legal arrangements do not make public officials dependent on the votes of many of the taxpayers who do not live here year-round, the sheer size of the challenges we face and a basic sense of fairness in government should underlie that dependence.
We call on municipalities to open meetings, make more information remotely accessible, use technology to increase participation rather than limit it, encourage wider public involvement, and think about the remote public every time you sit back, away from your microphone.
Make the effort because it is the right thing to do and because we need the support of our nonpermanent residents if we hope to succeed against the challenges we face.
——–
Bible Quote: “A man who is kind benefits himself, but a cruel man hurts himself.”Proverbs 11:17
