Convention Hall: Why Is It Still An Issue?

To the Editor: 
City of Cape May is once again flexing its litigious muscles over Convention Hall.
It is difficult to grasp the idea that more than five years ago, a $10.5 million Convention Hall would be conceived, designed, planned and built on the oceanfront without due diligence regarding availability, cost and requirements of insurance coverage and taking extraordinary precautions to assure it not only met but exceeded Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood zone requirements.
City officials reportedly urged and prodded architects, builders, and subcontractors to complete construction in time for a Memorial Day 2012 opening. It went off without any hitch as far as taxpayers and visitors knew.
Everything should have been in order, right? Wrong! The newly constructed building was not compliant with FEMA guidelines on building elevation. Someone forgot to measure twice and cut once. 
Someone also forgot to assure the necessary flood insurance was in place. If this had been done, surely the elevation problem would have been known far in advance of Memorial Day.
It was a frightening thing to learn five months after the celebratory opening day that there was inadequate or no insurance coverage almost simultaneously with learning Superstorm Sandy was heading up the Atlantic coast.
Cape May and the Convention Hall dodged a huge bullet when Sandy bypassed us and regrettably devastated our neighbors to the north.
While key elected and appointed city officials knew the insurance snafu before the November 2012 election day, Cape May voters did not. It was only post-election that the rest of us found out about the non-compliance with FEMA regulations and the inadequate insurance policy. Subsequently, to the taxpayers’ collective relief, it was learned Convention Hall was partially insured. It was difficult for taxpayers to keep up with what was real, what was hoped for and what might yet be revealed.
One hedge used by the city in advance of stormy weather was to pile sand on the ocean side of Convention Hall. Another hedge was to budget seemingly excessive funding for legal fees on the apparent assumption that Convention Hall was vulnerable, and so was the city and taxpayers.
There was considerable hand-wringing and bloviating about what went wrong with Convention Hall that outweighed any substantive action to redress errors in judgment and practice until a month ago. In August, the city filed suit against the firms responsible for designing and constructing Convention Hall. Four years have passed. It’s election time again. Is the timing of the city’s action planned? Serendipitous? Convenient?
The city, the private construction firm it hired, the architectural firm with which it contracted and the subcontractors point multiple fingers at each other. Meanwhile, the room housing the sump pumps and fire suppression equipment continues to be at an inadequate 8.5-foot level. It was a matter to be negotiated and resolved with the architects and builders five years ago. Since we knew it was an issue five years ago, why is it still an issue?  
Is the city’s lawsuit more than a patently transparent effort to deflect attention away from the lack of needed resolution on this hot button topic in our community?
It is not unfair to speculate that the filing was timed to make sure even the discovery process of the lawsuit could not be completed within the next two months. Is the city’s case so flimsy? Why else wait more than four years to take action? Why continue to try to collect the value of higher insurance premiums ad infinitum rather than pursuing and negotiating a permanent solution to the Convention Hall woes?
Restoring trust in our local government and returning common sense to our city procurement practices should be a top priority for every resident and taxpayer. 
ED. Note: The author is a candidate for the office of mayor of Cape May.