To the Editor:
Voters in Cape May should vote out Chuck Lear and Patricia Hendricks. Vote for a $5 million firehouse. If need be, the police can stay where they are now, at City Hall and West Cape May. City Hall needs repair anyway, and an addition could be added over the sally port at the rear.
Not only can we not afford it, there is another reason not to vote for the $15 million public safety building. That is its location with the new proposed library.
Remember when Lear first ran for office, he proposed selling City Hall for condos, and building a parking garage in the City Hall parking lot?
Remember when Lear and Hendricks got into office they tried to sneak redevelopment of the Acme-City Hall block first through the Cape May Planning Board and then, with Shaine Meier’s vote, through Cape May City Council, without voters even knowing what was happening?
Folks found out and their plan was foiled, but later it turned out that one of Curtis Bashaw’s architect’s secret plans for the redevelopment was what Lear proposed when he was running for office: City Hall was to become “retail, condos” and City Hall’s parking lot was to become a parking garage, including where the firehouse stands.
Then, not to be deterred, Lear, Hendricks, and Meier hired a redevelopment lawyer to try again, this time with another redevelopment zone at the Beach Theatre, too.
Lear and Hendricks know that there is not anywhere near enough parking for a new public safety building and new library at City Hall. That’s why their new master plan proposes that precisely because of the new public safety building and library at City Hall, that the city should “promote redevelopment” in the Acme-City Hall block. Translated, this means more stores and a parking garage paid for by residents in this block.
The master plan also recommends Lafayette and Washington streets become one-way streets to serve this commercial expansion. Imagine, in addition to your new future tax bills, how, if a parking garage were built in the Acme parking lot (justified by a public safety emergency – no place to park because of the new public safety building and the new library), life would be changed in Cape May, and not for the better.
Now, instead of parking in the Acme parking lot to go to church, the Acme, the mall, funerals, City Hall, etc., we would have to go into and use a parking garage paid for by residents.
How would this affect our National Historic Landmark District status? Would people still want so much to live in or visit Cape May?
