Hopefully the new HOA president won’t be running away from the substantial issues facing OG residents. Ocean Grove Boardwalk. June, 2020. Paul Goldfinger photo. Blogfinger.net. ©
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor of Blogfinger.net
The Home Groaners had a Zoom meeting today, June 27, but a lot of audio was lost.
We normally don’t pay much attention to the HOA because of their failure to actually accomplish anything vital that affects our lives as residents in the Grove. But we decided to attend this ZOOM session.
The highlight of the meeting was Joan Venezia’s North End report. She is the Chair of the North End Committee. She covered items which Blogfinger has already reported about and her presentation was clear and accurate for those few who don’t read BF.
However, she did offer some topics that were new to us in addition to some vital omissions.
She said that she has an unidentified source in the DEP (“deep moat?”) and that relevant reports can be found on the OGHOA.org website.
At the site, they do have the OGNED response to the first (April) DEP deficiency letter which rejected the proposed underground parking garage.
In that developers’ letter they say that the proposed underground garage “is not in a flood plane.”
Ms. Venezia reports that Vito Gadaleta, Neptune Township spokesman, told her that OGNED is still claiming that the underground garage will be approved, but Ms. Venezia said that if the garage is disallowed, then “the future of the project will be in jeopardy.”
Interestingly, Ms. Venezia made reference to the only approved North End plan from 2008, but the OGHOA have themselves reported that the “new plan, a scaled down plan,” is the one currently submitted to the Planning Board, but it never was officially approved by the Township. Wassup with that contradiction?
She did acknowledge that the “new plan” does still require State RSIS parking compliance and underground parking.
The North End presentation failed to mention the latest news which is the May 28 second deficiency letter from DEP which we reported on in 3 separate BF posts in the last week.
From that letter we mentioned concerns by the DEP about potential damage to historic artifacts. That issue was not mentioned at the HOA meeting nor were the comments from the DEP regarding “storm water management and water quality” at the North End, all important issues which need to be monitored by the HOA North End Committee.
Also missing in the presentation was information about the water table at the site. This topic was raised via ZOOM by a OG resident out of town.
Joyce Klein, a board member, reported that water depth measurements had been made at the site, and that 10-15 feet was found. This certainly seems to be problematic for an underground garage., but maybe the OGNED engineers could find a loophole.
In the latest letter the DEP demands that the HPC/North End report be submitted to them in Trenton. It sounds like OGNED conveniently left that out of their application.
Our piece about that notorious HPC North End report from November 2019, which was suppressed at the Planning Board that month, is linked below.
And, by the way, a new slate of HOA officers was nominated, headed by Richard Williams as president.
Hopefully he can cause his group to make some real progress in a number of areas, but his board will be the same old, same old…..They must remember that “Grover Lifestyles Matter.”
ST. VINCENT AND THE NIGHTHAWKS from Boardwalk Empire soundtrack.
St Vincent
Richard Williams has the potential to make the Home Owners Association great again!
George: Of course I know that anyone can attend an HOA meeting. But that’s not my point.
I believe this town needs an advocacy group that represents all residents. And both husbands and wives could be members.
It would have the community of residents as its only focus. iI would not waste our time by inviting history experts, climate change academics, exploitative developers and anti-defamation league speakers among other useless topics. It would not censor questions from the floor at meetings.
The group would organize demonstrations for useful reasons and would not allow anyone to be elected more than once. It would find ways to put pressure on politicians on behalf of Ocean Grove’s citizens, and it would attend important meetings and report back to everyone.
Expanding the membership will create a larger and more inclusive group, ready-made to be advocates when needed and it will be fearless in aggressive moves to achieve goals.
The HOA’s web site brags about accomplishments from more than 30 years ago, and this is from their mission statement:
“OGHOA continues its tradition of community involvement by closely monitoring development in Ocean Grove to ensure that it is consistent with the priorities of Ocean Grove homeowners and is in keeping with the historic character of Ocean Grove.” This is nonsense.
In addition its site says: “The mission of the Ocean Grove Home Owners Association is to enhance the quality of life in Ocean Grove.” Also nonsense.
Dear Paul, It is open to all residents. Mailing was sent to all 2,000 homeowners last February.
George
Sent from my iPhone
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I was pleased to ask the critical water depth question to which Joyce Klein responded 10 to 15 feet. A simple concept I put forward at the start of this debacle: “How deep to you go before you hit water ?”