Which way are we heading in Ocean Grove? Dec. 2003. Paul Goldfinger photo © Click to see better.
The Township Committee established a, Parking Task Force in response to the O.G. Home Owner/ Condo Owner Assoc. suggestions on how to cure our parking problems. The voting members of the task force will be the Stake Holders.
However, there are two sides to this Stake Holder coin, with each side of the coin having different aspirations of what the Task Force will recommend to the Committee.
On the head side of this coin is the Township and the OGCMA; with both having a financial stake in shoehorning more condo units into our small Historic District without parking, where parking conditions were already bursting at the seams by the early 1980;s.
The Township, the OGCMA, and the OGHOA do not want to solve our parking problems; they just want to treat the symptoms.
On the tail side of this coin are the rest of us, that just want to preserve Ocean Grove and have a place to park our cars, but we don’t get to vote.
I predict, when the task force flips this coin, it will always come up heads, on the side of making money—–over the historic preservation of our town.
A few months ago, at the public portion of a Committee Meeting, an attorney advised the Committee that “A historic district is a detriment to development.”
I can see where we are heading with all of this.
Jack Bredin
K.D. LANG with a Patsy Cline song: