Save Sandy Hook.org

Save Sandy Hook Group Elects Officers to Keep Businesses Out of Fort Hancock

October 25th, 2003

The citizens' organization Save Sandy Hook held its first annual meeting this week, and reelected Mrs. Judith Stanley Coleman of Middletown as chairwoman and Ben Forest of Red bank as vice chairman.

The group was founded about a year ago to oppose the National Park Service plan to lease to a local real estate developer 36 Fort Hancock buildings that the NPS allowed to deteriorate for 29 years. The developer plans to repair and sublease them to other tenants, which will include commercial businesses. Save Sandy Hook maintains privatizing the buildings to a single, apparently inexperienced developer will lead to commercialization of the Fort.

Mrs. Carole Balmer of Holmdel was elected as corresponding secretary, James M. Coleman of Middletown as recording secretary, and Ron Gumbaz of Middletown as treasurer.

Mrs. Coleman told the group the National Park Service is “doing all that it can to ignore citizens’ protests” about its plans. “The fact that almost 2,000 people have signed our petition against the plan proves that the more people know about privatizing the Fort and letting businesses operate there, the more concerned they become,” she said. “A measure of the Park Service’s desperation is that in a recent report claiming their plan didn’t need an environmental impact statement, they deliberately ignored our hand-delivered petitions and then declared there is no public opposition to this project.”

She also noted that the Park Service also ignored the opposition expressed to the press by Gov. James McGreevey, U.S. Senator Lautenberg, and state Senate President John Bennett.

“Two local newspapers that have followed this controversy very closely have come out editorially against the NPS plan, another paper has expressed reservations, and I hope more public support will follow,” she said.

Mrs. Coleman warned the group, “Our work has just begun. It is so easy for people to say they favor preserving the Fort buildings, but it isn’t so easy to explain to people why this is a disastrous deal for taxpayers. Our job is to explain how this plan will bring the Fort under commercial control, and how it will adversely impact recreation and conservation at Sandy Hook.”

“It is absurd that after 130 years of protecting out natural and historical resources from commercial exploitation, we must now turn these precious resources over to very business interests we kept at bay -- just because the Park Service can’t do its job of protecting the buildings,” she added.

Other SSH board trustees elected are James Allen of Tinton Falls, Trudy Ditmar of Colts Neck, George Moffatt of Oceanport, Rosemary Bagwell of Middletown, Tara Ryan Killeen of Highlands, and Patricia and Peter O’Such of Fair Haven.

Press Releases :

November 13th, 2008

Save Sandy Hook will continue to figh...

...commercialization was never envisioned by the founders of the National Park Service