CAPE MAY — A committee asking for a voter referendum on a $10.5 million bond ordinance passed by council to finance the construction of a new convention hall presented a petition with 222 signatures at City Hall June 9 asking council to rescind the bond ordinance or face a voter referendum.

Petition committee members Virginia Hesel and Jo Tolley, accompanied by volunteers Jean Powick and Susannah Newman, marched into City Hall at 1 p.m. presenting City Clerk Diane Weldon with the petitions.
Hesel read a statement outside City Hall. She said the committee supports Mayor-Elect Edward Mahaney Jr. and noted that his was the first signature on the petitions.

“We have also received the signatures of numerous other former mayors and councilpersons, not to mention a valued cross-section of full-time, voting residents,” said Hesel.

She presented the reasoning behind the petition:
• “The process has been completely backwards. First should have come an agreed upon design, arrived at through open, community participation and a multiple-bid process including known budgetary limits. It serves no public interest to embark on a multi-million dollar project with only one architectural design, presented by a firm hand-picked by our City Engineer. Rescinding the bond and collecting multiple bids will give Mahaney that opportunity.”
• “There has been inadequate discussion with the residents about the nature of a new or rebuilt Convention Hall: its look, its scale, its purpose, its placement, its parking and infrastructure requirements, and its total cost relative to all these questions, not to mention questions of the city’s interim needs/plans.
Only a few people have been invited by the Convention Hall Committee to express opinions - and those individuals, for the most part, spoke on behalf of particular (not all) organizations, not the public at large.”
• “The current contract with Architects Kimmel-Bogrette should be cancelled. Then, architects from all over the mid-Atlantic (perhaps even beyond) should be invited to bid, to compete for the privilege of designing a multi-use community and performance facility in a small, unique city with historic landmark status.”
• “The creation of a new facility does not have to cost the 15 million now projected. It does not have to contain all the aspects in the current design to be wonderful. For example, an open-space concept, with raised, folding and moveable seating units eliminates the need for a proscenium stage altogether. This reduces the cost considerably and allows for important flexibility of use.”
• “Let’s be clear; the waiver is just that — a waiver. It only postpones $500,000 of the cost by postponing the down payment on the bond. And although this waiver, gotten just hours before the council’s vote, is attached to this ordinance, Mahaney will be able to apply for, and receive, another waiver for the new ordinance. Since we do not know the design, or therefore the cost (which ultimately could be considerably less), we do not know the amount of a new bond or its waiver and celebration.”

Hesel projected the timeframe for constructing a new Convention Hall at three years.

Tolley said the petition committee did not attend a meeting of the Taxpayers Association of Cape May because the association initially requested a meeting closed to the public and press. (See related story page A1). She said the petition committee was also busy gathering signatures for the June 9 deadline.
Tolley said it was a very easy process for the committee to gather signatures going door-to- door.

Powick said costs of a new hall could reach $15 million taking into account an additional $600,000 for raised seating. She said it was not clear to her if a 10 to 20 percent contingency cost was included in the cost estimate.

Newman asked what the cost of stage lighting and a sound system would add to the project. Powick said a 2006 report from Johnson Consulting estimated a $15 million cost.

Christine Miller, who spearheaded a voter referendum on reconstruction of the Washington Street Mall, told the Herald by phone that the Convention Hall project mirrors the mall reconstruction because in both cases, the city said, “give us the money, we have to have the money first and then we’ll be able to do the project.”

Miller answered Convention Hall Committee Chairman Skip Loughlin’s statement that the Washington Street Mall referendum accomplished nothing. Voters defeated a $6.4 million bond ordinance, that included mall reconstruction, two years ago, of which $5 million was earmarked for the mall, she said.

She said the referendum effort opened up meetings of the city’s Revitalization and Convention Hall committees and made spread sheets available to the public which showed the actual cost of the mall was between $2.4 million and $2.7 million. Miller said council passed a new bond ordinance for $3.5 million to finance the mall project with the winning bid coming in at $2.8 million.

“To date, the referendum has saved the city, on the mall, to this point, $1.5 million in bonds,” she said.