(Open letter to the mayor and council of Fair Haven)

This follows my July 31 letter to you, your Aug. 10 hearing on the De Normandie Avenue Charles Williams house acquisition, and the Aug. 12 Planning Board hearing on River Rats.

Council has fabricated any urgency associated with rushing to act now before the Firemen's Fair and back-to-school to buy the De Normandie Avenue house. It has reversed itself about using grant money or not. It has disassociated its responsibility for acquisition from its responsibility for equitable enforcement.

It is time for straight talk, time to see things clearly and to see them whole. It is, however, difficult to see and to hear things clearly in our council chamber. Columns block our view of you and yours of us. Despite considerable money spent on renovation, the sound system hasn't worked for some time. There was standing room only both for De Normandie and River Rats. The room is too small.

Consider five alternatives for proceeding.

1. Spend no money at this time.

2. Spend less to buy De Normandie.

3. There are alternative riverfront properties near our dock or De Normandie or on Battin Road that may become available.

4. Fix and reopen Historic Fisk Chapel (Bicentennial Hall).

5. Enforce equally and comprehensively. We have had a borough culture of delinquent and selective enforcement.

With respect to capital and expense, council appears determined to spend now. How about committing for the first time since 1976 your will and the budget to fix historic Fisk Chapel and rededicate it in 2012, our centennial year? This would be a great event for Fair Haven. Our congressman would be invited for the ceremony. We need the facility for meetings. It is funded and purposed also to educate us about the people who developed our town before the Civil War and through the years to who we are today.

Timothy J. McMahon's 1991 map shows "Covert store" (1825) and "African Church" (1842-1873), both at Browns Lane. Of our earliest builders — Brown, Chandler, Corlies, Covert, Doughty, Quero, and Williams — four are of Native American and African origin, three of European. On our World War II monument are the names Brown, Chandler, Corlies, Covert, Doughty, Hendrickson, Minton, and Shippee.

Give us an accounting since 1994 of capital and expense monies expended on or committed for historic Fisk Chapel from the borough, other government agencies and private donors. I think of $42,000 in HUD money from the county spent on the handicap ramp in 2002, though the building has been closed to the public for this first decade of the 21st century.

Given the alternatives of buying De Normandie now or fixing historic Fisk Chapel, let's hear the recommendations of the Finance Committee, Historic Preservation Commission and Historic Association. There are riverfront property alternatives near our dock and on Battin Road.

Times change. Individuals come and go. Markets change. I recall eight years ago, during a Long Range Planning Committee town meeting, Terry Matson declaring, "The Masonic Hall is not for sale." The Charles Williams house has been on the market for a year. It has not been well presented to the market.

I could not walk on either De Normandie sidewalk to the beach. The borough allowed boats to be stored against the sidewalk side of the Yacht Works fence. The sidewalk on the opposite side is overgrown. A local Navesink Avenue businessman objected on Aug. 10 to what appeared to him to be a double standard of borough enforcement of commercial activity on Navesink Avenue and on the De Normandie Avenue beach.

The borough has not been fully responsive to complaints about litter, traffic and boat storage from homeowners on Grange, Hance, Pine Cove, Battin, Riverlawn, and De Normandie.

Forty-three years ago Battin and Riverlawn neighbors opposed River Rats' use of its property. In 1966 the Zoning Board of Adjustment balanced the interests of residents with those of the club, but for more than four decades borough enforcement inaction has been contrary to the interests of the neighboring homeowners.

On Aug. 10 the mayor and Councilman Jon Peters several times justified the $1.2 million price for De Normandie with a $1.4 million appraisal number. Again, I call for two current market evaluations from two of the real estate offices who list and sell the most waterfront property in Fair Haven, Little Silver and Rumson.

All of the foregoing considerations should be addressed by council in a town meeting at either the Youth Center or Sickles School in mid-September after the Firemen's Fair and back-to-school.
Rose Greco
Fair Haven