READER'S WRITE

Has the National Park Service Satisfied the Mandatory Requirement for Obtaining the Programmatic Agreement Approvals for the Ft. Hancock Proposal?

On October 26, 2004, a public meeting was held in the Ft. Hancock chapel on Sandy Hook. Its purpose was to enable the public to have input into the Programmatic Agreement process. National Park Service (NPS) personnel, both local and headquarters representatives conducted the meeting jointly with other Department of the Interior (DOI) Headquarters personnel from the Office of Historic Preservation, Washington, D.C. Due to the NPS proposal involving the lease of (a minimum) of 36 Ft. Hancock buildings which had previously been declared historic structures at a historic site by the Federal Government, special coordination, namely the Programmatic Agreement was required to be obtained by the NPS, before this project could go forward. The Programmatic Agreement is a mandatory requirement and could not be approved unless the required concurrences and signatures were obtained from the DOI Office of Historic Preservation and N.J. Department of Environmental Protection to name but two of many required approvals.

This approval process was, by no means a certainty, or a foregone conclusion. The NPS proposal calls for a 60 year lease of these historic National Park buildings to a for-profit private developer for use as a commercial business park. This would be a flagrant violation of the NPS regulations which state that only commercial ventures which enhance the recreational experience of park patrons should be permitted to operate on National Park land. A commercial business park would surely not qualify.

This Programmatic Agreement meeting concluded with no recommendation for approval being made that day. One outcome which did result from this meeting was the startling pronouncement by an NPS official that the lease document signed by Sandy Hook Partners on July 9, 2004 was not a real lease, but “an agreement to agree”. This was due to the fact that no real lease could be entered into prior to the Programmatic Agreement approval being obtained and this still remained an open issue.

This was a revelation that caused those rightfully opposed to this horrific proposal to take heart. The NPS has tried mightily to convince the public that with the signing of the 7-9-04 purported lease document, the Ft. Hancock matter was a “done deal set in concrete.” Three months later at the Programmatic Agreement meeting we now had the NPS stating that the 7-9-04 document was not a binding lease. How nice it that? The NPS had sought to deceive us once again.

One year and eight months have passed since then, and I have not heard one word from any source, that the Programmatic Agreement approvals have been obtained for the Ft. Hancock proposal. How can this be?

Why has the public been kept in the dark for so long on this matter? What is the NPS hiding?

Lest we forget, National Park land belongs to us, We the People. The NPS personnel are but stewards for our park lands. The NPS was required by Federal Regulations to have obtained the Programmatic approvals before they ever got this far into the process.

This NPS proposal for Ft. Hancock is flawed, flawed, flawed.

Please complain to your federal congressmen and senators and ask to have it stopped.

For additional information please go to www.savesandyhook.org.

Peter P. O’Such, Jr.
Fair Haven, New Jersey