Your turn Guest Column Carole Balmer Time to put public first on Sandy Hook Many, many thanks to the 1,500-plus signers and especially those who collected the signatures on petitions to save Sandy Hook National Park lands from private commercial development. Your continued interest and participation is the best hope for the Hook. At the April 12 National Park Service’s (NPS) meeting for the Wassel Realty/Sandy Hook Partners’ (SHP) traffic study, Deputy Superintendent Richard Wells read a letter from state Sen. Joseph Kyrillos. Sen. Kyrillos blessed SHP’s plans for Fort Hancock/Sandy Hook with his own endorsement and referred to various organizations that agreed with him. Fifteen hundred-plus petitioners were submitted following Senator Kyrillos’ by-proxy testimony. It was noted on the record that the petitioners’ signatures were tangible evidence of opposition to the NPS’s lack of duly noticed public hearings and the plans for privatization of park facilities. The petitioners also wanted full disclosure prior to "public" meetings and an objective oversight body to assure the taxpayers’ access to public property would remain unrestricted. On or about March 27, the traffic impact report for the SHP development was released for the April 12 meeting. There was little lead time for public review of the copious document prior to the meeting. It was unfortunate that the traffic expert for the scheduled 2 p.m. meeting was delayed (perhaps by traffic), arriving at 3:30. It was unfair that the NPS refused to reschedule and extend the public comment period for those who had taken the time to attend, signed up to speak and could not stay for the expert’s unknown ETA. The expert was hired by the NPS. Our tax dollars paid for his testimony and the 200-plus page report. Normally, it is considered a conflict of interest for a reviewing agency to pay for professionals that proffer the applicant’s position. In this case, the Park Service paid for the expert the applicant should have paid for. The professionals’ fees and the subsidies (our tax dollars) the NPS spent on the SHP’s traffic and environmental reports could have been used for saving and/or repairing one or more buildings that — according to the NPS — can only be done by Sandy Hook Partners’ development group. Until the identity of the projects’ backers are revealed, the actual uses and users’ plans for each structure are unveiled, all traffic and environmental reports are speculation. Long-term leasing of public lands cannot be given away without full disclosure, public comment/input and guarantees that the people’s rights to absolute use of Gateway area (the Hook) are preserved. At the April 12 meeting, Congressman Frank Pallone suggested a committee be formed to bring together interested parties to reach a compromise. If a committee can be established that serves the public’s interest first and foremost, that would be a good thing. However, history has proved time and again that when private profit margins are at stake, the public is left in the inevitable wake. It does not have to be that way. Mount Vernon was restored and maintained by resourceful groups that did not pick the taxpayers’ pockets to achieve their goals. But here, the Park Service (taxpayers’ employees) solution is to place public property/lands in private hands. It is not the workers’ (NPS) job to surrender the proprietary rights of the true owners (the taxpayers). The Park Service’s charge is to protect the Hook. The last of a publicly owned endangered species providing all the people with irreplaceable pristine ocean and bay-front open spaces deserves better than nebulous propositions and flawed procedures that foster fears for the Hook’s future. To best serve the public’s vested interest, the proposal process for developing Sandy Hook must be reopened. Carole Balmer is a resident of Holmdel