Your association is writing to you to bring you up to date on our progress and planned activities.
Last Friday our board and trustees met for our regular meeting . During the meeting we addressed many programs that we are working on for your benefit.
We are planning CPR classes for our members and the general public to attend.
We will be working on our bike safety program.
We will be finalizing our plans for a beach clean up day and hopefully coordinating our efforts with the local National Honor Society students.
We are meeting with a National organization regarding coastal flooding and perhaps produce a program to be presented at our next public meeting.
We have brought your concerns regarding our beaches and beach mats to our Mayor and he has done all he can do to make a tough situation better.
We brought your concerns regarding bike racks to our commissioners snd they responded by providing temporary bike racks until the NJ state and Feds provide the racks.
As you can see we are quite busy.
For the past 5 months we have also been planning a Public Forum so all of our candidates who are running for the commissioners office.
Those candidates are Mayor Michael Becker,. The two current Commissioners Mr. Amodeo and Mr. Blumberg. The fourth candidate is Calvin Tesler.
We had been working hard for months to produce this event and the Margate Business Association was working with us to co-sponsor this event.
Late last week the three incumbents suddenly and without ant communication with us sent a press release stating they will not be participating in this event. Their press release was loaded with false information. Here is our response.
To say we are extremely disappointed is an understatement. Below is our post from our Facebook page.
“We, the MHA, have received many e mails and phone calls from people throughout Margate regarding the three incumbents NOT wanting to participate in a public forum.
We were asked about the plan for the meeting. Please read on.
There was the same agenda planned as they did one other election time a few years ago.
Our Community would submit questions regarding the future of Margate.
The questions would be collected in boxes placed throughout Margate and through the internet.
The MHA and the MBA would review the questions together and choose , as a team,the top 15 questions.
The questions would be given to all four of the candidates so they could prepare for the public forum.
The event would have been moderated by The NJ League of Women Voters.
There would have also been time for the audience to ask questions.
After the Q and A,we were planning to have some food and refreshments for all who attend and the candidates could mingle with those in attendance and share more information and be asked additional questions.
This was all planned months ago. We discussed this with the Mayor back on February 15th at a breakfast meeting.
Their campaign manager told us in early March that the three commissioners were “All in”
Then suddenly this past week everything fell apart. The three incumbents and Mr.Tesler were all provided with several dates for the public forum. We had the approval from the school board for those dates to use the There was never any further talks with the MHA and the three current three incumbents .
They chose not to communicate with us and they informed the public ,through a press release their choice of non-participation in the public forum. They could have at least given this association the courtesy of a call .
We had the time, dates, location, questions and an unbiased moderator.
This is our community and it is unfortunate that we will not get to hear all four candidates at the same event.”