In response to pressures to urgently generate a Grover Homestead Restoration Committee report:
(1). Regarding prospective delays with the Grover Homestead Restoration Committee, let me be clear. When the paid professional township staff acts as quickly as it expects its unpaid volunteers to, perhaps we can talk. Those who are paid and have a fiduciary responsibility have been derelict from the get-go. We do not need to curry their favor; we do not need those who twice voted to put a part of West Windsor’s history into a dumpster for anything. We have the law, not the township attorney, on our side. Our constituents are the West Windsor taxpayers, history, and our future.
(2). Storm damage litters the Township a full three-plus weeks after Sandy despite more equipment and horsepower than the ancient Egyptians had to build a pyramid. The mayor and staff have had three years and three months –– from February, 2009, until May, 2012 –– to do the very tasks it expects volunteers to jump through hoops to complete.
Volunteers historically did the heavy-lifting in West Windsor under the previous form of government, township committee. Instead, since 1993, we have been operating under a directly elected, fully accountable mayor-council form. How is that working for us and where are the documented savings? Silence.
(3). The Grover House and Homestead are a testimonial to endurance and American values. Due to the sniping hand(s) of the West Windsor mayor and his administration, this property has withstood the best Mother Nature and our misguided bureaucrats could muster. I will not be a party to being bullied by an administration that has stonewalled every attempt we made to get timely answers. I have the paper trail with time-date stamps, photographs, and certified letters to the State of New Jersey to prove my points in the court of public opinion.
(4). Through a friend, I am hopeful to deliver an official, professional insurance adjuster estimate for the damage to the Grover House. This friend is here from out of state to effect state-wide insurance claims to help our residents. The township did not file an insurance claim for the Grover damage. The house has been stripped threadbare. The township administration twice recommended spending $60,000 to raze the house. Historic window replacements and front door with transom might cost $43,000. So where is the money from the sale of missing items brokered by whom?
(5). We will deliver our volunteer report to cover a property abused and trashed by others. Why is our report more important than an official police investigation that will shed light on why the Grover House was eviscerated? Why have the mayor and administration been silent on this and where have they been during this odyssey? Why did they not act quickly to recover items removed from the Homestead?
(6). No one wants to get this matter resolved more quickly than the volunteers who have made countless trips to the Grover property and attended many Restoration Committee meetings. We have dealt with rumors of soccer fields on the farm, none of which came from our committee. We invited the petition-gatherers to attend our meeting/s to no avail.
(7). A municipal township enterprise with a $37 million and growing annual operating budget holds public meetings on a whim. The township has not even posted its agenda barely 24 hours prior to a rescheduled meeting.
However, is the entire township somehow being held hostage by a volunteer committee trying to save a 170-year-old farmstead? The desecration of the boyhood home of our township’s most decorated military veteran, Thomas Grover, lies squarely on the directly elected, fully accountable mayor and his administration.
As always, I invite your comments and corrections.
Pete Weale
Vice Chair, Grover Homestead Restoration Committee
