Abolishing Environmental Committee was necessary

The use of Photoshop pictures taken from the Internet by the Vernon Township Environmental Commission to try to "push“ the purchase of Camp Sussex with Open Space Funds, (back in June of 2014), implied Camp Sussex was an epicenter of local heroin activity. Graphic pictures posted in our municipal center lobby, courtesy of the committee, intended to shock residents and was nothing more than a public relations campaign. These pictures, as well as other items on display, apparently had originated from EC members’ collective vivid imagination and were eventually determined to be fraudulent. A petition drive to stop the purchase of Camp Sussex using Open Space funds was successful. The origin of a fire at Camp Sussex which occurred immediately after the Committee’s campaign to purchase the property, remains under suspicion to this day.
As well, a $350,000 tree grant drafted by the outgoing EC is still under review by the NJ State Department of Community Affairs.
Impassioned pleas by the outgoing Environmental Committee were made at the June 13 meeting. To further their cause, and at the behest of the EC, independent outside groups were brought in to support the committee’s appeal not be disbanded. Had those groups and individuals been given the whole picture of the prior activities of the EC or were they led to believe that the outgoing group held only the highest ideals for the environmental protection of Vernon?
We agree with Mayor Shortway that the abolishment of the present committee would ensure the integrity of another environmental committee perhaps in the future, with no hidden agendas.
Steven P. and Mary Ellen Vichiconti
Highland Lakes