The children of Downtown Barnegat once again lose with the closing of our Youth Center. Barnegat Twp. has decided to move the Food Pantry into our Youth Center. Let's be perfectly clear...we FULLY support our Food Pantry and the great work they do for our community! We even planned to raise money for them at this year's Heritage Day until the Hartman Committee and the leadership of the Barnegat Chamber of Commerce killed Heritage Day. The Food Pantry deserves a great facility to serve people in need...but not at the expense of the Youth Center which should be utilized for programs for our children every day.

It's sad that we have to emphasize our support for the Food pantry in order to avoid people claiming we are against them. But that's what's going on in this town. They are trying to divide us. We are one...we support our Food Pantry and we also support our Youth Center. One shouldn't be sacrificed for the other.

The space currently used for our Youth Center is small, but there's no other facility downtown -- including the Aquifer --to provide the space needed for certain activities held there currently (other than the Edwards School which we are no longer allowed to use).

The reason given to take this resource away from our children is that the building "hasn't been used much over the years". That's the Township's fault...they shouldn't punish our children for their inadequacies in offering programs for children in the Downtown area. There is little for a child or teen to do Downtown anymore.

Many people have enjoyed the Youth Center every year during Halloween (it's the Haunted House), our children have participated in Recreation Dept sponsored programs there which we could walk to, and it was a great resource for our annual Heritage Day activities providing the only public restroom in the entire downtown area. How can you have events in this town with no restroom facility?

This is just one more of the many things that have been taken away from our Downtown over the past few years. The series of decisions that this Township Committee has made regarding the Downtown gives the impression that they have no regard for the people or children who live in the Downtown area...maybe that's why we're no longer even allowed to have a polling place to vote Downtown. Over the past couple of years our voting location was moved from the Firehouse to the High School.

If, as Mayor Hartman claims, the Committee's priority is recreation, why would a decision be made to close our youth center with the excuse given being that there were not enough activities there. And, why would Superintendent of Schools McMahon claim the reason the School Board decided to rip out and throw away our only Downtown playground was because the township doesn't provide adequate recreation space. Where can our kids go...their playground was ripped out, their Youth Center is removed, and who knows what the future of the Edwards School is.

This in another unfortuate legacy of this Township Committee's administration. We hope that the Township Committee will start doing some positive things for the people --and especially the children-- of Barnegat.