DowntownBarnegat.com was the only outlet that brought up this issue, and asked all candidates for Township Committee to comment on it. The incumbent candidates refused to comment on this, as they were in the process of kicking our children out. Now, for bringing this up Mr. Melchiondo, you may say we are "anti-incumbent". NO SIR WE ARE NOT! WE ARE PROUDLY PRO-CHILDREN...PRO-RECREATION...PRO-DOWNTOWN...PRO-YOUTH CENTER...PRO-FOOD PANTRY...AND PRO-BARNEGAT. I ask you Sir, what are you? You had the opportunity to tell all of Barnegat, and you chose not to.

Are we supposed to thank you for taking this away from our children? No...we won't. That doesn't make us against you...that makes us FOR our children. This is just one more thing that we have lost. I ask you to look at the responses to question #4 in our online candidates' forum. You will see how others addressed this issue. Please remember you had a chance to comment on this, and said NOTHING. If it were not for this website that you label "anti-incumbent" and that praised you in the past when you deserved it, most people would not know that our Youth Center was taken away.

This hurts our children and kills any sense of community in our downtown. We were told that we would have the use of our Youth Center at least until January. So we signed up our child for one of the LAST CLASSES she could take there. She loved taking those classes and was proud to walk downtown to do so. Well sir, you took that away from her also. The online forum clearly points out that you can have a Youth Center and a Food Pantry. The Food Pantry is vital to our community, and so are activities for our children downtown. One should not be sacrificed for the other. Please work with the people in our community. I am SICK AND TIRED of having to tell my child why she can no longer do this - or that - downtown any more! Maybe if YOU had to look into her eyes...and YOU had to tell her...maybe then YOU would think twice before you label someone "anti-this" or "anti-that" again.