LEWES, Del. — The Shine a Light series continues its mission of promoting transparency in government with a public interview featuring Matthew Ritter, director of Delaware State Parks. The event was held Jan. 29 from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at the Lewes Public Library.
Ritter, who has worked at DNREC for 18 years, oversees more than 20,000 acres across 17 state parks, including Cape Henlopen State Park. His division is responsible for managing the natural, cultural and recreational resources of the state’s park system.
At the event, with questions posed by CoastTV News' Madeleine Overturf and the Cape Gazette, Ritter discussed the state parks' finances, priorities in Cape Henlopen State Park, and more.
Ritter said one way to increase revenue is to enhance public-private partnerships without adding any business in the state park.
"I think we can partner with organizations that can support some of the efforts we're doing," he said. "There's a lot of environmental organizations or companies that promote ecotourism. For them to do an event and utilize our parks is a way that we can partner without giving them a footprint necessarily."
Ritter mentioned groups renting the Biden Center, or having more events in the parks as potential revenue sources.
Another big topic was traffic leading into Cape Henlopen State Park, which backs up well onto Freeman Highway. Neighbors asked if a sign could be put up farther away from the park so fewer people would cue on Cape Henlopen Drive.
Ritter said addressing capacity and traffic is another priority, floating the idea of changing the layout for the entrance to Cape Henlopen.
"The reality is, the layout is tough because you're not very far in the park before we're stopping you," he explained. "So the thought was to find a way to move the fee booth back further that would allow more queuing inside the park. That comes with challenges and restrictions and removing some trees in that front area, which I know is not a favorable thing, and that's a balance that we run into."
The event was moderated by Sally Boswell with Preserve our Park, who expressed optimism for the park's future and her group working with Ritter.
“We are all about loving the park and want to help do all we can to make it accessible and great for people," she said.
The Shine a Light series was founded by Ronald Collins to help bring public scrutiny and civic engagement to all levels of government.
In a statement from event organizers, the goal is to encourage “civil and informed” dialogue between the public, journalists and government leaders: “The ‘Shine a Light’ on local government series is designed to make the workings of our cities, counties, and state government more transparent and thus more citizen participatory. To that end, the series will invite journalists and citizens to interact, in both civil and informed ways, with their officials. Such openness is intended to make government more responsive to the needs of our communities.”