While I wonder whether Shore Regional is sitting back waiting to see what reaction Oceanport will get to its petition asking the Commissioner of Education not to let residents of Highlands, Atlantic Highlands and Sea Bright vote on regionalization, it still makes me wonder about so many other things. The least of which is…don’t people learn from past mistakes?
Both Shore Regional and Oceanport have remained silent throughout all the regionalization news, meetings workshops, Facebook talk and more this year.
If they attended any meetings to become informed, they did not make themselves known?
If they asked for copies of either the Porzio or Kean University reports, they did not identify they were asking in official capacities?
If they called any borough officials seeking information… there are no records of it.
Weren’t any of these people around five years ago?
Back in 2017, Charlie Rooney, son of a former Mayor, was a Councilman in Sea Bright. He was signing and approving checks every month in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, all payments to Shore Regional High School for the education of the 31 Sea Bright kids in the school district.
Rooney was annoyed as hell over the high cost of education, and he and the rest of council tried to negotiate with Shore Regional.
There were meetings…
There were talks …
There were ways mentioned of how the tax formula could be changed so Sea Bright taxpayers would only be paying their fair share … not their fair share plus hundreds of thousands of dollars more.
In the end, and at the very last minute, Shore Regional said nope, we’re not going to allow any referendum to change the tax formula. Continue to pay up Sea Bright, we like your money $$$.
An Irishman who had seen his own father work so hard to maintain Sea Bright the fine community it is, Charlie was photographed on page one of The Link, still a leading local newspaper in the area, when Shore Regional’s decision came down. In the photo in 2017, he was wearing a Henry Hudson hat and holding a Henry Hudson mug, his personal way of showing his disappointment in his own alma mater, Shore Regional.
Councilman Marc Leckstein in that same newspaper, issued a warning to anyone smart enough to listen.
Leckstein said “With Charley Rooney leading the charge, Shore Regional should know Sea Bright will never walk away from this fight. It’s long way from over.”
So here we are. Four years later. And it ain’t over!
So that, residents of the Bayshore, is how the battle began to have Sea Bright sever its relationship with the school districts that were charging them thousands and thousands more for the same education kids in other towns were getting.
Maybe now, voters in Monmouth Beach, West Long Branch and Oceanport, you should be asking those officials from five years ago why they didn’t simply let the people have the right to vote on whether they wanted to help Sea Bright or not? Or did they all think, what the heck, Sea Bright is our absolute best customer, let them keep on paying the lion’s share.
Oceanport voters should be asking whether they should be paying for any legal action now that the law has changed and it looks very favorable to have a vote on whether Sea Bright should quit being your biggest contributor…in money, not students.
By the way, the thing that steamed Charlie so much was this. In 2016, Sea Bright residents were paying $2.124 million in annual taxes for education to Shore Regional. The notice for the next year was that rate was going up to $3.333 million. That’s a 55% hike in a year. That’s roughly $109 a year increase per each resident for the 31 children being educating. Given that only 31 kids were being education, that whopping amount comes out to $108,000 per student.
Now do you think regionalizing with Highlands and Atlantic Highlands is a prudent move?
And if you think Charley Rooney was mad then, Shore Regional, you can understand why he’s so vociferous in being a leader in the battle today.
Only this time, the state of New Jersey is backing Rooney’s idea. The Governor gave money to towns to study regionalization possibilities and probability and the way to accomplish it.
Do the people of Oceanport or any of the towns in the Shore Regional district think state legislators or the Commissioner who answers to them are going to oppose letting the people have their say? The law, S3488, was passed unanimously by both houses in the legislature; it was signed into law. Does anybody think it was all done so that things could stay the way they are?
Do these folks who are asking for state chastisement for towns who want to let their residents have a say in local government know what professionals participated in this from the very beginning? Do they have any idea about the legislators who wrote the words that are now law?
And Oceanport taxpayers, are you taking up the fight for Shore Regional so they can sit back, save money and wait to see whether your complaint to the Commission is effective? Or is there now a chance that the three towns who want to vote on something new, something refreshing and something legal will now result in correcting a wrong the state made decades ago.
