Candidates Meet The Enclave

I was the first woman I have to mention that was ever elected to the Lakewood Township committee and the first woman to ever serve as mayor that's an honor that I'm really very proud of and I believe I'm still the only woman who's ever served and I look forward to once we I've recording the second woman who was elected liquid um when I left uh I decided not to run for a third term because I think I felt that things were moving in the right direction and I don't think politicians should stay in office forever I think it's Public Services just that I enjoyed much in terms of the committee but it was time to move on and give us somebody else a chance but in the last two years I feel we're beginning to move in a wrong direction the taxes seem to be higher than ever once again traffic doesn't seem to be seems out of control and people once again don't feel represented fairly by the government so I decided to throw my hat back into the ring and as you don't call things as you know taxes are very important to the senior citizens during this past uh budget crisis one of the township committee members voted no to the uh current tax rate but voted for a tax increase and I'm just wondering that was one of your party members and I'm just wondering if you would follow that suit as long as follows as long as your party line or will you really be out for these seniors and the people of Lakewood and as I said I mean there's an old saying that there's no Democratic or republican way to fix a pothole there are certainly important ideological differences between the deaf party which I'd be glad to discuss with you in another Forum when it comes to governing a town a local town of Lakewood um or any town for that matter what matters is that you look at the specific issues you know Barack Obama doesn't know whether or not Rewind Tour traffic on these are local issues whether or not a specific budget should be passed whether or not a specific expenditure should be approved is something that I would make up my my own mind on not follow a party line I'd like to continue about the taxes over 50 percent of all our property taxes go to schools nobody in here has a dog in the race so we're giving you fifty percent of our taxes and we're getting nothing in return for that money how do you plan to rectify that situation you're not going to like the answer but it I mean I'm a blunt person and I tell as a member of the township committee could not directly change the funding system for the school system that's something that's under the control of the state legislature I will tell you that in the past both as a private citizen and as a Township committee people I have worked to correct the funding formula which I believe gives Lakewood an unfair share of the resources from the state as you may know a lot of the income taxes that we pay come back to the district as school aid Lakewood gets far less than its fair share of the school aid and we as local taxpayers have to make up the difference in hmm out of our property taxes that's not right I would continue to Lobby Trenton and put together senior coalitions and citizen coalitions to try and get that changed however the township committee does not have the right to say seniors don't have to pay the taxes it's it's law as of now what we can have a right to do as Citizens and as elected officials is try and change that law and track the way the law is made what I could say is that we there it does make a difference if you work closely with the Board of Ed and try to help them you know like there was recently Carl and the mayor work together a joint venture where they where they where the township committee had the Public Works do some road work for for um for the but Board of Ed properties and I thought that was a very smart move they did it at Cost so so the township won the game and ultimately a taxpayer and and another thing that I could say is I trust the current world some of the members of the current board to to a board of ed to to keep looking for for ways to cut and and if a budget if the budget keeps growing at some point if I was on the committee I would say that that I'm not approving that budget um I must I must I mean if we had a pristine School District where where the kids were all passing there would be another story but but the system the way it is right now I would say that we we would have to we would have to turn up turn down the school budget at some point yeah just just so everyone understands if you turn down the school budget and the school board appeals you have to be careful eventually it goes to The Soaring um some of the funding uh that taxpayers may may have reduced one of the things that you can do as a taxpayer is vote for people from your community on the school board uh school board has Direct Control of the school budget I think Carl will tell you it's not an easy animal to control when you should all thank him for taking taking on the responsibility but the property tax problem in Lakewood and New Jersey will not be completely involved until the school funding formula is corrected and we all have to work together to make that happen a question for either either we're either one of you at the Smart growth meeting that we had on the summer there and did you look at the plan no I did not attend the yes I wasn't there but I did see the plan you'll notice there that it was mostly like tools it was I think three schools implant and I'm not too sure I understand that that's smart growth because it really focused on one community and there was some space there for uh like a park or something like that but the way it was set up that wasn't going to benefit the rest of the town because it was a sort of a closed community I mean that's what it seemed like to me and I don't know if that's called smart growth there was no affordable housing in there there was nothing in there that the rest of the community could take advantage of so well just wondering if you noticed the same thing but one of the things that there are hundreds of can you hear me back there without the mic yeah one of the um one of the there were hundreds of affordable housing units I think well over a thousand uh affordable housing units that were that were put out in various areas of town um not in that particular smart growth community's referred to the Southwest part of peace that was just approved by the planning on the zoning board on cross and Prospect and not the empire my main goal with with when with this piece of property over here my main goal was when if I don't know who came to the 2000 to 2006 master plan uh meetings but my main goal was there's a 75 paper track that was up to up for a very high density housing and my main goal over there was to prevent that from happening which I did do and I and I turned the board on that and I had them I had them cancel it out they were trying to build 16 acres per unit which uh quick math will be three 400 units on just 25 acres of that property and I ended up getting something around 160 a few years later because I because I fought that and um and I that was my number one goal was to assure that the 75 Acres don't turn into 16 units correctly because I thought it was very very dense and it's privately owned land it's not it's in other words a school owns some of the land um and various investors on the rest of the line right in schools no private private schools own the land themselves in other words it's not our land it's not the township land it's it's privately owned land and we just control we've tried to control the development that was going on there and because I've been in contact with members of your community um we've been in close touch and we did deny a lot a lot of areas over there bill hopde was very involved in the approval and and my understanding is that it was an attack with the beerways as well to make sure that that that there isn't too much density over there um I think I think what what ended up happening is that that the 25 acres that did get approved did not got approved for less than 10 units per acre which which is a lot less than the original 16 that they were trying for and the other 50 acres are supposed to be set for for lower density as well but there was going to be two schools in that area but we're trying to we're trying to limit what those private schools can do as well in other words we're concerned we are concerned about a lot of schools and I've read the paper one time you're probably even more Massachusetts we're trying to work on we're trying to work on buffering setbacks to as time goes on and that affects our taxes also because you're taking those properties off of the tax that would also be smart growth it seems to me the one problem you have with hd6 and hd7 properties a lot of other things could have been built there which none of us would have liked well give me an example I would rather not in public forward you could have had 55 building uh 55 foot across you see what they're building back here is that smart growth uh yeah that's great you could have had one we could have had 55 foot buildings in one area with you know numerous floors and so forth just figuring out how many people could have been there so it's very very difficult when you're looking to build building goes on Carl I'm going to cut you because