Interview with Lakewood Democratic Township Committee Candidates 2014

along this beautiful tree-lined street in lakewood new jersey is a house that houses the headquarters of ray colts a long-time lakewood veteran and a long-time lakewood politician somebody has been very active in the growth of the lakewood community he's now running on the democratic ticket with moshe racing for township committee it'll be interesting to see what they have to say about the issues facing voters here in lakewood and what they expect to accomplish for this constituency right here in lakewood which really has consequences repercussions and benefits for people way beyond lakewood this is parents be iclear reporting let's meet the candidates so we're in the backyard of uh ray cole's office here in lakewood and we have uh moshe racic and ray colts gentlemen i understand that you're just a week away from the election ray why don't we just start with you and if you can tell us a little bit about you know why this is an important race and what you and moshe hope to accomplish well lakewood is a growing town and as such we really need to be able to figure out ways to keep in touch with the folks who've been here for a long time as well as to reach out to the people who've just moved into town i've been here about 25 years myself motion you've been here for quite some time also 78 and i think it's good that you have somebody two people actually who represent lakewood where the face of lakewood anybody who has a problem knows that they can call me up at any time my door is always open folks have come to my house at night early in the morning i give out my cell phone without hesitation it's what we're here for is to serve the people to be accessible to those people and um really we want to help guide lakewood into the next phase of its growth as it becomes a city and to face those challenges head on not to try and avoid anything well that's a very good point moshe what do you think about this idea of accessibility to constituents would you say right now there's a lot of room for growth for more accessibility of constituents to be heard by township committee members absolutely it seems almost to the point where people feel that they need to personally know a township committee member in order to get assistance and issues that they have the township is open but we want to let people know that that we're here for them that they could come to township committee meetings as ray said they could call us anything that's needed and we want to be there for the people and i think at this point people don't really feel that accessibility is there for them okay so that's something you're intending to absolutely you know that was that would from day one i mean just to reach out to people in the community i i was even thinking maybe perhaps even setting up a hotline a designated line so that instead of each committee man saying you know sometimes issues come up and they say oh i'm sorry this is not my department this is not my department um that they could reach one number and that by you know the office can direct it to the committee man that it's appropriate to instead of the people having to worry about how do i reach the person who needs to help me with the issue that i have what about utilizing resources that we have here in the township to make it profitable for the township what do we need to know about that right well i think if you look at the township today compared to where it was five or ten years ago you'll see that we actually have fewer people servicing quite a lot more residents than we had before we've tried to do everything in under the sun we've automated our garbage pickup the robo trucks that you see today one man or one woman can drive that truck and pick up garbage that used to take three people to do last year we were able to go to the single stream recycling so that instead of having small cans outside you have one big yellow can and it's picked up by the same robo truck again taking the work that three people used to have to do bringing it down to one and allowing those other two people to go out and do other things like pave our streets take care of the parks all the different things in town that really need to get done that most people never see until they realize that it's not done properly then they have an issue with it the township is obviously growing ray you had said i think in uh in november of uh 2011 that the biggest issue is growth so that means housing for everybody moshe racic what would you do to increase housing without increasing services well basically i think the ideal situation would be when people are looking to build uh to congregate those new buildings those new houses in areas where there are already a lot of houses to increase in high density areas rather than building into outlander areas as such you know if you have to you can't have a truck go pick up in one area towel and then have to cross across town where there's no accessibility from other areas at that point people want to build to every single corner but until we maximize the space that we do have in high areas and and with ideas such as cleaning up uh decrepit houses that are that are going to be knocked down anyway and use those as areas to build up before building in other areas that really could use our services to the maximum rather than spending it and having to buy new trucks and new services for areas where there's not yet development what do you think about that ray are there really that many decrepit areas that that could be and should be fixed a lot fewer than there were in the past but there are definitely some neighborhoods that are really in need of um refurbishment and um to give them a fresh start um we've been following the state plan which again is an anti-sprawl plan which looks to target areas to maximize the uh the density in an area without going crazy and making it impossible for people to get in and out so while we always look at those areas i think you know today i can honestly say that i can count on one hand the number of areas that really are in bad shape whereas when i first got involved 15 20 years ago there were areas in town that um definitely were in need of a lot of help and tender loving care speaking of tender loving care you mentioned something before we were talking about something in an adjacent township where there were problems that would not allow growth from lakewood residents because of what let's for lack of a better term called xenophobia are we facing that here in lakewood i don't think we're facing in lakewood as much anymore the face of lakewood really has changed in the 13 years that i've been on the committee and i think for the better i mean i don't see a lot of the the antagonism and the hostility that we saw many years ago i mean the town has grown together and i think the reason for that is the fact that people have gotten to know each other it's very difficult once you establish a relationship with somebody and you're on a first name basis to call that person names and i think in the past because the fact that you know people didn't know each other there were a lot of assumptions made because you're one culture i'm another culture you know we just shouldn't get along and that's been disproven in town and i think our challenge now is to go to the towns around us to establish those relationships the people see that you know we're all the same there's no difference between us we may worship differently but we're all looking for the same thing we want to be able to raise our children safely we want a safe place to call home and we want to enjoy ourselves when we are there moshe what do you think that you and ray together are going to add to the township committee that doesn't exist now and in a nutshell tell us why voters should come out for you i want to give a classic example ray just sort of touched upon it now we're both on the municipal alliance committee which is an organization that reaches out to get funding from the state and the county in order to help children who are on drugs and abusing alcohol uh to get them into programs that are positive to get them off the streets and stuff like that as ray said we're working so hard to uh make it one community one town we're all in this together it's not us versus them it's we working together and and we really want to give over that point and i think we give it over better than the other committee men might be able to do so i think our openness and and ability to to make people people feel comfortable and feel wanted and make it an inclusive environment on this committee that we're on you have completely across the spectrum of lakewood residents all types of people are on it and that's exactly what they want and we want to expand that idea and make everyone feel like we are working together and we want to take ideas from the public how to make the town better i'll give you an example as far as traffic for example they take people who come in from out of town to do a traffic study and uh it's really the people on the streets who drive the routes every day that know it best and we want to do it in a smart way a couple years ago somebody on the on the township committee felt that it was prudent to make one-way streets in different areas and the business owners were complaining and saying that's not what we need here you know and i think ray and i together and with mayor lichtenstein as well can really work to advocate for the people that are out there not to dictate to them what we think should be done and i think would be it would be a lot better town because of it ray just the parting shot what do you think that the two of you together can accomplish that would be distinct different and better as a unit well looking at the two of us sitting together i'm just a few years older than moshe but you would think that you know these are two people who were from different worlds and together our friendship or the work ethic that we have together to show the people in lakewood that you know as moshe said we are one family we're one town and communication is really the key to that we need to be able to let people know that the doors are open the telephones are there get in touch with us don't be afraid to call don't be afraid to stop us on the street say hello and if you have an issue let us know what it is and i promise you that we'll do our best to work through it for you gentlemen thank you very much thank you