Senator Singer on Lakewood Issues ahead of New Term

this year of course is election year for the entire legislature including the governor um and if i am successful in november and the election i think some important issues that we have to work hard on for for lakewood uh we were successful this past year getting uh over five million dollars in the department of transportation budget uh to work on uh the southern part of lakewood route nine both the widening issue as well as uh interim fixes this is key uh once you get past the lake it's a disaster we all know that uh we have to have a long-term solution here the five million dollars is a drop in the bucket but it's a start and we had a great meeting with the commissioner of transportation uh lakewood mayor and laker professionals talking about what we can do in the interim where we see some of the bottlenecks are and we have to look for a long-term solution to the problem that being said there are other solutions being worked on right now kudos to the township committee i mean they'll be starting this coming year of public bus transportation uh there's gonna be uh seven or eight different routes it's a beginning it's something i'm encouraging to do it's something that we were able to bring in over nine million dollars from federal dollars to do so but again we've got to encourage that we've got to make sure it works and we've got to expand it this is a great way to help the transportation needs of playground both now into the future by having public transportation we cut down the congestion and as a town is growing again that's an important issue you have to work with the second issue that i that i think is important that we have to work together on is this issue of the homeless situation and likely um i think the tax committee is on the right track uh we have to be supportive of them uh that this is no place to have a homeless camp in the middle of our town uh and i think that very honestly uh within the next year or so i think the work of the mayor and the committee you're going to see this disappear and we have to work with the county for a permanent solution for homeless people county-wide but certainly not uh where it was in lakewood and certainly there are enough other areas in the county more centrally located in lakewood to see that a homeless shelter is is built not in lakewood uh lastly what i think is is an important issue is the economy in general and we have to encourage the fact that more jobs are created in the state we have to make more incentives available to bring businesses in this is important for the community as a whole the community is growing we are seeing more people getting degrees and professions that need jobs we have to make sure the jobs are here for them so i'm encouraged to know that that's it that's a commitment the governor's made uh on bringing down the unemployment rate working on more jobs for new jersey more jobs for likely and now we're part of that team