It was a good night for Jackson Township Mayor Mike Reina who not only won his own reelection tonight, by receiving approximately 1,100 votes more than his opponent; his Township Council running mates Jennifer Kuhn and Scott Sargent declared victory as well.
With 100% of the town's 43 districts reporting, Reina received 9,254 votes, which represents 52.91% of the vote count, while Council President Martin Flemming received 8,165 votes, which represents 46.68% of the vote count. The total vote count was 17,491.
Council candidates Jennifer Kuhn and Scott Sargent received 9,028 and 8,696 votes respectively, defeating incumbents Andrew Kern and Samara O'Neill who received 7,747 and 7,790 votes respectively.
According to a report by The Lakewood Scoop, approximately 3,000 of Reina's votes came from the Orthodox Jewish voters. Indeed, the Jewish community held the winning ticket as had their votes gone to Flemming, he would have been the one to declare victory tonight.
Reina won in District 11, which includes the Royal Grove neighborhood. Flemming won in District 13, which includes the Leesville Road farm property.
As previously reported here on FAA News, Lakewood developer Mordechai Eichorn of Bellevue Estates currently has an application pending before the Jackson Planning Board to build 4 private schools on the 32-acre farm at 443 Leesville Road. Numerous neighbors (who are not Jewish) showed up at the meeting and opposed the application.
Thereafter, as previously reported here on FAA News, Mayor Reina broke the news just a week ago that in order "to protect existing neighborhoods within Jackson Township and to protect and honor the rights of all Jackson residents", he "successfully negotiated to acquire Eichorn's farm [to keep it for open space]".
At a "town hall" Reina subsequently hosted for residents in the Leesville area, he clarified that the acquisition would be in the form of a land swap for Township owned land near the Lakewood Cross Street border, and that the swap requires and awaits approval from the Township Council.
As more recently reported here on FAA News, Royal Grove area residents recently learned, thanks to receiving a legal notice regarding a pending NJDEP application, that Lakewood's largest school, the Lakewood Cheder / Beis Faiga, has plans to build multiple schools on a 37.9 acres parcel at 245 & 279 East Veterans Highway.
At a meeting held with Aron Rottenberg, a contractor and representative of the school, the neighbors learned that the 3 schools proposed for this property are anticipated to contain 2,500 students who will arrive on 50 school buses. A review of the Site Plan indicates that only 23 buses can stage at once in the bus loading lane directly in front of the school.
Neighbors presented their concerns regarding the additional traffic which the school will bring, and noted that East Veterans Highway and Butterfly Road which runs parallel to it have only a single lane in each direction with not even a shoulder.
When the neighbors asked Mr. Rottenberg if he would be willing to swap land with the Township should the Township make such an offer, he said "yes".
As noted above, Reina won in District 11, which includes the Royal Grove neighborhood, while Reina lost in District 13, which includes the Leesville Road farm property, which Reina has been working to acquire and retain as open space in an effort to "to protect existing neighborhoods within Jackson Township and to protect and honor the rights of all Jackson residents" (according to his own press release).
Jackson's District 11 voters, including Royal Grove residents, are now eagerly awaiting to see if newly-reelected Mayor Reina will return the favor of his supporters and change his plans to instead swap land with The Cheder so as to preserve District 11 and save them from the school development which they have expressed opposition to, or if he will stick to his original plan to swap land with Eichorn and save Leesville Road from the school development despite the fact that the voters in that district did not support him.
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3 comments:
To clear the air, ain't none of this land swapping to save us from "evil schools" would have been necessary if not for Agudath Israel's lawsuit which resulted in a Preliminary Injunction requiring Jackson to permit schools.
To clear even more air, Agudath Israel's lawsuit would not have been necessary had Jackson Township's Council in 2017 not adopted an ordinance banning schools! And by the way, for all those excited voters who seem to have forgotten, guess who signed those very ordinances into law? That's right, Mike Reina!
Zachor - Remember thy history!
Mike Reina fought our yeshivos, eiruv, shuls, and appointed land use board members who were openly anti-Semitic.
You guys don't have the story straight. It was actually one large conspiracy where the developers had an end goal of getting zillions of houses approved, so they began by submitting one application for a school for Oros Beis Yaakov, after that scare the Township Council and Reina enacted the 2017 ordinances banning schools, and then the crooked developers got their Crooked Avi Schnall - backed by Agudah's big bucks - to file their major lawsuit under the guide that they really wanted to build schools, and they went took things all the way until they secured their prized Preliminary Injunction which the developers are now using to submit their school plans - all in the hopes that Jackson Township officials will beg them to build zillions of houses instead of the "awful schools". Once that happens the developers will accomplish their very initial goal...
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