Times
MICROMEDIA PUBLICATIONS, INC.
THE TOMS RIVER
Vol. 11 - No. 45
Inside This Week’s Edition
Business Directory....................... 20-21 Classifieds......................................... 22 Community News.......................... 9-14 Dear Joel........................................... 24 Dear Pharmacist ............................... 17 Dr. Izzy’s Sound News ..................... 16 Fun Page .......................................... 23 Inside The Law.................................. 25 Letters to the Editor............................. 7 WWW.MICROMEDIAPUBS.COM
March 5, 2016
Your FREE Weekly Hometown Newspaper | Serving All of Toms River Township
CELEBRATING THE CHAMPS
Your Taxes School District Faces $7.4M Funding Gap
By Bob Vosseller TOMS RIVER – In spite of some big plans to enhance student success in the district, Toms River Regional Schools have a big gap in its budget as officials look toward the 2016-17 school year. Superintendent David M. Healy said Community Development Block Grant funding available after Superstorm Sandy helped stabilize the previous budgets, but that funding might be gone for 2016 -17, creating a budget crisis for TRRS. The CDBG funding amounts to $7.4 million. “The challenges will be that at this juncture we are planning our budget around the impending loss of 7.4 million in CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) money,” Healy said. “We are in a budget crisis that we are working very hard to address.” The issue is across the towns that TRRS includes – Toms River, South Toms River, Pine Beach and
Beachwood – the ratable base remains significantly less than what funded the budget pre-Sandy, from the widespread destruction to homes and business destroyed or not paying taxes. “The loss in ratables from Superstorm Sandy and the ratable recovery in Toms River is predicted to be three plus years away,” Healy said. Toms River Township officials said that of the $2 billion in lost ratables, only slightly more than half have returned to the tax roles. Healy said that Super Storm Sandy has had a financial impact to both the school district and the township “as well as a residual impact to the three regionals (South Toms River, Beachwood and Pine Beach). Despite this and beginning last summer we have been working diligently to protect and preserve our existing staff, programs and (Taxes - See Page 18)
Funds Needed For New IBSP Beach Cam Live Stream
By Catherine Galiato ISLAND BEACH STATE PARK – At more than 1.6 million annual visitors, Island Beach State Park is the most visited site in the state park system. But several of its most well-known visitors fly overhead: the ospreys whose nest has been on-camera at the Friends
of the Island Beach State Park website, streaming live. The Friends have some big plans in store for both the osprey and the beachgoing masses in the coming months. Angelo Sica, president of the Friends of IBSP, shared what some of those projects are: a new (Cameras - See Page 6)
–Photo by Catherine Galioto TOMS RIVER – It was an evening of many congratulations for local teams, when the Toms River Township Mayor and Council feted three teams – one football and two cheerleading – who won big this past season. Here, the Toms River South Raiders Cadets football team poses with their trophies as state AYF champs and third place AYF Nationals . For more photos of the teams, see page 19.
Ocean County’s 114 Gangs
•RECOGNIZING
“Gang Wise” Events Share Vivid Truths
•PREVENTING GANG ACTIVITY
By Judy Smestad-Nunn OCEA N COU NTY – New Jersey has some 1,500 different gangs, and Ocean County alone has 114, said State’s Investigative Agent and gang expert, Edwin Torres, who recently gave an eye-opening presentation called “The Gang Wise Project” at the Toms River Library. The event is a series the library is hosting at several branches, focusing on recognizing, addressing and preventing gang activity in communities. Torres, 49, started his law en-
forcement career 28 years ago when he was a Housing Unit Officer at the NJ Training School for Boys, a juvenile detention facility located in Monroe Township. “I noticed after a few years that the character of the kids who came in was different--they came in with tattoos on their neck, hands and even their lips, and they used language I hadn’t heard, and I thought what’s going on?” Torres said before his presentation. One of the tattoos Torres and his colleagues saw over and over again was “MOB,” which the
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•ADDRESSING
juveniles said stood for “Money Over B-tches,” but in truth it stood for “Member of Bloods,” one of the most recognized gangs in the country. “I didn’t know we had Bloods in New Jersey. I thought they were only in LA, so then we started changing the way we did business and we created a gang unit at the facility,” he said. The Language Of Gangs Using PowerPoint and real newscast videos, Torres showed various ways to identify gang members, (Gangs - See Page 4)
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