NJ News & Views

Lynn Celli, a member of the Lakewood Development Corporation board of directors, is having second thoughts about her vote to fund an alternative congregating site for day laborers near Lakewood Airport.

The Lakewood Development Corporation (LDC) oversees the administration of Lakewood's Urban Enterprise Zone (UEZ), where the proposed waiting area would be located.

On April 4, the board voted to approve a grant for $37,500 to the township's public works department for construction of what Mayor Meir Lichtenstein referred to in his presentation as an employment center. It would consist of a movable deck and covering where day laborers who currently congregate in the downtown area along Clifton Avenue could instead wait for work.

The employment center would be located on a 2-acre site off Cedar Bridge Avenue. The site is also the location of a proposed parking lot that is being assessed for construction at a cost of $16,900. LDC Director Russell Corby said the parking lot could be leased for profit as storage for school buses, automobiles and trucks.

Unlike the parking lot, Celli is doubtful that the so-called employment center, which in past discussions by committeemen was called a muster zone, would generate any funds to the UEZ or would even qualify as a business. However, media reports may have erroneously contributed to that impression, Celli said.

The Asbury Park Press and The Ocean County Observer both reported Lichtenstein's April 4 presentation at the LDC meeting. In the Asbury Park Press article, the board reportedly approved UEZ loan funds for construction of the employment center. In The Observer article, the LDC reportedly approved loan funds for the project.

At the April 6 committee meeting, the governing body unanimously passed a resolution to have the department of public works build the employment center. A reporter for the Tri-Town News covered the meeting and quoted Lichtenstein referring to the $37,500 UEZ grant as a loan.

This reporter for NJ News & Views is the former Lakewood beat reporter for the Tri-Town News.

Celli said she called the editor of the Tri-Town News last week after reading the article in which Lichtenstein reportedly called the grant a loan. After Celli said she left a voicemail message with the editor of the newspaper, the reporter who said he wrote the article called her back. Celli said the reporter told her that in both Lichtenstein's public comments and in an interview after the committee meeting, the mayor referred to the grant as a loan.

"I told him I was a member of the board of directors and that we approved a grant and not a loan," Celli said. "He asked me if I was calling the mayor a liar."

A reporter for NJ News & Views covered the April 4 meeting of the LDC and reported that the board had voted to approve a grant to fund the project.

Lichtenstein told NJ News & Views on Friday that he knew the UEZ funding was a grant and not a loan.

The difference between a loan and a grant is significant since UEZ funds are generated by interest earned on loans made by the LDC to businesses that qualify for them, Celli said. Since the state must also approve the board's expenditures, the proposed employment center would have to meet the state's criteria of a business in order to qualify for the grant - which Celli thinks it will not.

Other LDC board members also had concerns about the construction of the employment center at the proposed location.

LDC board member Bert Albert, who is also director of the airport, said at both the February and April board meetings that the township land sited for construction of both the parking lot and the employment center had been set aside as an airport protection zone. He said that the proposed project would not be permitted under the grant the town received from the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) to buy the airport a decade ago.

Last year, Lichtenstein headed an investigation into the contract with the FAA and instructed township attorney Steven Secare to find out whether it could be broken.

Lichtenstein also served as committee liaison to the LDC last year.

The committee declined to approve the sale of a 16.8-acre strip of wetland the FAA had instructed the airport authority to purchase. However, the governing body unanimously voted to adopt an ordinance at its' February 23 meeting that will give the airport authority an easement on the township-owned property.

The site the LDC seeks to assess for construction of a parking lot and the employment center is not the same land the committee refused to sell to the airport authority.

Although Lichtenstein asked that the proposed project be called an employment center, Secare told a reporter for NJ News & Views on April 28 that advocates are calling it a muster zone and threatening to sue the township if it is built. He declined to identify the individuals threatening the lawsuits.

In December, downtown merchants told committeemen that they no longer supported a muster zone anywhere near their stores on Clifton Avenue. They cited increased crime, intimidation of shoppers by large groups of men, and public defecation.

Earlier this year, the committee adopted an ordinance outlawing public urination, despite an offer by Rabbi Yehuda Shain to install port-o-potties wherever they were needed. Lichtenstein declined Shain's offer.

Secare cited public frustration as the reason the committee voted to adopt a resolution at its' April 6 meeting to use UEZ monies to build the employment center.

Celli said that she would not have voted to approve funding for the employment center had the board's attorney, Kevin Starkey, advised members of the possible consequences of their action.

"As a humanitarian, I believe in helping people," Celli said, "but not if it means spending UEZ funds illegally that I have been appointed to oversee."