The BERKELEY Times Vol. 25 - No. 40
In This Week’s Edition
BREAKING NEWS @
jerseyshoreonline.com
Community News! Pages 11-15
Dr. Izzy’s Sound News Pages 18
Inside The Law Page 21
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Family Needs Help After Brain Tumor Diagnosis
By Chris Lundy SOUTH TOMS RIVER – By the time you read this article, Sophia Colavito will have a diagnosis. But at cur rent time, her parents were still waiting to hear how bad the news was going to be. They know it is going to be cancer, and that there’s “no chance it’s going to be benign,” her mother Lindsay Colavito said. It started only six months ago, when Sophia was getting a lot more headaches than a healthy 4-year-old would normally get. Most of the times, it was explained away. She would get them at the same time as a fever, and kids sometimes get headaches with a fever. Then, she got the flu, accompanied by a headache again. But when the flu went away, the headache didn’t. St i l l , Li nd s ay a nd her husband Michael were thinking she had migraines or that she needed glasses.
that there was little to no vision in her right eye. Her left eye was
County, Schools Prepare For Coronavirus
By Chris Lundy OCEAN COUNTY – The advice is pretty consistent across the board from officials: use good hygiene and educate yourself. While this might be good advice in any
situation, right now it’s what health and education officials are saying in order to keep people safe and keep children from getting sick from the coronavirus, otherwise known as COVID-19.
Town Fighting JCP&L Proposed Increase
−Photos courtesy of Colavito family Sophia Colavito, 4, was recently diagnosed with a tumor affecting her brain, vision and spine. They had her eyes checked by Dr. Michael Spedick, who found
At the time this article was written, there were no cases of the disease in Ocean County. New Jersey had 11 known cases. The governor declared a State of Emergency – a legal decision which is need-
ed to receive federal funding. It also gives greater power to the Office of Emergency Management. “The Ocean County Health Department has been closely monitoring (County - See Page 7)
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overcompensating so there had been no hint (Family - See Page 10)
By Chris Lundy BERKELEY – The governing body will be fighting against a potential increase for residents’ electrical bills. The proposed increase would be 8.5 percent, according to Jersey Central Power and Light. For the average residential customer, this would be a monthly increase of $8.73. “The majority of our residents are retired, living on fixed incomes. There are a lot of young families trying to make ends meet,” Mayor Carmen Amato said. Amato mentioned the 2 percent cap. This is a law that requi res tow ns to keep their spending increases within 2 percent from one year to the next. He asked why an entire town can keep increases to 2 percent but a utility
can’t? (To clarify, recently Berkeley’s taxes haven’t been near that 2 percent cap. Last year, the town’s budget increased by .67 percent, by way of example.) He also criticized the dance that happens every time a utility suggests an increase. Whether it’s electricity or gas, they announce a huge increase, and then settle for a much lower number. “It’s the usual bait and switch,” Amato said. “It would be better just to present a normal percentage so we can have a realistic discussion about it.” What happens in this situation is that JCP&L will make a request to the Board of Public Utilities, which oversees the situation. JCP&L said in a press release that even if it’s approved, customers would still pay (JCP&L - See Page 10)
Tight Races For GOP Endorsement
By Chris Lundy OCEAN COUNTY – Two close campaigns were run to get the county Republican’s endorsement in the Senate and 3rd District House race. The importance of winning party line approval means that a candidate will be below Donald Trump on the ballot, and likely to rack up auto-
matic votes with Trump supporters. People who choose the entire party line will vote for them even if they don’t know who they are. The way it worked in Ocean County is that a screening committee made a recommendation. Then, the votes were cast at a convention in (Races - See Page 4)
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