AN ‘UNACCEPTABLE’ SPAN OF TIME

Sale of Bass River School Set to be Consummated in February After Judge Denies Buyer’s Complaint

Long-Delayed Closing Reported Ready to Proceed with High Bid of $757,500 Submitted Last March by Lakewood-Based Developer

By Bill B onvie Staff Writer

BASS RIVER—Nearly a year after a winning bid of $757,500 was submitted for the former Bass River Township Elementary School, the sale of the more-than-century old landmark building located at 11 North Maple Avenue in the hub of the New Gretna commercial district is reportedly about to be consummated.

A Trove of Emails Reveals the Official Conversations That Led to the 2021 Closing of Jackson Road Bridge in Medford, Which Continues to Inconvenience Residents and Impact Local Businesses with No Relief Now Being Promised Until Early Spring

By D ouglas D. M elegari

Staff Writer

MEDFORD—Any reopening of the Jackson Road Bridge in Medford Township, which has been closed since the fall of 2021, purportedly bringing about an adverse impact on at least some “aggravated” local businesses and many “inconvenienced” motorists, has now been delayed until “early spring” of this year, with the latest timeframe provided by both county and township officials.

Construction reportedly just resumed a couple weeks ago after at least a couple months’ long pause, the circumstances of which have drawn scrutiny in recent weeks, with a county spokesman only detailing to this newspaper that it took one utility over two months to relocate its lines, and that the relocation of the utilities in the area to make sufficient room for project work is required by federal law.

Questions have also been raised about why a bridge that was supposedly significantly repaired following a major flood in 2004 was no longer viable for normal traffic less than two decades later.

But the larger story to emerge in the last couple of days, the result of a credible news tip given to the Pine Barrens Tribune, is the discovery of email conversations late last week involving both county and local officials indicating that the span was closed in 2021, months earlier than it probably would have otherwise been (county officials had imposed a six-ton weight restriction when the bridge was first found to have

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But that has only come about after what was supposed to have been a smooth realestate transaction that was intended to help ease the tax burden on residents of this rural community was delayed by a lawsuit filed in Burlington County Superior Court by the high bidder, who claimed that the Bass River Board of Education, which is now in a send-receive relationship with the neighboring Little Egg Harbor School System, had violated the terms of its agreement with him.

It wasn’t until the breach of contract claim and associated relief sought in that litigation by the prospective buyer, Eli Blech, a Lakewood real-estate developer, was denied “without prejudice” earlier this month by the judge in the case, Hon. Paula Dow, that a date and time for a closing were reportedly set by mutual agreement for Feb. 6 at 11 a.m., according to a knowledgeable source who didn’t wish to be identified, with the amount of the original bid to be See SCHOOL/ Page 7

LeisureTowne Residents, Southampton Officials Excoriate Pinelands Water Company for Proposing Hefty Rate Hikes Comments at Public Hearing Called to Air Customers’ Views and Experiences Lambaste Quality of Water, Service as Well as Requests for Steep Increases

By Bill B onvie Staff Writer

SOUTHAMPTON—Bill Cozzi likes to recall the 52 years during which he had the privilege of drinking “the purest water in the area” from his own well in Southampton Township. But that was before he decided to become a resident of the local retirement community, LeisureTowne.

Now, he can only say how he would “love to go back and put my own well in and eliminate this whole thing” – by which he means his current dependency on Pinelands Water Company, the firm that back in September petitioned the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) for a whopping increase of 64.22 percent – nearly two-thirds of present rates – for water usage, in addition to its sister company, Pinelands Wastewater, which proposed a hike of 26.76 percent in its wastewater rate for residents of both LeisureTowne and the nearby community of Hampton Lakes.

As someone who has spent the last 45 years working for utility companies around the country, however, presenting information that would justify welldocumented rate increases, Cozzi is frankly unable to understand the “breakdown in costs” used to substantiate these newly proposed ones by the Pinelands firms – or so he testified during a Jan. 12 public hearing held virtually via Zoom before Administrative Law Judge Jacob Gertsman, with an option to participate via a remote setup at Southampton’s Robert L. Thompson Municipal Building, intended to allow affected residents to voice both their opinions on the increases sought by the company and the quality of service it provides.

And did they ever.

In both live and Zoom session statements from some 17 residents, including the current mayor and two other members of the Southampton Township Committee, Gertsman and Michael Kammer, the director of the BPU’s Division of Water and Energy, who listened in on the proceedings, were given a scathing collective appraisal of the water company’s proposal (as well as that from the wastewater company), its potential effect on a population consisting largely of seniors on fixed incomes, the firm’s treatment of its customers, and of the adequacy of the product it provides, which some of those who spoke – including Cozzi – called undrinkable.

A couple of the participants delivered particularly passionate denunciations of the requested increases in hopes of convincing both Gertsman and Kammer, along with a team of lawyers from the state Division of Rate Counsel represented by attorney Emily Smithman, that “the preponderance of the credible evidence” in Gertsman’s phrase, fails to prove “that the proposed increases in the respective rates “are necessary for the petitioners to provide safe, adequate and proper service to the respective customers and to earn a reasonable return.”

One such speaker was Thomas Haluszczak, an attorney, author and former LeisureTowne board member, who made a point of the water company’s having been granted a monopoly, and in return for providing a critical service, is “guaranteed a clientele” in a market protected by the government, unlike other industries that are “restrained by competition.”

Haluszczak then called on the judge to “ascertain and weigh very carefully the socioeconomic strata” of the people” the company serves in that guaranteed market, and to “keep in mind that none of us in it can draw a well,” the company being “the only shop in town to get us water.”

“We have nowhere else to go,” he declared. “They’ve got us by the throat.”

Haluszczak then suggested that “if the burden of proof is on Pinelands to establish the prima facie reasonableness of their petitions for increase, I would ask that they be compelled to advise us all how they factored in the socioeconomic income levels of their customers and further show us how in all honesty they can they justify through a preponderance of evidence that their economic metric supports these petitions.”

He then asked, “Where is this analysis in their paperwork?,” maintaining that, “I don’t see it anywhere.”

Then, in addressing his remarks to company executives who didn’t speak at this particular session, he asked, “Did you consider us at all, or are you hiding behind your protected status of a public utility to saddle us all with a fait accompli?”

Also weighing in on those themes was Southampton Mayor Michael Mikulski, who started off the session by referring to “the devastating impact the proposed increases will have on some of our most vulnerable residents and on the township itself through increases to our 90-plus fire hydrants,” the cost of which would rise by more than $300 each.

As for the proposed amounts of the increases, Mikulski maintained that “it is difficult to say those numbers without laughing or crying, one or the other.”

The mayor said he was particularly concerned that “in terms of revenues and expenses,” Pinelands Wastewater has produced an income statement as part of their submission that indicates an increased net income by almost 1,500 percent between 2019 and 2021 and that “a three-year balance sheet shows steady asset figures and liabilities that are nearly $1 million less in 2021 than in 2019, with last June’s figures being even lower.”

“But there is no definitive timeline and no cost estimates that we can identify with our engineers and find out if those are reasonable expectations,” Mikulski contended. “These are percentages that are far in excess of the inflation of the past three years.

Mikulski then asked that “increases of these great amounts” be denied, adding, “We understand there is inflation and supply chain issues – but for rates this high, the records should be replete with specific examples of what things are going to cost,

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As She Gets Ready to Retire from Public Service, Jean Stanfield

Reflects on a Long Career of Dedication to Quality-of-Life Issues

Both in Her Six Terms as Burlco Sheriff and Shorter Stint as a State Lawmaker, the 8th District Senator Says Her Focus Has Remained on Helping Constituents a means to an end.

“You have to get elected in order to serve,” is how she put it.

But once in office, her mission has always been to find ways to improve the quality of life for her constituents, rather than to achieve power over others or ego gratification.

In both roles, she said, that has meant “being creative” and “working with people to make things come alive.” During her 18 years heading the sheriff’s department, for example, “the most fun we had,” she maintained, was in coming up with ideas for new programs, and applying for grants to make them happen.”

As a result, we had a great department that was very community-oriented, which offered programs “to help people in all walks of life — senior citizens, kids, veterans”— as well as fighting such problems as human trafficking. Some of these had a special focus on giving citizens a better understanding of how law enforcement works, like the “police academy” she and her staff created for seniors to help answer questions like, “Why do police do certain things? Why can’t they just shoot somebody in the leg?” in that capacity was in the realization “that a prosecutor’s job was to do justice, not to win at all costs.”

“Just explaining things like that to people made a difference,” she asserted.

While in that office, she said she found herself working under then-Chief of Detectives Gary Daniels, who successfully ran for sheriff, choosing her as undersheriff, but who quit after two terms (Daniels died this past December), giving her a chance to throw her hat in the ring.

“I was very fortunate to get the support of the Republican party,” she said, given how unusual it was for a woman to run for that post and not knowing how voters would react to it.

But their response to her was a positive one, as indicated by her having been elected five more times to the three-year office.

She announced her retirement from the job in 2019, only to become a candidate for Assembly the following year and then to win Addiego’s Senate seat in 2021. But “health issues” she encountered last fall, coupled with a desire to spend more time with her grandchildren, have caused her to rethink those commitments to the demands of public life.

By Bill B onvie Staff Writer

MOUNT HOLLY—As hard as it may be for some area voters to believe and as “funny as it sounds” for her to say, state Sen. Jean Stanfield, the senior member of the Eighth Legislative District’s team of lawmakers who recently announced she won’t be seeking another term in office, is, by her own admission, really “not a very political person.”

Stanfield, 65, of Westhampton, a former six-term Burlington County sheriff who retired from that position a few years ago, only to run for and win an Assembly seat as a Republican before ousting Democratic party-switcher Dawn Addiego, from her state Senate seat in November of 2021 in a hard-fought campaign, revealed to the Pine Barrens Tribune in a Zoom interview this past week that being elected to office, whether in law enforcement or lawmaking, was merely

Stanfield’s approach to her current job has been much the same, she noted, with a day every month totally dedicated to community service along with her colleague, Republican Assemblyman Michael Torrissi, of Hammonton, as well as focusing on various causes like the county animal shelter and protecting women from domestic violence.

But such concerns come naturally to someone who started her career working for the Division of Civil Rights when she first got out of college and thinking she’d like to become a public defender, only to end up working in the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office. However, the way she differed from many others who have served

Asked if there is anyone she would like to see step into her current job, Stanfield was quick to call former Republican County Freeholder Latham Tiver, a labor union activist who recently entered the 8th District race, someone who “would be a fantastic replacement” and who shares many of her values.

“We’ve known each other for many years,” she noted. “He is someone who wants to serve, a very genuine and caring human being, and that is what you need to be in public service.”

With Tiver, she maintained, “it is not about ego, it is not about anything else, it is not about power – it is about what I can