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Vol. 6 – No. 18 ♦
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February 19 - February 25, 2022
Residents Ask Bass River to Buy Elementary School District Has Up for Auction
“WHAT EXEMPLIFIES A ‘HERO’”
Locals Insist Facility is ‘Quite an Asset,’ But Commissioners Claim They Asked Several Times for Remediation Reports and ‘Have Not Received the Answers’ By Douglas D. Melegari Staff Writer
BASS RIVER—With just a little less than a month left before the auction of the shuttered Bass River Township Elementary School comes to a close, a group of township residents has approached the Bass River Township Board of Commissioners, urging it to have the municipality purchase the 23,000 square-foot building from the Bass River Township School District, believing the facility, as well as the 4.15 acres it is situated on, is “quite an asset for the town to have.” However, according to both Mayor Deborah Buzby-Cope and Commissioner Nicholas Capriglione, who responded during a Feb. 7 Bass River Township Board of Commissioners meeting, the municipality has been “asking for well over a year now” about air quality, asbestos, flood, mold and oil tank remediation at the former school, and “is still awaiting answers” from the district, reportedly not yet having been provided with copies of remediation “reports.” “We need them (the answers) in writing,” Buzby-Cope declared. The residents, upon hearing that the township has not gotten answers, urged the commissioners to investigate its “options,” with one pointing out that “time is of the essence” with the auction clock ticking, but Buzby-Cope maintained that it is a “longshot” at this point that the municipality could find out everything it needs to know, and arrange for a possible purchase, by the scheduled 3 p.m. March 11, 2022, close of
Photo By Tom Valentino
U.S. Marine Corps veteran Matthew Bailey (left), of Medford Lakes Borough, receives a proclamation from Mayor Thomas Cranston in recognition of his “heroic actions in providing lifesaving assistance.”
U.S. Marine Corps Veteran from Medford Lakes Borough Honored for ‘Heroic Actions,’ Performing Perilous Ice-Water Rescue of Man Who Fell Through Ice at Ballinger Lake; Part of a Broader Story of an Infantryman Who Gives Meaning to Being a ‘Lifesaver’
By Douglas D. Melegari Staff Writer
MEDFORD LAKES—U.S. Marine Corps veteran Matthew Bailey, of Medford Lakes Borough, was in the right place, at the right time, on the evening of Jan. 27, a set of circumstances that has led him to believe, “God chose to use me that night.” Bailey, also a fitness enthusiast who lives by the Marine ethos, “Honor, Courage, and Commitment,” and where “Semper Fidelis,” the Latin motto of every Marine, meaning “Always Faithful,” is “just second nature” to him, had just finished a workout at Medford Fitness, in Medford Township, when he decided
to go for a “routine” four-mile run. That run, as it typically does, would take him from Medford Fitness, through a nearby YMCA camp, and back to the gym, a path that traversed parts of the borough. But his return to the Medford gym on Jan. 27 was delayed, according to Medford Lakes Mayor Thomas Cranston, the result of Bailey, a veteran of both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, performing both a “heroic” and “life-endangering” ice-water rescue at Ballinger Lake, located at the intersection of Lenape Trail and Stokes Road, in Medford Lakes. Bailey, the mayor said, was near the end of his run, running alongside Ballinger
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Lake, near P.J. Whelihan’s and Lenape Trail, when “inexplicably” his headphones – despite being fully-charged – had stopped working. That caused Bailey to take them off, and within about a minute of doing so, “he heard the screams for help from across the lake.” “Those screams were from Drew Urban, who had discovered her father, Joe, had fallen through the ice while skating,” the mayor detailed in honoring Bailey with a proclamation during a Feb. 9 Medford Lakes Borough Council meeting for his “courageous actions” on Jan. 27. Joe Urban, in a Feb. 14 interview with See HERO/ Page 13
See SCHOOL/ Page 10
INDEX Business Directory ����������������������������������12
Marketplace..................................................... 14
Events........................................................3
Worship Guide �����������������������������������������11
Local News.................................................2
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