New Jersey Unfiltered

Look who owes Atlantic City $363,000

ATLANTIC CITY - Hours after being sworn in as acting mayor, William “Speedy” Marsh asked a state judge to delay a decision on how and when he must repay a $363,000 debt to the city “until this little mayoral thing works itself out.”

Marsh, the City Council president, took over from former Mayor Bob Levy (JEW) who resigned Wednesday, citing health problems and a federal investigation into veteran’s disability payments he received stemming from his Vietnam war service. With Levy’s resignation, which followed his two-week disappearance, Marsh became acting mayor.

The $363,000 Marsh must repay the city is his portion of a payout to him and a former mayor to settle a lawsuit they filed claiming they had been fired from board of education jobs due to political retaliation.

In May, the state Supreme Court ruled that Marsh and Lorenzo Langford, who would later be elected mayor, should not have received the settlement, which the court termed “infected by intolerable conflicts of interest.” (Langford was in office as mayor when City Council approved the payments.)
Marsh says he needs a little breathing room before he repays the money. (he spent it already)

“I absolutely will pay it back,” he said in an interview with the Associated Press yesterday. “I’m not going to duck it. We’re just asking for it to be suspended until this little mayoral thing works itself out.”

Marsh’s attorney, Frederic Bor, said he wrote to Superior Court Assignment Judge Valerie Armstrong “almost immediately” after Marsh became acting mayor, asking her to delay the payment “until he is no longer mayor.”

An aide to the judge said the request had been received, but no hearings had been scheduled.

The dispute began in 1998, when city school board positions held by Langford and Marsh were eliminated days after Mayor James Whelan won reelection by defeating Langford. Marsh was Langford’s campaign treasurer.

At the time, Marsh was a $79,000-a-year neighborhood facilities coordinator and Langford was a $30,000-a-year liaison officer.

Langford and Marsh filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit in 1999 against the city, Whelan and others. A federal judge dismissed the case, but it was revived by an appeals court.

City Council negotiated a $1 million settlement in 2001, but Whelan - who was unseated by Langford in the 2001 election - refused to sign it before leaving office.

As a result, Langford took office in 2002 with the suit still pending and City Council agreed to settle it for $850,000.

The city ignored a warning by the state Office of Government Integrity not to distribute the money until it reviewed the deal’s legality.

Marsh got $363,784, Langford got $193,784, and attorneys got the rest. The settlement became a major issue in the 2005 Democratic primary for mayor, in which lifeguard Levy defeated Langford.

Marsh said he is interested in being named mayor until a special election can be held next year.

“I hope I do a good enough job, and maybe I can pursue it,” he said. “If I can get a month under my belt, and people like what I’m doing, maybe I’ll continue on.”

The local Democratic Party has 15 days to nominate three people to serve as mayor. If the council picks one, that person will serve until a special election next year. Another mayoral election will be held in 2009.

“That’s the only thing that scares me, having to run two times so close,” Marsh said, “That’s hard on your family.”

Marsh spent his first full day in office meeting with city officials. He sought to calm municipal workers and residents, promising no drastic upheavals.

“The residents and the business community don’t have to worry,” he said. “The embarrassment has to stop, and we have to have good leadership.”

Diane Reaves wishes she was dreaming.

At this point she’d opt for the surreal rather than continue down the path of organizing a rally that in the last few months has given her a crash course in reality checks and false hopes.

“PLEASE SOMEONE TELL ME THIS IS A DREAM!!!!!” she wrote in the subject line of a mass e-mail to a reporter and dozens of supporters.

The message Tuesday described what very well may be the final blow to an already crippled pursuit: Yet another venue had rejected a request to host the rally against illegal immigration when Reaves was under the impression the event was on.

Kim Siecinski, the Exalted Ruler of the Old Bridge Elks Lodge, informed the novice organizer in an e-mail that “Our organization is not sectarian and non-political, thus we are unable to be party to your organization.”

Siecinski declined to comment when reached by phone.

Three days earlier, Reaves sent out an e-mail, ecstatic because a former exalted ruler, Frank Shallis Sr., had offered her use of the lodge in Old Bridge.

“And to top it off, they REFUSE to charge me a DIME for the hall rental,” she wrote. “They have the courage and patriotism that is forbidden in the township of Lakewood. They are not dictated by the “majority rule’ of the two major groups in Old Bridge. They believe in our battle and are willing to help out in many ways.”

By that time, Reaves had given up on holding the rally in Lakewood. Originally scheduled for Aug. 25 at the Lakewood town square, the rally was canceled because Reaves felt there would be too little security amid rumors of Hispanic gangs and militant groups showing up.

The township declined to provide the rally with an increased police presence, saying it was against its policy to do so for private occasions.

Others, however, have pointed to past events where the police department provided security, including religious fundraisers.

That led Reaves to ask the American Legion Post on River Avenue to use its building. She and its first vice commander, Angelo Barone, drew up a $300 contract to hold the rally there Oct. 20.

Days later, the post commander, Greg Naekel, came back from vacation, saw the contract and voided it, saying the group’s bylaws prohibit the post from hosting anything political or partisan in nature.

“I was away, and when I got back I was like “Whoa! What happened here?’ ” Naekel said. “Since then, we’ve tried to smooth it out as best as we could.”

Rally supporters have argued that the legion has taken a stance on immigration. The national office has on its Web site a policy paper that says, in part: “The security, economy and social fabric of the United States of America is seriously threatened by individuals who have illegally entered this country.”

Naekel said, however, that each local post follows its own bylaws and not necessarily those of other offices. He recently met with county and state legion heads who agreed, he said.

“I’m not against border security or any of that, but we’re not allowed to have it at this place,” he said.

Reaves’ money was returned with apologies for the mix-up, Naekel said. Reaves said she still plans on suing the American Legion for breach of contract.

With the Elks club rejection, it appears the rally will not be held at all, according to supporters.

“I think it’s sad,” said Patricia DeFilippis, who was supposed to go with Reaves to Middlesex County this weekend to hire police for security at the Old Bridge rally. “She’s had speakers line up all this time, and now 18 days beforehand we get canceled. What’s an American to do?”

Reaves she said she is still getting calls for interviews from media across the country, including one Tuesday night from SCAN TV in Seattle, the community access network there.

Rabbi uses You Tube to market High Holiday services

BASKING RIDGE — The High Holidays begin on the eve of Sept. 12 and Rabbis the world over are trying to get the word out.

Rabbi Mendy Herson of Chabad of Somerset County, it trying an untraditional approach to get his message to the Jewish people of Somerset County.

He posted a short video on You Tube titled Do the High Holiday Services make you feel…?

Rabbi Mendy describes the warm and welcoming environment of the services at Chabad “… you can come when ever you like, and leave whenever you like, and no one is taking attendance…”

Rabbi Mendy is banking on some success from the You Tube video; according to a release he has hired the local police to deal with the heavy traffic he is expecting.

Chabad of Greater Somerset County is located at 3048 Valley Road, Basking Ridge, NJ 07920, (908) 604-8844; www.chabadcentral.org

Springfield yeshiva looks to Somerset
The 19th-century McCutchen mansion — a 15,000-square-foot Queen Anne that anchors North Plainfield’s Washington Park Historic District — has caught Rabbi Eliyohu Sorotzkin’s eye.

“It’s just gorgeous,” Sorotzkin told the borough’s board of adjustment Wednesday. “I am completely enraptured by the beauty of it.”

The home was gifted by Marga ret McCutchen to the New York Yearly Meeting Friends’ Home, a Quaker organization, in 1951 and refashioned as the McCutchen Friends Home, a residence for seniors with an adjacent nursing home. If Sorotzkin’s plans are approved, the mansion soon could house Somerset County’s only yeshiva, an Orthodox Jewish religious school for young men.

Sorotzkin, who comes from a long line of yeshiva directors, is seeking to move his growing school, Yeshiva Tiferes Boruch, from its cramped quarters in Springfield, in Union County, to the McCutchen home. The school’s 92 students range in age from 14 to 22, although the class size is expected to dip to around 86 this year.

Most of the students — around 97 percent, the rabbi said — go on to further religious study in Israel.

James L. Whitely, chairman of the board at McCutchen Friends Home, told borough officials the home had to be closed because it had become uneconomical and was running a deficit that would reach $600,000 this year.

“It was a very agonizing decision for us,” Whitely said. “We felt very much a part of the community.”

Whitely said the organization preferred to turn the property over to another care provider, but of the few nursing homes that looked at the property, only one made an offer. Allen Rosenberg, the real es tate agent hired to market the property, said the offer was “almost an insult.”

The sale includes a nearby vacant lot which would be used to build a home for the rabbi, said Ted Gast, attorney for the yeshiva. While terms of the sale have not been disclosed, it was on the market for $2.25 million.

Rosenberg said he had three separate inquiries from yeshivas to purchase the property. Given the unique nature of the property and its location in a residential neighborhood, the school is “the best use for the property,” Rosenberg said.

HADDONFIELD
In Amicus Brief, ADL Argues Anti-Semitic Comments are Not ‘Teasing’

West Orange, NJ, August 22, 2007…The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) this week filed a “friend of court” brief in Cutler v. Dorn, a case involving a Jewish police officer from Haddonfield, NJ, who claimed that other police officers’ anti-Semitic remarks and actions created a hostile work environment.

The brief in support of Jason Cutler urges the New Jersey Supreme Court to reverse that part of the decision which characterized anti-Semitic comments made by the officer’s supervisor and co-workers as “mere teasing.”

Lawrence Cooper, New Jersey Regional Board Chair, and Etzion Neuer, New Jersey Regional Director said: “The lower Court’s use of the term ‘teasing’ to describe comments like ‘dirty Jew’ and ‘Jews make all the money’ fails to capture the true harm these remarks were meant to convey. Such assertions targeting a Jewish employee can have a very destructive discriminatory impact in a workplace, and should not be dismissed or trivialized.”

Other organizations joining the brief include American Jewish Committee and The Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern New Jersey. The brief was submitted on behalf of the coalition by ADL Regional Advisory Board member Philip Rosenbach of the firm Berman Rosenbach, P.C.