Deputy D'Amico needs to flip again.
D'Amico has been calling for Brookdale Community College to cut its budget. Last night the Freeholders introduced a county budget that included $27.7 million for Brookdale. At a separate meeting also last night, the Brookdale Board of Trustees announced that they found $1 million in savings from their $93 million budget and that they would only be requesting $26.7 million from the Monmouth County property tax payers. Thank you very much to those who are accepting wage freezes. Some of that million is a deferral of debt service. Some was eliminating positions that weren't filled anyway. Those parts are not really savings, but those are the games of creative accounting that bureaucrats and politicians play.
Brookdale's recently announced tuition increase will stand. Good. By any standard Brookdale provides a quality education at extremely reasonable tuition. With record enrollment of 15,000 students, the market evidently agrees. There is no doubt that many of those students, or their parents, would rather be spending tuition dollars for freshman and sophomore years at a quality four year institution of higher learning that awards baccalaureates. Yet Brookdale offers a quality alternative at 25% of the cost.
My question for D'Amico is why is he making headlines by squeezing Brookdale for a few hundred thousand dollars (remember, a lot of that "million" was creative accounting, not real savings)when he is not willing to save $2.5 million in real money by closing the Youth Detention Center.
Brookdale has 15,000 students. The YTD has 20 delinquent detainees. The $26.7 million the county will contribute to Brookdale comes to $1780 per student. The county could save $125,000 per delinquent by closing the Youth Detention Center, yet D'Amico has pledged to cast his two votes (his and Amy Mallet's) to keep the YTD open. Why?
In addition to the cost of operating the YTD, the Monmouth County facility is in need of serious repairs, which will cost millions more. The Middlesex County YTD is modern and has fair superior facilities. The detained youth would be better off in Middlesex. If the extra half hour to drive for visitation is too much for the families, well maybe that attitude contributed to those kids being in trouble in the first place. Maybe the kids are better off without inconvenienced visitors.
Freeholder Director Barbara McMorrow was evidently moved by the pastors and families who spoke about the need for the Monmouth YTD. She said she wanted to find cost savings at the falling down facility in order to keep it open. Here's an idea; How about we start charging the families or churces of detainees "tuition" for the Monmouth YTD. Watch how quickly they will drop their opposition to the closure.
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The same day that two alleged drug dealers were killed by three other alleged drug dealers around the corner from my house, I attended the “hearing” on closing the YDC. Perhaps I was in a less tolerant frame of mind than usual. Perhaps the time I spent as a victim’s advocate makes the plight of juvenile offenders less of a priority than the plight of the folks who have to live around them. Any which way, watching D’Amico and Mallett pretend to care about public comment and then read pre-written statements about the importance of the YDC made me a little sick.
D’Amico and company talk about cutting funding to Brookdale when closing the YDC can save as much as two million dollars a year. Moving a handful of juvenile offenders to a new facility in Middlesex County will mean an extra 20 minutes of travel time. Sorry if a few offenders and their “support system” have to be inconvenienced. The victims of their crimes don’t get free lawyers and social workers and case managers – they get nothing but the meager support that can be offered by a handful of not-for-profits that are holding bake sales and relying on volunteers to keep their doors open.
Tough decisions need to be made, but this isn’t one of them. Only the worst juvenile offenders are placed in the YDC. Overall, 6% of juvenile offenders are responsible for 66% of all violent juvenile crime. Some of these kids are one person crime sprees. And over 85% of their victims are from within their own communities. So while the ministers from Asbury Park are decrying closing the YDC, perhaps they should at least mention the toll these offenders take on their own neighborhoods. Where were they when it was time to tell D’Amico not to cut educational opportunities for kids in their communities who are working to get ahead?
Mallett is beholden to the unions who support the juvenile detention officers. D’Amico is tied in with them as well. Their position has nothing to do with what’s best for Monmouth County. They can listen to the ministers and pretend to care about this handful of offenders, but they’ve already lined their campaign coffers with union dollars. This is a purely political move on D’Amico’s part, as it is for his hand-puppet, Amy Mallett. McMorrow should realize that this is political cronyism at its worst and vote to close the YDC.
this analysis is correct, and will be another plank in the GOP platform for this and next year, to take the county back for the GOP, and mostly, for the taxpayers.. the D's are just so beholding to their far-removed but rich party bosses,and are really screwing up on a daily basis, so we need to get going, to turn the blue levels of gov't. RED, and pronto....
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