Route 40 (https://rtforty.com/author/sprouseb/page/28/)
Matt Skoufalos, who’s not only the smartest guy in the room but also has good sources, has an in-depth story that adds detail to the situation at Cherry Hill East High School, where teacher Timothy Locke has been suspended after talking about school shootings and students are protesting.
About 35 Atlantic City residents got together last night at the Masjid Muhammad Mosque on Albany Avenue to talk about the the PILOT bill and the Municipal Stabilization and Recovery Act and IAT money and ACA money and I have to say it’s a little surreal to see so much interest on the part of citizens in the…municipal budget process.
The three Atlantic City police officers who beat Steven Stadler had nearly 70 internal affairs complaints filed against them across 10 years, prompting Stadler’s attorney to say in court yesterday she’s not sure whether the ACPD really has an “Early Warning System” meant to monitor potential problem officers, the Press of AC’s John DeRosier reports. “They failed in their function to monitor the officers and track officer conduct,” the attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, said.
The average New Jersey property tax bill is at an all-time high. A federal excessive force trial against three Atlantic City police officers is entering its third week. And Atlantic City H.S. basketball lost the CAL Championship game Saturday to Wildwood Catholic in OT.
That PSE&G subsidy bill no one likes is set to go before the state senate on Monday, the valuable NJ Spotlight reports. It’s in its “sixth iteration.” That’s called #perseverance. Meanwhile a prominent casino analyst has weighed in on Bart Blatstein’s plans for the Showboat (spoiler: It’s like The Shining in there). But story-of-the-day honors go to Amy Rosenberg’s inspiring report on the Egg Harbor Township teenager who called out Jeff Van Drew for doing his job supporting the unsupportable positions that earned him a 100% rating from the NRA, which wants to arm schoolteachers.
The Atlantic City Council voted to approve a bond ordinance to raise $55 million to pay what will end up being more like $63 million in pension and health benefits deferred by the state overseers.
Ted Greenberg at NBC Philadelphia got surveillance video of the pickup truck plowing into the storefront in Ventnor Plaza. Only two injuries, amazingly.
A pickup truck drove through the front of the AutoZone in Ventnor Heights Monday after hopping the curb at Wellington Avenue, traveling the width of that entire empty parking lot I ride my bike through to get to the gym and then hopping another curb and crashing through the window, everyone reports.
The Columbine massacre was 19 years ago this April. I remember thinking how surreal and horrible that felt–fifteen school kids murdered (two the murderers themselves). Yesterday it was 17 and our failure to do anything meaningful to halt this epidemic is an index of how broken our civic and political culture is. I think so anyway. Our grandkids will measure us by it, if we’re lucky enough to have them.
In 2015, 18-year old Tiffany Valiante, of Mays Landing, was struck by a NJ Transit train in Galloway and the death ruled a suicide. But her family has long maintained the details don’t add up. Now a pathologist hired by the family’s lawyer has argued in court filings that the autopsy report was without scientific merit and investigators didn’t collect enough evidence to determine if the body was even Valiante’s, let alone that she committed suicide.