The Business of Drugs and Unelected School Boards – Friday’s Roundup

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The Business of Drugs

There was a major drugs bust rounding up heroin and cocaine suppliers who operated throughout the area yesterday. Police and other law enforcement officials made 15 arrests in Camden and Philadelphia – the culmination of seven months of investigations by agencies that ranged from the New York City Police Department and New Jersey State Police to the U.S. Postal Service. Yes. If you ever needed proof that the illicit drugs trade is in fact a highly-organized logistics business, you should read a bit about what this group – allegedly with ties to Mexican cartels – were up to. Their business involved mailing, shipping and trucking drugs from Chicago to here.

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No North Jersey Casino Campaign Set To Win and It’s Still Spending – Thursday’s Roundup

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Casino Expansion Unlikely, Polls Show

Seventy percent of registered voters say they oppose an amendment to expand casino gambling to North Jersey, according to the latest poll from Fairleigh Dickinson – NJ Spotlight has the goods. Atlantic City casino workers want the referendum not just to lose but to lose badly, to avoid having this fight again in a few years. No North Jersey Casino Campaign Spends Big

To further that cause, the No North Jersey Casinos campaign has been spending a lot – $14 million according to ELEC. Hudson County View, a colleague of ours in the New Jersey News Commons project, reports that the campaign dropped $3,500 just for permission to film inside the Bayonne high school: the school and other Bayonne landmarks appeared in three separate TV commercials paid for by Trenton’s Bad Bet – the anti-North Jersey casino group. Trenton’s Bad Bet has continued an aggressive, multi-million dollar marketing campaign, despite their pro-casino counterparts, Our Turn NJ, suspending their paid media campaign in late September. AC Badlands

Changing topic and returning to Atlantic City, check out Bill Sprouse’s latest piece on how someone – bless them – is trying to change the zoning in the inlet and build a house there.

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Picturing Life Before Gambling and The State Strikes Back – Wednesday’s Roundup

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Remember the days when Atlantic City didn’t have casinos? Only one of us was born at that point but it’s amazing to look back at these old pictures, via Newsworks, and listen to their piece discussing what’s happened to this crazy town. So many promises were made, so few fulfilled. And there are so many vacant lots! It’s been 40 years (or more) of constant redevelopment.

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Mountains of Sand and Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fashion – Tuesday’s Roundup

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The Lonely Fight
The city of Margate gave up suing over the Army Corps of Engineers’ plan to extend dunes to the southern part of Absecon Island, but some Margate residents are keeping the fight going. A lawyer for those residents has filed an injunction request, seeking to prevent the work from starting before the case is heard. Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers has received bids for the work. Read the details here. Globalization Spreads To South Jersey.

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The Borgata Question and Your Right To Know

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The Borgata question

This morning, Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian and a support team of lawyers are testifying before the Assembly Judiciary Committee in Trenton to try and win support for the city’s recovery plan. The Press of Atlantic City’s Christian Hetrick is providing a rundown on Twitter (@_hetrick) and the deal – which includes agreements on city union contracts, significant cost cuts and no tax increases for five years – seems pretty impressive. The one question hanging over it, as Amy Rosenberg raised in the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday, is the extent to which the city’s biggest taxpayer, the Borgata casino, is on board. The Borgata said yesterday it had no agreement with the city – but the casino is prepared to discuss a reduction of the amount the city owes it in taxes it overpaid in previous years. The Borgata, as the city’s advisors well know, doesn’t really trust Atlantic City after long-running litigation over its taxes, and it is apparently waiting for the state’s ruling on the recovery plan.

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Winter Weather Guessing, Who’s Paying For What and Kindergarten – Tuesday’s Roundup

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The local weather institution that is Dan Skeldon has a piece that (SPOILER!) won’t surprise you by accurately predicting, day-by-day, the winter weather, but you’ll want to read it anyway just so can talk about the weather in an informed kind of way with friends, relations and Wawa cashiers. Skeldon says that other forecasters believe it will be an ‘average’ winter and that maybe the warm ocean temperature could cause more coastal storms and coastal flooding. The No North Jersey Casinos coalition is holding a rally on Thursday – on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. Right now, SNJ Today says polls show that 70 percent of voters are against the idea of gaming in the north of the state. And most people you speak to in AC think it’s just another way to kick South Jersey while it’s down.

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Aviation > Gambling and Talking Trump In District 2

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The stars seem to be aligning around here, meaning that a whole lot of people with deep pockets as well as some politicians have agreed on something: Atlantic County needs jobs and maybe aviation and technology could be a better bet (sorry) than the casino industry. Leaving aside the fact that it would be hard to do much worse than being a gambling economy centered around closing casinos, aeronautics really does sound like a great future for our youth of today. The Press of Atlantic City looked at this issue last week and New Jersey 101.5 has the details today of a New York-based college that focuses on aeronautics and technology and could open a branch at the Atlantic City International Airport. Every time I read about District 2, I think of the Hunger Games. But democratic hopeful David Cole seems to be thinking of how to beat his big-spending incumbent rival Frank LoBiondo.

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Atlantic City’s D-Day Is Monday, An Existential Taj Mahal and Picky Eaters – Thursday’s Roundup

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Atlantic City last night took a step closer – maybe, just maybe – to getting out from under the bizarre and complex terms that came with taking a controversial state emergency loan earlier this year. The city council agreed (just – the vote was 5-4) to sell former airstrip Bader Field to the city’s water utility in return for $110 million (and yep, a lot more debt for the Municipal Utilities Authority). Next step is the announcement of a five-year recovery plan which will be presented at a public meeting at City Hall on Monday at 5pm. If it doesn’t appease the state, it won’t be for Mayor Don Guardian’s lack of trying. Guardian has sold everything from scrap metal and filing cabinets to bicycles and vacant lots to raise money and he’s persuaded hundreds of city staffers to take early retirement and do without city courtesy cars to trim costs.

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A Notorious South Jersey Mountain Lion and Trump? Who’s He? Just Show Me The Money

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In news from the paranormal school of clickbait, Philly Voice reported on a Mountain Lion possibly roaming through South Jersey (wait – you didn’t realize you were living in a mountainous snowy wonderland? Us neither). There was “trail camera” footage, a genre familiar to everyone who’s ever googled ‘Jersey Devil’ or ‘Big Foot’, and Winslow Township police were on the case. Spoiler alert – the story was later updated and the party poopers at the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife snuffed out the wannabe viral image. ‘Tis the season, folks.

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