Flood-Area Home Buyouts
A national environmental group is urging FEMA to create a voluntary buyout program that would help homeowners in flood-prone areas reduce their insurance costs. The current program, which pays out taxpayer funds to rebuild homes, ‘traps’ homeowners, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. The NRDC proposes buying out homes that have frequently flooded. Read more via NJ Advance Media here, or read the full NRDC report here.
South Jersey, idyllic pastoral-style. Greenwich, via @cweisman284 on Instagram.
Cyberthreats
Counties are on the frontlines of the cyber war, according to Route Fifty. “Retired four-star Marine Gen. John Allen has seen the cyber threat in action and believes it’s targeted at counties,” the news site wrote. Allen spoke about his experience in more detail in a Route Fifty interview, after he told a recent National Association of Counties Tech Town Hall this weekend that the fundamental operations and values of our democracy live in our electoral system, and “it exists and it lives at the county level . . . an awesome responsibility for you, frankly.”
We didn’t know a whole lot about the pressures on county-level IT services but we recently spoke with Atlantic County’s IT department and learned a little about the incredible traffic that their servers experience. Various data-collecting companies (ourselves included, on occasion) run crawlers and other programs that scan county pages as often as every second for updates on electoral data, contracting, official records and other services. The Atlantic county site gets an awesome number of pageviews each day and it has limited resources for monitoring who exactly is scanning its data and figuring out how to defend it. It’s a local slice of security infrastructure that’s mostly hidden from public view but is worth thinking about as national cybersecurity issues stay in the headlines.
“I had to give up a job I worked so hard to get.” Read the other side to the story of the 2014 fatal police chase in Atlantic City, via Lynda Cohen at BreakingAC. Video footage of the chase was released this week and shared thousands of times on social media. Cohen writes: “For officers involved in fatal shootings, the incident doesn’t end with the suspect dead. Only about a quarter return to work, says retired FBI Special Agent Mark Johnston. The number is even lower in South Jersey over the past three years.”
Looking for some upbeat news? Read about and watch two South Jersey siblings who are champion Irish dancers (via SNJ Today).
In the rest of the day’s news, some Ventnor and Atlantic City beaches have elevated bacteria levels at the moment, a reminder that your county freeholders are well-remunerated, the Pinelands Commission meets today to discuss a new gas pipeline project, there is more dunes controversy after recent storms brought flooding to Margate beaches near the dune construction project and President Trump’s cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency in our region may not be as harsh as in other areas. All that and more below:
Camp Roosevelt Holding an Open House–Camp Theodore Roosevelt which opened its gates to scouts and many community organizations of the south Jersey area in 1927, will hold an Open House on Saturday, August 5. The Open House will run from noon until 6 p.m. NJ.com
Medical Officials and Community Members Celebrate Opening of Alzheimer’s Care Center–On Tuesday, July 25th, a local medical center and members of the community gathered to celebrate the launch of the region's first center for Alzheimer's care. www.snjtoday.com
How Much Are You Paying Your County Freeholders?–Freeholder boards range from three to nine members in New Jersey. Each county's freeholders earn salaries that they set for themselves. NJ.com
Egg Harbor Township Dog Park Gaining Ground on Opening–After more than eight years stuck in the planning stages, Friends of the EHT Dog Park held its official groundbreaking Monday, July 17. Shore News Today
Local Soccer Team Goes Unbeaten at Nationals, Places Third–The South Jersey Futbol Club U-16 boys soccer team, also known as Mainland United/Upper Township FC, went unbeaten at the U.S. Youth Soccer National Presidents Cup tournament earlier this month. Shore News Today
Pinelands Commission to Meet Wednesday for Comment on Pipeline–The state Pinelands Commission will hold a special meeting Wednesday to hear public comment on a pipeline planned for the northern end of the protected region. Press of Atlantic City
Margate Dunes Project Overflow Angers Homeowners–Margate residents say they are concerned for their beachfront homes due to an overflow of water created by heavy thunderstorms that rolled through South Jersey. Press of Atlantic City