LAKEWOOD BUSING FIASCO: Igud Hamosdos Weighs In
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I’m sorry but if you have the money build schools then provide the funds for your own transportation
13*x1=$100,000,000.00
I already opted in, anyway to undo?
Isn’t Balsam a member of LSTA?
and i always thought it was Karlin Stolin.
How do you opt out of your school Originally told you to opt in and you did
The fee in question is only for Kids who aren’t eligible for state funded transportation ie: kids who live less than 2 miles away from their schools.
just because we want to send our kids on busses doesn’t mean the state should pay for it.
this attitude that if we want it we get it is more than a little pathetic.
lobbying the state to pay for this is an exercise in futility, and the ever present pretending that we have it coming and a little bit of pushback toward the state Government will get us everything we want is a ploy by the askanim, when in fact it’s not actually going to accomplish anything at all. And it wasn’t ever meant to, friends in Trenton shouldn’t be getting is special treatment it should get us the same treatment as everyone else.
in short Township’s around the US get state funding for specific projects, the lobbying that we are meant to do to the state is to say that this needs to be done now and yes it’s worth it to do, etc. etc.
but it was never Carte Blanche for us to say the state Should pay for extra things because we want it because we have one member in the Senate that votes how we want him to vote.
to believe that we fell hook line and sinker for the idea that us coming out to the ones wipe out hundreds of millions of dollars in our tuition bills a year is possibly the biggest indictment of us yet.
In fact, we were told we were promised and Avi Schnall was running for Senate, By others that if we vote him in, he’ll have stronger voting power than the Governor (Avi himself was never the one saying it).
But there is one thing we can do.
Sadly, we fell for it the next year When they told us that a little township as ours is going to somehow close the gap and that we with our 20,000 votes can Who the pulse suggested would lose by half 1 million votes.
Lobby State Government to lessen than the non-mandated school busing area. Right now it’s 1.9 miles, And here is where we can actually demand Avi Schnall to do something for us in Trenton, Introduce bill to lower that number to 1 mile or a half a mile. Because that is the only way the state will ever pay for bussing.
The state is not giving us a charity donation, It’s high time we realize that.
Why should the government pay for what was always known as Courtesy Bussing? My daughter attended Catholic School; we had the same bussing issues. The government did not cover our extra bussing monies.We all work hard to support our families; we cannot rely on extra government support.
It’s a very good question, but what I believe the logic behind this, is that the government wether on the State or Local level has a budget for education and that gets allocated mostly to fund public schools with a small portion going to private schools. However in town/cities where the majority of the population sends to private schools herein funding their own education that calls for a disproportionate percentage allocation. All we are asking for is to at least cover the bussing.
To put it in perspective: The government is telling us they don’t have the funds for bussing our children but what would they do if all of the children that are in private schools in this town would enroll into public schools, how much would that cost them?
I hope this can give you some clarity into understanding the frustration showed by your neighbors.
Why the down votes to this realistic and factual comment.
Why should they lower it? It only benefits the Frum and it’s private schools. The majority of the state politicians couldn’t care less for Lakewood and it’s frum community. Avi can grovel all you want, at best you’ll get it at an increase in state taxes. The increase in state taxes will probably quite higher then the cost for LSTA.
Yay and that’s going to help how exactly
I live in Toms River. I have friends here, and in all the surrounding townships. I don’t know one person who would not be delighted to pay $900 and get our kids bussed to and from school. I’m so disgusted that when we beg and beg and beg no one ever helped us, but all of a sudden someone living a mile away gets a deal we would dream for, and the igud hamosdos is involved and saying it’s unacceptable.
And don’t say, well then, you shouldn’t have moved out of Lakewood. There is no room in Lakewood for everyone who lives in the surrounding towns. They wanted and needed us to branch out.
Yes absolutely!!!!
You get, if you fill out a b6t, you get $1177.
No one is saying that you shouldn’t have moved out of Lakewood, but moving out of Lakewood means you understood and actively chose to accept that there would be a cost to that i.e. if you live outside of Lakewood, but use schools and amenities from inside Lakewood it would either be more time behind the wheel or it would cost you money. People that stayed living in Lakewood did not expect that and didn’t have to deal with that previously so obviously are complaining when it’s a last-minute change like this.
It’s the same if you live inside the mandated space. If you don’t want to pay the small fee, move a few blocks further. The laws of the land are the requirements that we follow.
Opt out and then what? What’s the plan?
Take off from work, so you can sit in traffic for hours daily, while transporting your children to school. Then complain how you ,can’t afford tuition, because you don’t have income. Same circle of nonsense all over again. Or move to Ihr Hatorah Brooklyn, where you won’t have these problems.
interesting to consider that the most likely voters for the vaad are those living within 2 miles to the schools. The further away you get the more likely to be from Brooklyn or non yeshiva affiliated.
now a vaad speaks up. Why? It won’t help. Lsta doesn’t need the riders. What I think is that it’s to show the voters that “The vaad” cares about you. Really? What about all the kids not yet accepted?
Further out doesn’t equal Brooklyn. 2 Miles is a very limited requirement. So unless you live right near your childrens mosdos, you’re outside the 2 miles. Westgate is quite a distance from where the Cheder was and is. Plenty in the Westgate area are 3rd generation Lakewood people.
this is just stupid. The government doesn’t owe us bussing. It isn’t fun that this got slapped on us last minute and that should be investigated (calmly) but why are we giving non 613s another reason to hate us? Let’s talk about this in Trenton. If you don’t trust the agudah, fine. Get together a delegation on your own and go to Trenton and Lobby. You can also try to vote in a new candidate, and we can start a petition. But this is not the yiddishe way. We are in galus, Eisav doesn’t owe us anything, to be honest if this is the big issue we are having, we are really lucky. Our ancestors would could only wish that they could have the brain space to worry about money the way we do, they were too busy SURVIVING. let’s count our blessings, thank HaShem for everything we have, and daven for mashiach.
Maybe this is what happens when the whole block doesn’t vote for her
Which Government should step in & pay? If you mean the Lakewood Township then we will end up paying for it in higher real estate taxes.
To me, this seems like a manufactured crisis. The township has a large and maybe slightly bloated budget of which they relied on state funding and raising property tax every year. This year the state funding didn’t come through so they went to the board and requested to raise property tax even higher than the 2% statewide cap. They were denied about a week or two ago. Instead of saying, OK, let’s cut some of the bloat and maybe some not so popular expenditures they went specifically and picked the one thing to cut that would rile up a large percentage of people in town. Once they cut that the LSTA had to last minute raise the money. The Schools then say don’t opt in hence causing a showdown. Maybe they’ll be a day or two of traffic to cause extra pressure. Next thing you know the askonim come swooping in along with some elected officials and use this as an opportunity to squeeze the state for a couple more dollars by showing how their cuts have upset so many voters. Askonim and those elected officials end up looking good and the day is saved. Could be the details are not perfect, but I wouldn’t call it too much of a conspiracy theory either.