July, 2012. Ocean Grove, NJ. This is one way to be heard, but nobody left their signatures, and a petition can get many more voices to express an opinion. Blogfinger photo © by Mary Walton.
The Neptune Township Committee has the power to effect your lives. They can order you around because they can write ordinances and rules that will influence your quality of life, home values, historic preservation in Ocean Grove, and the look and feel of our town. They can tax you and tell you where to park. They can allow developers to construct big ugly buildings designed to make money and to increase density in OG.
Neptune Township receives its power from the people. Power flows downhill from the People’s Congress in Washington to the Neptune Mother Ship. So we need to tell our representatives that they can lose their power if they don’t pay attention to the wishes of the people.
At any Township meeting, with some exceptions, only a handful of citizens get to express their opinions, and then only for five minutes. This is hardly a good way for the voice of the people to be heard.
On Blogfinger we do polls and we hope that the Committee takes an interest in the results. They are supposed to be representing us, so you would think that they would like to know what the shifting winds of public opinion are saying about issues that concern us in Ocean Grove. We often get over 200 poll participants, and many more like to look at the polls. Many of the poll posts are shared on social networking sites or simply by sending BF links to friends and neighbors. But more voices need to be heard by the tone-deaf members of the Neptune Governing Body.
However, we get the impression that our representatives don’t care what we think. Perhaps they would care more if they heard from many hundreds or even thousands of Ocean Grove citizens/voters.
Blogfinger is basically a local news site. We offer opinions in our editorials, but we are not activists—we won’t organize a rally or a march on the Neptune Mother Ship.
We will announce an important meeting such as when the Committee might rule on the North End Redevelopment Plan, but we won’t get up and debate the issues at the HOA. That sort of thing is for community activists, who are in short supply in this town.
Recently a reader offered to make fliers to send electronically when it is necessary to rally attendance at a Town meeting. That’s great, because we will announce the meeting, but not make fliers.
Another reader suggested that someone do online petitions. That is a way to gather many hundreds of signatures to promote a particular point of view. Such petitions are used all over the world to influence local governments.
“Since 2007, the online petition platform Change.org has had more than 224 million online signatures in 196 countries to support and drive change in national, state, and local government legislation and corporate policies. (hubspot.com)”
But we will not initiate petitions, sign petitions or seek out signatures. Journalists don’t do that. We will publicize the efforts of others who would work on petitions—that’s news.
Petitions are a great idea to hit the Neptune Twp. Committee with a lot of voices on specific issues. If any of you want to actually do something, consider creating an online petition (eg via Change.org). Let me know, and I will publicize your project.
Here’s a sample idea for a petition ; “We the undersigned demand that Neptune Township cancel the North End Redevelopment Plan and return the project to private enterprise and original single family zoning.”
FRANKIE RANDALL
I’m all for free speech, and think everyone should have a voice. But it’s the taxpayers of Neptune – and OG, that will have to bear the burden of the Mayor and Council’s decisions. For that reason, it is to those voices that the leaders – and we, as residents, should be listening.
OGeggy: You are correct that these polls are not scientific; we never said that they are. They simply express the opinions of our readers. For the most part I don’t know precisely who our readers are, but I feel confident in saying that many, if not most, are residents–some owners and some renters. Others are those who visit here or who are interested in OG’s story. Most are people who care about Ocean Grove.
As far as whom the Governing Body should listen to,they can listen to anybody; they have no problems listening to rich investors whose only interest is in exploiting our historic oceanside town. I don’t hear you reacting to those influences.
We do have free speech in this country, so you don’t need to be a taxpayer who primarily lives in town to have a voice in what happens here. The funny thing is that the Township Committee doesn’t seem to listen to the taxpayers either.
If you care about OG you would welcome the support of anyone who wants to join the struggle to keep our town beautiful and meaningful. —–Paul @Blogfinger
Your polls are not only not scientific, but don’t necessarily express the views of RESIDENTS. Rather they contain opinions of visitors, tourists, and those for whom OG is not there primary residence. The taxpayers who are residents, with OG as their primary address, are the only one whose opinion should be considered by the Mayor and Council. Until you can demonstrate that these are the respondents to your so called “polls” they cannot, and should not be considered by our leaders
Related to ensuring that the Ocean Grove message is heard by the Township Committee: I see on the Township website (under Public Notices) that the town is looking to hire a Public Relations and Marketing Consultant. Among this person’s duties would be to “Act as a PR consultant for the governing body when potential publicity events occur either positive or negative.” I was curious about how common it is for NJ municipalities to have PR consultants and found a May 5, 2014 article at northjersey.com that said that, at least in North Jersey, only “a handful of… towns and cities pay public relations specialists…”. (http://www.northjersey.com/news/towns-debate-paying-for-pr-1.1008971?page=all). It looks like the Township Committee will soon have professional assistance with getting its message out.