The quest for “a better Asbury Park” enunciated by a candidate for City Council.
Paul Goldfinger, Editor Blogfinger.net
No candidate for Neptune Township Committee or, for that matter, officials who run the Home Groaners, the Hysterical Society, the Chamber of Commercials or the CMA ever publicly express a wish to make the town of Ocean Grove “better.” There is no sense of sharing a common cause.
That is why the Asbury Park slogan above is so impressive compared to us and why A. Park will continue to get better while OG sloshes along, at the mercy of those self interested factions.
Right now the town is a mish mash without direction or values as a community.
The Grove needs to define what sort of place it wants to be.
The Township Committee will never concern itself with what’s best for the town’s residents. We need a new activist group of citizens who will pursue what’s “better for Ocean Grove” and which will assert power to the people.
In 1920 the citizens formed a group called the “Civic Betterment League.” They fought with Neptune and the CMA over taxes, assessments, and formation of an independent Ocean Grove Borough. There were law suits and confrontations. Eventually the people failed, but after one hundred years, maybe those fundamental issues should be looked at again.
The ultimate solution, not a new idea, is secession.
DANIEL AGEE From the HBO series Big Little Lies: “How’s the World Treating You.”