Panter: Military housing plans pose security issues
Tinton Falls sees impact on school district
BY LINDA DENICOLA
Staff Writer

Panter

Mix together economics, housing, children and their education, and you get one combustible mess. Add a terrorism bust in New Jersey focused on a military facility, and boom! … clarity.

According to Assemblyman Michael Panter (D-12), the terrorism plot disclosed earlier this week highlights the need to reconsider plans for housing at Naval Weapons Station Earle.

The U.S. Navy has floated plans to rent as many as 300 homes on the base to civilian families commencing as early as 2010. Currently, only 5 percent of the housing on Earle is being utilized by military families.

Panter announced Tuesday that he is scheduled to meet with NWS Earle officials May 15. The meeting will include local officials from Colts Neck Township and the borough of Tinton Falls and will focus on two issues: homeland security and the economic impact on the two communities of up to 500 civilian children residing on federal property.

Panter explained that he has met repeatedly in recent months with officials and school board members from Colts Neck and Tinton Falls regarding their concerns that the Navy's housing plans could compromise security at the base, and lead to an influx of civilian students into local schools without adequate federal aid to pay for their education.

"Tinton Falls has faithfully educated military students housed at Earle for many years, at an economic loss of more than $8,000 per student annually," said Panter. "While they remain committed to this responsibility, nobody foresaw the Navy becoming a private landlord by inviting civilians to live on base.

"We will be asking the Navy to slow down or abandon their plans for civilian housing at the base in light of these critical security and economic concerns," Panter said.

For Tinton Falls, the issue has nothing to do with terrorism, it has to do with fairness and economics. Board of Education President Peter Karavites explained last month that 18 years ago, Colts Neck sued the Navy because they didn't want the children of the military families attending school in their district.

Tinton Falls agreed to accept those students in return for impact aid, which, according to Karavites, was several million dollars.

He explained that on average, the school district gets $2,000 for each of the 103 Navy dependent children.

But it costs between $9,000 and $10,000 to educate a child in Tinton Falls, according to Tamar Sydney-Gens, Tinton Falls Board of Education administrator.

The borough Board of Education has said the district has repeatedly reached out to state and federal legislative representatives asking for increased funding, but, in fact, federal and state funding has been reduced, not increased, over the past 10 years.

In a letter published in February, the board of education stated, "The federal government has consistently let down our military families, while the taxpayers of the Tinton Falls and Shrewsbury Township communities have had to step up and compensate for the inequities and shortfalls created by the state and federal governments."

The letter noted that recent realignment of military personnel has resulted in NWS Earle housing being used by other branches of the military and it could potentially be offered for civilian use.

"In 1988, the Department of the Navy and Tinton Falls Board of Education entered into an agreement for the children of Navy-attached parents to attend the Tinton Falls schools, instead of attending the schools in which the base is located [Colts Neck]," it said.

Sydney-Gens said the 801 housing, which is how the housing on the Earle federal property is categorized, was leased to a private corporation to handle housing management for the Navy and is only minimally occupied by military families at this time. However, in the future, the private company will have the ability to rent to private citizens, she said.

The issue is incredibly complex, Panter said, adding that Tinton Falls remains committed to educating military children whose parents are based at Earle.

"They know they are bound to educate naval students. It's not that they are against having the Earle students, but they recognize that it is a slippery slope with the possibility of up to 500 civilian children living on federal property," Panter said.

He added that one of the potential solutions for the Navy would be to make the housing age- restricted so that children would not be moving in. Another solution might be to have the land conveyed to the private developer and get it on the tax roll of Colts Neck.

"Earle needs to be a responsible citizen. It can't act with a blind eye toward the impact on citizens," he said.

In addition, Panter said, "Having hundreds of civilians move onto a military base would be a step backward in security when we should be increasing the base's safety."

Panter explained that the FBI and the state police arrested six people Monday night in connection with a terrorist plot.

"In light of the terrorist plot uncovered this morning against New Jersey military facilities, it is critical that the Navy's plans be re-evaluated in the interest of homeland security," said Panter, who is based in Shrewsbury.

"Earle is in our backyard, and this morning's developments demonstrate the danger of compromising the base's security. Allowing hundreds of civilians to move into base housing would be a step backward when we should be increasing security," he added.

Panter noted that preliminary news reports Tuesday morning detailed a plot by terrorism suspects living in Cherry Hill to attack soldiers at the U.S. Army base at Fort Dix, located in Burlington County.

These reports indicated that surveillance of additional military installations may also have been conducted by the suspects, including at Fort Monmouth.

Regardless of the security issue, Karavites said there is a huge unfairness inherent in the issue. "The taxpayers of Tinton Falls should not have to pay for civilian kids who live in Colts Neck. For 18 years, we have subsidized the federal government. We have given those kids a wonderful education, but we can no longer subsidize the federal government."

He explained that if the K-8 school district was forced to absorb so many more children, the district would probably have to build a new school with no tax help at all from the government.