One for Senate, one for Assembly
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK
Sentinel staff
NORTHFIELD — Assemblyman Vince Mazzeo is looking to move to the upper house of the state Legislature, while Caren Fitzpatrick has her eye on Mazzeo’s Assembly seat.
Mazzeo, a Northfield resident who owns B.F. Mazzeo Fruit & Produce on Route 9, served on City Council (2003-07) and as mayor (2007-14) before joining the Legislature in 2014. A Democrat, the 57-year-old represents most of Atlantic County.
Fitzpatrick, a Linwood resident, is serving her second term on the Atlantic County Board of Commissioners. She serves at-large, representing the entire legislative district.
The Senate seat representing Legislative District 2 will be up for grabs because state Sen. Chris Brown, a Republican, decided not to seek re-election. He was a member of the Assembly from 2012-17 before moving to the Senate in 2018. An Army veteran, he served from 1987 to 2009, retiring as a major. Brown, of Linwood, did not respond to multiple attempts to reach him regarding his time in the Legislature.
The Atlantic County Republican Party voted overwhelming to endorse Egg Harbor Township resident Vince Polistina for Senate as well as Don Guardian and Claire Swift for Assembly in New Jersey’s Second Legislative District, according to Keith Davis, the party chairman. Guardian is a former mayor of Atlantic City and Swift is a former deputy attorney general.
“I believe our conservative message of bringing fiscal responsibility back to Trenton, safely reopening schools and businesses and fighting for our hard-working middle-class families is exactly what Atlantic County wants to hear,” Polistina said. “It is time for all Republicans to come together and support this ticket, and our candidates from top to bottom, to ensure we have the resources to defeat Vince Mazzeo and the Democrats, who have continually sold out Atlantic County to north Jersey interests.”
Polistina previously served in the Assembly from 2008-12.
Mazzeo, who was elected to his fourth term in the lower house in 2019, said he felt “the timing was right for me to take a shot at the Senate seat.”
“It’s always difficult to run against an incumbent, but the opportunity presented itself when he decided not to run so I thought that I would jump in,” Mazzeo said.
The assemblyman said one thing he is focusing on in the near-term is how the state’s share of the federal COVID Relief Package gets distributed.
“There will be a significant amount of money that’s coming through,” he said, adding that he would like to see the municipal, county and state governments be fiscally prudent with the relief funds.
“What I would like to see — as elected officials, when we knock on doors the No. 1 issue is property tax relief,” Mazzeo said.
He advocates for using the money to lower taxes through providing more municipal and school aid.
“Hopefully on the local and county level they will be able to reduce taxes or keep taxes stable,” Mazzeo said. “I think that’s important.”
School funding issues
Spring is budget season and many cities and school districts have been presenting their spending plans publicly in the past couple of weeks.
The Linwood School District has suffered under the Student Funding Reform Act of 2018, which eliminated adjustment aid and state aid growth gaps and allowed adjustments to tax growth limitations for certain school districts.
Mazzeo said most of the districts in Atlantic County saw an increase in funding. One stark exception is the Linwood School District, which has seen its aid drop by $430,953 since 2016-17. The district was projected to lose about $750,000 over six years starting in 2018-19.
“It’s a difficult situation. There are some winners and there are some losers in that school funding formula,” Mazzeo said. “We have to take a look at the schools that got less and see what we can do.”
He said the city lost a lot of residents when the casino industry collapsed several years ago. The district has lost 78 students since 2013-14, or 9 percent, which Mazzeo said contributed to the loss in aid.
“I know that they saw a substantial decrease because they came to my office asking for help,” Mazzeo said. “It’s unfortunate. I understand that people want to live in certain areas and send their kids to these schools, but if you have less funding than in years past it becomes problematic to give them the education that they would hope they would get there.”
He said whether enrollment continues to fall or not, all districts in the state should be working toward consolidation.
One of the suggestions in state Sen. President Steve Sweeney’s Pathway to Progress is to consolidate school districts where possible.
“We have all of these administrations and school boards throughout New Jersey. Is there a way that we can look at things differently? The example I always give is Northfield, Linwood, Somers Point and Mainland — you have got four school boards,” Mazzeo said.
Shake (up) your
moneymaker
Mazzeo is a member of the Tourism, Gaming and the Arts Committee, through which he may be able to direct some of the COVID relief funding to the revitalization of Atlantic City to help boost the southern New Jersey economy.
The assemblyman said funds from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority have been used for the past five or six years to try to stabilize the city budget. Now, he said, it’s time to move on to redevelopment and economic diversification.
“If we can get in a better place for Atlantic City, then we can start bigger projects as far as redevelopment and making Atlantic City not just a casino industry,” Mazzeo said.
He mentioned what he called “Ed and Med,” referring to Stockton University and AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center, each of which has a campus in the city. He said the combination could help attract young professionals to the city, where the housing market is 70 percent rental and 30 percent owner-occupied.
Mazzeo said the education and employment opportunities could attract young, growing families to the region who want to buy property in the city.
He said it’s also important to make sure that the residents of Atlantic City see financial relief, noting the city’s taxes increased 53 percent in 2015.
“We don’t want to get in that type of situation again. We stabilize the property taxes in Atlantic City, and one of the ways is to diversify the economy and get people living in Atlantic City where you have owner-occupancy instead of rental occupancy,” he said.
Fitzpatrick said she is “delving deep” into flooding on the Black Horse Pike outside Atlantic City.
“You don’t have to wait for a full moon and a high tide anymore. It floods fairly regularly,” she said.
Fitzpatrick believes addressing coastal issues caused by climate change “should be the responsibility of those who caused the damage, such as Big Oil.”
“They should be contributing to the repairs of roadways and the changes that we have to make,” she said.
The commissioner said keeping Atlantic City viable as an economic engine is important to the district and state.
“We’re looking at changing our forecasting based on a 100-year plan and we are in a low-lying area. We are going to have some hard decisions to make,” she said. “We’re going to need the state to help us. We have given a lot to the state from this county and now we need some help in return, and because of the work I have been able to do as a commissioner I can see what those needs are.”
She said she had a one-on-one meeting last week with the deputy director of the Department of Environmental Protection to ask what the plan is to address the issues.
“We went through the projection — the 20-, 40-, 100-year projections of sea level rise and how that will affect the Black Horse Pike and Absecon Island,” she said. “They are about to roll out a research paper that is going to show the public what’s coming and hopefully the public then will get engaged in the decisions that will have to be made in order to keep our economy driver and keep the people who live on the island and the surrounding bay areas healthy and safe.”
She said the local and county governments are going to have to work with the DEP and the Department of Transportation “to figure out what exactly that means.”
“We have to have an entryway that is not only attractive but safe and passable all the time,” she said, noting it is one evacuation route off the island.
Diversifying economy
Mazzeo called the National Aviation Research & Technology Park (NARTP) in Egg Harbor Township “part of the equation as well.”
He said the centerpiece of Atlantic County is the Atlantic City International Airport, along with the Federal Aviation Administration’s William J. Hughes Technical Center and NARTP.
He called it “underutilized” but an asset that could draw more people to the district working in high-paying professions.
Atlantic County was just awarded a $3 million USEDA grant toward construction of a second building at NARTP
The planned two-story, 40,000 square foot research office building will house at least three aviation technology companies and is located within a designated federal Opportunity Zone.
“This project will help strengthen Atlantic County’s growing aviation cluster, attract additional investment and help bring much-needed diversification to the regional economy,” Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson stated in a news release.
The project is expected to generate an additional 165 technology-based jobs. The first NARTP building was completed in 2019 and is fully occupied. It resulted in 300 new jobs.
Mazzeo said industry and education must work hand in hand so that local residents are trained as a work force for the types of jobs available. That way, he said, more people will be able to grow up in the area and stay to raise their own families.
“What are going to do to keep students and people in Atlantic County? The training field has to equate to what the industry is. So if you have technology, or aviation technology, we have to have schools that teach to what are industry needs and keep people staying in Atlantic County,” Mazzeo said.
Fitzpatrick advocated for the marijuana industry as a way to bring more jobs or income to those already working as farmers in the region.
“I think that marijuana is going to be a fantastic cash crop,” she said, noting she recently was part of a Zoom meeting with the Agriculture Board during which there was discussion of how climate change has affected the state’s cranberry crops.
“It’s getting colder here and the bogs need warmer weather, but cannabis is grown in green houses. That’s a 12-month-a-year season. I think that would be a big help for us and I’m in favor of using that to boost our agricultural economy,” she said. “We have a great community of farmers. They employ a lot of people and this is going to be a great way for them to make money and they deserve to make money. We depend on them for our lives. The restaurants depend on them for food service. Retail supermarkets, farm markets depend on them for their product, and if they can expand their product line to include cannabis I think that is a great idea.”
Fitzpatrick joins ticket
The assemblyman said Fitzpatrick is an asset to the ticket, noting she garnered the most votes in both elections for an at-large seat representing the entire county.
He said he has known Fitzpatrick and her family from when they operated Fitzpatrick’s Deli in Somers Point. The restaurant purchased its produce from his family business in Northfield, he said.
“I’m happy to see her on the ticket because I think it’s important to diversify our slate and have a woman on the ticket who is a strong voice in Atlantic County,” Mazzeo said. “She just ran such a good race and got the most votes both times. She has the likability factor and she has a name; that’s helpful in elections.”
Fitzpatrick said she enjoys working at the county level but that most of the issues important to her are state-controlled.
If elected to the Assembly, she said, “I will be able to have a lot more direct impact on things that concern me.”
She mentioned the environment, women’s health care, pay equity and infrastructure as among those issues, as well as “getting the fair share of Trenton’s dollars down here to our district.”
Fitzpatrick said her experience as a commissioner gives her “a front-row seat as to what the needs of the county are and where the shortfalls are as far as state funding.”
“I have a little bit of a head-start as opposed to somebody who hasn’t been in county government to see those things,” she said, noting the district has issues with homelessness and hunger.
“The pandemic has really shown how vulnerable a lot of our residents are and we need to address the job situation, the tax situation, equity in education — all of those things that are important to us,” she said.
“We are a great community of diverse populations and really try I think to take care of our neighbors but we can’t do it all ourselves. All of the responsibility can’t be on the backs of the local taxpayers.”
Fitzpatrick is an advocate for gender equality and said she was excited when the House of Representatives voted to extend the limitation on the time for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.
“It’s high time that that got passed. It’s been 50 years — I had an ERA patch on my jeans in 10th grade. We shouldn’t have to put together pieces of legislation here and there to show that women have equality under the law. It should be proactive and spelled out in one sentence: Equal rights for everyone.”