By Brenda Flanagan
NJ Today
“I have no sympathy for your view. No sympathy,” Gov. Chris Christie told a town hall crowd in Middlesex. He’s targeting beachfront property owners who will not allow protective dunes to be built in front of their ocean view homes.
“The selfish ones who care more about their view than about the safety and the welfare of their neighbors,” Christie said.
The governor argues that Sandy devastated beach blocks that lacked a strong barrier of sand dunes, while shore towns shielded by dunes suffered less damage. There’s a $3 billion plan to rebuild dunes and beaches along the Jersey coast, but it hit a wall when some oceanfront homeowners refused to sign the necessary easements. Now Christie’s threatening to name names.
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“So that’s why I wanna warn you, so there’s no sudden heart attacks by my constituents. But we’re gonna start calling these folks out in the next few weeks if they haven’t signed these easements to let us build the dunes,” Christie said.
More Sandy drama. In the audience of Christie’s 104th town hall meeting was Elaine Konopka. She asked the governor if he remembered her.
“I remember walking down the street and I remember you,” Christie said.
He first met Konopka while touring the flood damage in Sayreville, where Sandy destroyed her home.
She doesn’t want to rebuild and keeps waiting for a buyout — 148 days. Christie expects $250 million in federal funds to come online next month.
“We’re in limbo because we don’t know what’s happening. We’re waiting for a buyout which I begged the state to help us so we could move on with our lives,” Konopka said.
The governor focused on getting the biggest bang for tax dollars, specifically money spent on public education. He still wants a voucher system.
Christie referred to the struggling Camden School District — where yesterday he announced the state’s taking over. He called the schools there “failure factories.”
“For parents in Camden, for instance, where we’re paying $24,000 per pupil, per year, why not give a student and their family a voucher for half that and let them go to a better performing Catholic school,” Christie said.
He said vouchers would force public schools to compete and that competition’s a powerful incentive for failing districts to improve.