School
funding mess cuts deep
Halt to project hammers a
struggling neighborhood in Camden County
Sunday, July 31, 2005 • BY RUDY LARINI AND STEVE
CHAMBERS • Star-Ledger Staff
David Dankel bought his house in a
run-down neighborhood of Gloucester City eight years ago,
after his 32-year-old wife, Tina, died of throat
cancer.
It was to have been a place of new
beginnings.
Now he and his daughter have to start
over again.
The Dankels are among a handful of
families left in what was once a bustling neighborhood in
this faded industrial city on the Delaware River just south
of Camden.
These days, it is a scary place of
boarded-up houses and empty streets. It is a monument to the
mismanagement and waste that has crippled the state's $8.6
billion school construction program, as well as vivid proof
that the funding mess has roiled struggling towns large and
small, from one end of the state to the other.
"It was a real nice neighborhood;
everybody knew everybody," said Lois Dankel, 24, her
blond-streaked auburn hair tucked in a bun. "Now it's just
depressing and scary."
The New Jersey Schools Construction Corp.
planned to build a $21.3 million middle school where the
neighborhood and an adjacent shuttered factory stood. But
with a $25 million federal environmental cleanup of the
factory site nearly complete and 70 houses purchased and
emptied at a cost of $10 million, the SCC gave Gloucester
City bad news Wednesday: The agency was running out of
money, and the middle school would have to wait for another
infusion of cash.
"They're (the SCC) going to finish the
demolition, scatter some grass seed and walk away," said
Lynda Lathrop, a spokeswoman for the school
district.
There was plenty of pain to go around
last week, as the SCC told Gloucester City and the state's
30 other distressed districts which construction projects it
could fund out of a $6 billion pot set aside by the
Legislature. In all, more than 200 projects already under
way were placed in limbo by the agency, which was set up
three years ago to manage the court-ordered school
overhaul.
Legislators aren't likely to begin
debating calls for more money until after the November
elections.
The projects hurt the most were ones in
places like Gloucester City, where houses and businesses had
been shuttered in vain -- at least for the time
being.
"It's a ghost town," said City
Administrator Paul Kain. "It's become a rougher neighborhood
because nobody lives there. We're having vagrants ... people
breaking in and pulling copper from the houses. Fires are
being set."
Every district seemed to have a similar
horror story. In Newark, houses on Dewey Street and Ridge
Avenue have been boarded up, threatening once-stable
neighborhoods.
Kevin McElroy, an SCC spokesman, said the
agency received a dozen demolition bids Thursday for
Gloucester City, adding that bulldozers would likely be
working by mid-August. He said the state also expects to buy
the last four properties -- two houses and two small
businesses -- but offered no timetable.
McElroy said the land will be retained in
hopes another round of funding will be forthcoming. But he
said it remains unclear how many partially completed sites
the SCC can continue to acquire.
A land acquisition committee formed by Al
Koeppe, the former Public Service Electric & Gas chief
executive brought in this spring to clean up mismanagement
and waste at the SCC, is expected to approve a list of
projects in August.
To make matters worse in Gloucester City,
the SCC also is making alterations to the high school,
adding a media center and other amenities. When the work is
completed in 2007, there will be no room for the seventh-
and eighth-graders who now attend classes in that
space.
They were to have moved to the new middle
school.
"It's horrendous what they left us with,"
said Mayor Thomas Kilcourse. "The people are all out, the
houses are all boarded up, and now there's no school
coming.
"It's something they promised us and now
they pulled it out from under us," he said.
Losing the new middle school was a
problem Gloucester City didn't need.
The city of 12,000 once was a thriving
industrial town, with a Navy shipyard and bustling
waterfront. That all disappeared decades ago, taking most of
Gloucester City's jobs with them.
"When they went belly up, this town just
died because practically everybody worked there," Lathrop
said.
Officials hoped the new school could help
a modest revival just getting under way. The city recently
was named an Urban Enterprise Zone, attracting a trickle of
new stores and businesses with the promise of a reduced
sales tax. Developers want to build $300,000 townhouses
along the waterfront.
But in Dankel's neighborhood, most
activities in recent months have been the regular police
patrols and visits from firefighters.
Tina DeFrank, her husband, John, and two
young children live in a house in the now-barren
neighborhood.
"The kids, they come and party in these
houses," she said. "Me, with the kids, I'm afraid
something's going to happen."
As other neighbors took the SCC offers
and fled, the DeFranks were left behind because of problems
getting their contract finalized.
"We've been ready to move," she said.
"We've done everything we had to. And the state is taking
its time like we don't matter."
A few doors away on Market Street, Jack
and Pat Heiser sat watching their deli business dry up like
week-old bread.
"I have to call people to tell them I'm
still here," Pat Heiser said.
In 1994, the Heisers bought the run-down
building for $55,000 and spent three years and $35,000
renovating it. Now, they, too, have to move.
The state's best offer for the store and
upstairs apartment has been $95,000 -- a price the Heisers
find too low.
"Give me a fair market value, and I'm out
of here," Jack Heiser said. "But you have to go
around and search and find a place you're going to like. A
business isn't just opening up."
© 2005 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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