Urgent: Action Urged to Stop Halpers' Eviction

While this is not directly a Highland Park issue, it is a terrible travesty that can happen to anyone. As we all know, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." On behalf of the Highland Park Citizens for Property Rights Protection, I implore everyone to take action and contact their elected officials and local newspapers and radio and TV stations to help the Halper family.

Tomorrow, Thursday, May 25, 2006, the Halpers, a Piscataway family of six including four children, will be unfairly evicted from the farm their family has owned and operated since 1922, which is wrongly being taken through eminent domain by the Piscataway Mayor and Council. This eviction is especially unjust because the Halper family will not receive monetary compensation for the farm for a year or more while instantly losing their livelihood and their home.

It is unconscionable that this disgrace should happen in America. Every elected official should be ashamed of himself or herself today. The people of Middlesex County and New Jersey need to gather in support of the Halper family and ask Governor Jon Corzine to intervene to keep the Halpers on their farm until this broken system is fixed.

In light of Public Advocate Ronald Chen’s report on the unconstitutional use of eminent domain in New Jersey, there should be an immediate halt to any effort to evict the Halpers from their farm. This is a complete violation of the New Jersey and US Constitutions. The Halper family is not getting just compensation. They are being evicted without being given a penny.

As concerned citizens, we call on all local, county, and state officials to do all they can to stop this travesty, both to the Halpers and in America as we know it. We implore elected officials to stop worrying about your own pockets and start worrying about the people who put you in office.

We especially call on Governor Corzine, who has no clue what it is like to be poor and thrown out on the streets and will likely never understand this, to take immediate action to stop this eviction.

We also call on all citizens to recognize that this could happen to them at any given moment when greedy politicians decide they want to send their children to Harvard and decide that our property could bankroll that education through the use of eminent domain.

Finally, we call on all citizens to contact their state, county, and local officials and implore them to support a stay of this unfair eviction and urge a moratorium on all use of eminent domain for private redevelopment.

Real Groundbreaking

Construction has begun on improvements to all the borough's public schools, approved in a December 2004 referendum. Tomorrow morning, a groundbreaking ceremony will be held at Irving School and will be attended by US Rep. Frank Pallone.

But the real groundbreaking that needs to be done is not a ceremony with a shovel. Beneath the facade of a first rate school system lurks an ugly truth, which is this: the distribution of the school budget, which is funded by taxpayer dollars, is unequal, unfair, and puts the well being of the school system's administrators before that of the children the district is supposed to serve.

In a district of 1500+ students, we have a Superintendent of Schools making $175,000 a year plus $500 a month for mileage. Who in the business world gets paid for the mileage to drive to work? In contrast, the Edison superintent, with a much larger district, is paid $150,000. Highland Park's Assistant Superintendent is paid $145,000 a year.

But when it is time to tighten belts, these salaries and benefits are off limits to any cuts because they are contracted. Instead, we have to cut freshman basketball, high school classes in journalism and TV production, and eliminate one of the winter track coaches.

Unfortunately, that is not the worst of it regarding the school budget. There are students in various classes ranging from grades three through six who are sitting on the floor every day because the administration claims it cannot afford to give them desks or tables. A teacher who asked for tables was told by the forementioned Assistant Superintendent that it is good for the students to sit on the floor and that there is no money for new tables or desks. That teacher was also placed under a gag order and warned not to go public with this information on pain of losing their job.

The result is that the teacher, like a large number of other district teachers over the last seven years, opted to quit without any new job prospects, finding this atmosphere intolerable. Ironically, the Assistant Superintendent is leaving as well.

This story is far from an isolated incident. There are classes where children are using old textbooks because the district supposedly cannot afford to purchase new ones. There are incidents in which parents who complained about such situations found their children ostracized and consistently placed at the end of the line for needed school services.

The real groundbreaking our school system needs is not a ceremony with "dignitaries" and a shovel but an immediate condemnation and reversal of the inequitable distribution of hard-earned taxpayer dollars that fattens administrators' wallets while leaving the children out in the cold--or, in this case, sitting on the floor.

Just like the world hunger problem is due not to a shortage of food but to inequitable distribution of that food, so too the problem in our schools is not that there is insufficient funding but the way that funding is distributed. Let's break some real ground and distribute that money fairly, putting the children first, which is what schools are meant to do.

Congressman Pallone, you are a decent and caring public servant who wants to do the right thing. Please talk to parents and teachers and look into this issue further, taking care to delve beneath the surface. The children are depending on you.