BERKELEY – The Township Council passed a resolution asking for President Trump’s hiring freeze to skip Veterans Administration employees.
Councilman James Byrnes said that he visited the VA clinic in Toms River and saw that it was understaffed. An official there told him it had to do with the federal hiring freeze that Trump declared on his first day in office.
Byrnes said he was skeptical of this reasoning, because Trump only recently took office; it takes more than a week to become understaffed like this.
The Toms River clinic opened last year, replacing the one in Brick which was too small for the large number of veterans in Ocean County.
The Township Council’s resolution asked the president to exempt the VA from the hiring freeze.
The hiring freeze, posted January 20 on the White House website, stops the hiring of all civilian employees throughout the executive branch. It does not apply to military personnel or positions related to immigration enforcement, national security or public safety.
The language states that Social Security, Medicare, and veterans benefits will not be affected, but critics have stated that this is unclear.
Within 90 days of January 20, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in consultation with the Director of Office of Personnel Management and the Administrator of the United States Department of Government Efficiency (formerly US Digital Service), must submit a plan to reduce federal staff. After this is done, the freeze would expire. However, the Internal Revenue Service will continue to have a freeze until the Secretary of the Treasury and other administrators lift it.
Open Space Acquired
In other news, the council agreed that the county should purchase some land in town for open space.
Block 1213, Lots 24, 24.01, 25, 26, and 27 is on Good Luck Drive. This area overlooks Barnegat Bay. Superstorm Sandy flooded the neighborhood, destroying homes.
“After Sandy, that area was devastated, so a lot of homeowners chose not to rebuild,” Mayor John Bacchione said.
The Ocean County Natural Lands Trust Fund collects a tax on all property throughout the county. That money is then used to buy property to keep it open space. The county requires the governing body of the town in which the land resides to sign off on the purchase. This is because once the land becomes open space, it can no longer be taxed. In this case, Berkeley would be losing a ratable but there are less services needed for an open space property compared to property with homes.
Many low-lying shore neighborhoods are considered repetitive losses by the federal government, which oversees flood insurance. It doesn’t pay to keep replacing homes that keep getting damaged. Therefore, Federal Emergency Management Agency gives discounts on flood insurance to everyone in a given town if that town has taken actions toward lowering flood risks. Turning low-lying land into open space and using it as a buffer for waves is one of those actions.
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