Assemblywoman Joins With Building ONE New Jersey to Discuss Impact of Governor’s Policy Decisions on Education Funding & Affordable Housing
(West Orange) – Assemblywoman Mila M. Jasey and Building ONE New Jersey co-hosted an education and housing briefing this week to address the Christie administration’s policy decisions on school funding and affordable housing, which could have significant long-term consequences, particularly for New Jersey’s older suburbs.
Jasey and Assemblyman John McKeon (both D-Essex/Morris) were joined by dozens of local elected officials, school board members and community organization representatives at the Court Yard Marriott to discuss New Jersey’s diverse and fiscally stressed middle class communities and the impact that current policy-making will have on them.
“It is essential that officials on the front lines understand the ramifications of the Governor’s changes to the school funding formula and make their opposition to it known,” said Jasey. “The school funding formula law we crafted several years ago was designed specifically to target the needs of individual school districts and the special needs of the students they serve, not just to award funding based on zip code. The Governor is now attempting to unilaterally rewrite this formula without regard to the complex needs of communities like our older suburbs.”
Jasey, who has served in the Assembly since 2007, participated in a White House conference on America’s older suburbs last summer and has been a leading advocate of a comprehensive policy promoting equity in education and housing.
“I am appalled that this administration would propose to raid the $200 million dollars that communities, like many I represent, have raised to build affordable housing so that he can subsidize his income tax cut proposal that ultimately benefits only our most wealthy residents. Meanwhile, meaningful property tax relief would benefit every New Jersey resident, especially those living in our older suburbs. I intend to continue my efforts to find real, bi-partisan solutions to these critical issues,” added Jasey.
Building ONE New Jersey is an off shoot of The New Jersey Regional Coalition, a faith-based, grassroots coalition of groups from throughout New Jersey devoted to the idea that everyone who lives here has a stake in the economic and social well-being of our region, and of all the communities within it, not just his or her own. The existence of distressed and impoverished communities within New Jersey challenges all residents, through increased crime, increased taxes, reduced economic growth, and a tendency for blight and poverty to “creep” into other towns.