Ocean View
Brick's 2007 Top 10 list
PATRICIA A. MILLER
There's one thing you can say without reservation about 2007 in Brick Township. It was never boring.

So here's the annual Top 10 list for the year, ranked in what I felt was the order of importance. Please feel free to disagree or send me your own list if you are so inclined.

1. Scarpelli pleads guilty

This is a no-brainer. Former longtime Mayor Joseph C. Scarpelli plodded into the federal courthouse in Newark on Jan. 8 and owned up to accepting a bribe or two from a still unnamed developer. His guilty plea wasn't exactly a surprise. The atmosphere in town hall resembled a wind tunnel during the last few years of his reign, as whispers and rumors swirled that the mayor was a crook. Now we know he was.

2. Scarpelli sentenced to federal prison time

U.S. District Court Judge Susan D. Wigenton didn't think much of Scarpelli's Dec. 17 plea for clemency and sentenced the four-term, Democratic mayor to 18 months in federal prison, three years of supervised release and a $5,000 fine. He is slated to turn himself into the federal Bureau of Prisons on Jan. 28. Wigenton made a recommendation that he be allowed to serve his time at Fort Dix, rather than sent out of state.

Former Mayor Joseph C. Scarpelli enters the federal court house in Newark last Jan. 8 to plead guilty to accepting bribes by an unnamed developer.

3. Acropolis elected mayor

Longtime Republican Township Council President Stephen C. Acropolis wins the race for the remaining two years of Scarpelli's unexpired term over Democratic political newcomer and longtime Planning Board Chairman Daniel J. Kelly. The bitter race featured Republican campaign fliers with pictures of a dourlooking Scarpelli and Kelly superimposed on a pea pod. The implication was obvious. The Democrats countered with fliers that played up a $27,516 federal income tax lien placed against placed against Acropolis this summer. Acropolis paid the lien the day after it was made public and said it was an accounting error on the IRS's part.

Stephen Acropolis

4. Kelly appointed mayor

The GOP-dominated Township Council appointed Kelly on Jan. 4 to fill in as mayor until an election could be held in November for the remainder of Scarpelli's term. Kelly said at the outset that he thought the professional appointments acting mayor and Township Clerk Virginia Lampman made at the New Year's Day 2007 organization meeting were his to make. He was right. The GOP council members dragged out the selection process for mayor until after the organization meeting. Lampman, with the council's input, recommended that longtime Democratic Township Attorney Charles Starkey get the boot. They replaced his firm with the Toms River firm of Gilmore & Monahan. George Gilmore is chairman of the county Republican organization.

4. Kelly files lawsuit

Unwilling to let the appointments brouhaha die, Kelly filed suit in Ocean County Superior Court on Feb. 8, challenging Lampman's right to make the appointments. No names were named in the original suit and the mayor said he only wanted an answer to that one question. But Superior Court Judge Frank A Buczynski thought otherwise and demanded names and further testimony. Buczynski eventually ruled against Kelly and the township had to pony up more than $77,000 in legal fees. It's unfortunate the lawsuit went as far as it did.

Daniel Kelly

5. Ocean Ice Palace purchase

Then-council President Stephen C. Acropolis trumpeted plans for the purchase of the 13.34-acre Ocean Ice Palace site on Chambers Bridge Road in late July for the eventual use as a community center. The Township Council voted 6 to 1 to introduce an ordinance that appropriated $5.45 million in bonds to purchase the property, which includes the rink, a pool and a dormitory in addition to the ice rink building. The Democrats jumped on the purchase as a campaign issue, calling it "Acropolis' Ice Follies."

The township is now doing due diligence on the site, which might have been a good idea back in July, when the purchase was first announced. But the site is still too good a deal to pass up.

6. Traders Cove and Foodtown site redevelopment.

Both sites sat stagnant for several years after they were purchased, inaction that Acropolis blames on the Scarpelli administration. The Planning Board and Township Council this summer both voted to declare the sites in need of redevelopment.

7. Seidenberger says adios to school district

Superintendent of Schools Thomas L. Seidenberger announced that he could no longer take the commute from his Pennsylvania home and would be taking a job in the East Penn School district. The announcement was not exactly a bombshell. Seidenberger had been not-so-quietly shopping his résumé around for more than a year.

8. School transportation audit reveals numerous flaws

The Bulletin was able to obtain a copy of an outside audit of the district's troubled transportation department in the spring. The review, conducted by TransportationAdvisory Services, a Walworth, N.Y.-based company, detailed a transportation department with so many flaws that few parents would have

loaded their children onto Brick school buses had they known about it. Several weeks later, school officials announced that the transportation coordinator would be moved to another department and replaced with township Councilman Joseph Sangiovanni. It's a small world.

9. School budget, ballot questions pass

Voters here said yes to the school tax levy, three separate ballot questions and a $4.5 million referendum to replace roofs on a number of district schools. The school tax rate rose 9.2 cents for each $100 of assessed valuation. School board incumbents John Talty and Sharon Kite lost their seats in a hotly contested election.

10. Longtime Police Chief Ronald Dougard retires a year early

Dougard, who was badge No. 2, that's right, 2, in the police department, announced in late November he had submitted his resignation papers to the state Department of Personnel. Some in town say he left because the political winds changed. Acropolis, who was sworn in as mayor on Nov. 13, at first said the selection process for a new chief would take between three to six months.

But that changed suddenly in December, when it was announced that the choice for chief was narrowed to two captains - Nils R. Bergquist and Douglas J. Kinney. Acropolis announced he would not take part in the decision about the next chief because of the appearance of conflicts of interest with both men. Bergquist's daughter is married to Acropolis' son Robert. Acropolis has said that Kinney is a longtime friend. By the time you read this, you will know who the new chief is.

So that's it for 2007. And that's enough.