Brick mayor won't criticize fellow Republican
When I was the mayor of Jackson in 2004, the president of the Brick Township Council, Stephen C. Acropolis, sharply criticized my administration for considering the possibility of commercial development on property along the Metedeconk River.

My goal was to increase clean commercial ratables in town in order to reduce the property tax burden on Jackson's residents, but Mr. Acropolis opposed any development because he contended that it could potentially pollute the Metedeconk and contaminate the water supply of Brick residents downstream.

He even suggested that he would consider legal action against Jackson to block any development along the Metedeconk. I did not agree with Mr. Acropolis, although I believed at the time that his attack was motivated by a genuine desire to look out for the interests of Brick residents and the protection of the environment.

[Recently], Jackson Mayor Mark A. Seda [was] planning to spray the chemical Dimilin throughout Jackson to reduce gypsy moths. Dimilin is a potent pesticide that has not been approved for aerial spraying by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and breaks down into a substance that has been classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a probable human carcinogen.

The Ocean County Sierra Club and others have protested Mayor Seda's plan, partly because the spraying of Dimilin would be conducted in areas that lie in the Metedeconk River watershed, which could contaminate the water supply of Brick residents and cause harm to the Metedeconk. These are exactly the same concerns raised by Mr. Acropolis in 2004 related to the commercial development issues. Yet in 2004 Mr. Acropolis stated, "I'll stamp on somebody's toes if I have to."

So what does Mr. Acropolis, now the mayor of Brick, say today?

In a Jan. 15 newspaper article Mayor Acropolis has turned a complete about-face. Not only does he not express concern about potential contamination of the Metedeconk from the Dimilin spraying, he praised Mayor Seda for "taking necessary precautions." MayorAcropolis even stated, "I'm not going to go into Jackson and tell them how to run their town."

One may ask why Mayor Acropolis has gone from considering legal action against Jackson in 2004 to hands-off in 2008, especially when the spraying of toxic chemicals probably presents a far more immediate and damaging effect on the Metedeconk and the water supply than commercial development.

In my view this is partisan politics at its worst. Mayor Seda, like Mayor Acropolis, is a member of the Ocean County Republican Party led by George Gilmore. Mayor Acropolis' concerns about the health of Brick Township residents and the protection of the environment, to the extent they were ever real, have been abandoned because it is politically inconvenient for one Republican mayor to criticize another mayor of the same party.

Even more so, the leader of the pack, George Gilmore, is the township attorney for both Brick and Jackson. As a Democratic official, I did not cause the same political problem for Mayor Acropolis and so was fair game. But the issues of potential environmental contamination and the health of residents should not be used as political tools, to be raised only when convenient.

When an elected official puts political alliances above the interests of his own town's residents and environment, we need to look hard at that official'smotivation and priorities.

Sean Giblin

Jackson