Mt. Pleasant Officials Calls for JCCA Closure is Due to State’s Failures
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In response to former assemblyman Tom Abinanti’s letter dated July 18 (“Calling for JCCA’s Closure in P’ville is Meant to Instill Fear in Election Year”), criticizing Mount Pleasant officials for seeking closure of the JCCA/Pleasantville Cottage School: Mr. Abinanti specifically asserts that local officials are “instilling fear” in residents, and asks that they “take positive steps to work with our state officials.”
This is exactly what Town Supervisor Carl Fulgenzi, the Town Board, our police chief and a handful of community advocate volunteers have been trying to do for more than a decade. The problem is state officials have continued to fail us time and time again, during this ongoing effort to rectify what is, and has always been, a dire, dangerous and outright alarming trend of unfortunate events.
How long do you expect our local leaders to continue to valiantly try this method before finally calling for the facility’s closure? Working with state officials can only be successful if state officials care about our community and the at-risk youths within those facilities as much as we do, and sadly, that’s never the case.
For example, we found dozens of e-mails to you, our then-assemblyman, dating back to 2016 regarding safety concerns for the young children inside of the facilities. It’s unfortunate that we only have just one response from your office – in May 2016 – referring us to your assistant. From then on, radio silence. Any of the safety measures implemented at the Cottage School since then, in addition to the closure of Hawthorne Cedar Knolls, are all the direct result of our advocacy and demands as a local community. The state has never once proactively stepped in, without a strong push from residents and local town officials.
We would prefer to have elected officials in local office that take our town’s quality of life and the public safety of ALL young children seriously; not ones who simply push something as serious as this off as a “state” issue as you’ve requested, leaving our local community in the dust.
Mark Saracino
Co-founder and former member, Coalition for a Safe Mount Pleasant
Danielle Zaino
Co-founder and member, Coalition for a Safe Mount Pleasant
Mark Saracino and Danielle Zaino are the Republican nominees for this year’s Mount Pleasant two town council seats. Zaino was elected to the Town Board in 2019.
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