Tag: #Middletown

UPDATE, AUG. 31, 3 P.M.: After publication, Public Record NJ was contacted by a resident living on property involved in the proposed land swap. This story has been updated with their account of receiving notice to vacate the property.

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The Middletown Township Committee is scheduled to hold a public hearing September 8 on a proposed land transaction that would exchange township-owned property and $8 million for 83 acres along Chapel Hill Road and Kings Highway East.¹

The deal, introduced by ordinance on August 17, involves property owned by two LLCs formed in October 2024. Public business records reviewed for this article connect those LLCs through a shared registered agent and address to two companies that contributed to Mayor Tony Perry's 2024 reelection campaign the day after the LLCs were registered.

The proposed transaction also resembles a land swap described nearly three years earlier in a sworn certification filed in separate litigation against the township. In that certification, developer Seth Gerszberg alleged that Perry told him in August 2023 that he planned to make a deal in which the Montecalvo family would purchase the property and trade it to Middletown for township-owned land.²

The Township Committee introduced the ordinance without discussion. Full text of the ordinances is available in the Township public notices. Public comment and possible final action are scheduled for September 8 at 7 p.m.

The Middletown Township Board of Education voted 5–4 Tuesday, April 28, against approving a “Long Range Facilities Plan (LRFP) Major Amendment Update,” then spent the end of the meeting arguing over whether — and how — that vote could be reconsidered.

In the end, the board president said the reconsideration would be withdrawn and that the original 5–4 rejection would stand.

On April 29, district leaders sent a post-meeting letter to the community — signed by Jessica Alfone and Chris Aveta — stating that, as a result of the board’s failure to adopt the LRFP, the district is now recommending holding off on the planned school closures and consolidations for the 2026–2027 school year.

The Middletown Township Board of Education is asking New Jersey’s Commissioner of Education to dismiss a parents’ petition challenging its February 26 school-closure vote, while declining to address the substance of the claims raised in that petition.

In a March 23 filing, the district does not defend the closure plan on its merits. Instead, it argues the case should be dismissed on procedural grounds, including that it is too early for the state to intervene because the formal approval process has not yet run its course.¹

At the same time, the district continues to act on a timeline aligned with implementation. The February 26 vote directed the administration to proceed with a closure plan tied to the 2026–27 budget, and subsequent district activity has moved forward accordingly. The result is a dual posture: in court, the district argues the closures are not final; in practice, preparations continue as though they are.

Public Record NJ has obtained and reviewed the district’s letter brief to Commissioner of Education Lily Laux, submitted by Madden & Madden partner Regina M. Philipps in Kristin Rooney et al. v. Middletown Township Board of Education (Agency Ref. No. 079-03-26). The motion seeks dismissal “in its entirety” based on jurisdiction, ripeness, and failure to state a claim, and was filed in lieu of an answer.¹

The parents’ petition challenging Middletown school closures, filed March 4 by Shah Law Group, LLC, asks the Commissioner to void the closure resolution and require the district to keep Leonardo Elementary School, Navesink Elementary School, and Bayshore Middle School open through the 2026–27 school year, among other relief.²

The district’s response centers on whether the case should move forward, rather than the claims it raises.

New Jersey has hundreds of public school districts. Almost none hire lobbyists.

State disclosure records show more than 500 public school districts operate across New Jersey. Only two appear in state lobbying disclosure records. Middletown is one of them.

The distinction stands out even more today. The district is facing a significant budget shortfall and planning to close schools to address it. That contrast raises a basic accountability question: when a public school district hires a lobbying firm, what decisions is it trying to influence, and what did students and taxpayers receive in return?

In Middletown, the public record reveals two disclosure systems that are usually examined separately: campaign-finance filings from the November 2025 Board of Education election and New Jersey lobbying disclosures filed by a Trenton-based government affairs firm. When those filings are read side by side, they show overlapping names, vendors, and timing — a pattern similar to one identified in our prior research on how campaign spending and political media intersect in Monmouth County.

They also raise several unanswered questions about how the district engaged a lobbying firm.

The most direct document-based link is this: CLB Partners LLC reported “Middletown Township Board of Education” as a represented entity on a Form L1-A annual lobbying report, listing $15,000 in receipts and identifying the entity’s business type as “School board.”¹

Separately, the joint candidates committee that backed three school-board candidates in 2025 reported a donor whose employer was listed as CLB Partners.²

Our review also identified at least one contribution that does not appear in the candidate committee’s campaign finance filings required under New Jersey election law. It is one of several contributions that point to a broader network of relationships surrounding the board, where public money, lobbying activity, and local elections intersect.