Deal Yeshiva officials’ conduct criticized
on several matters
By Sherry conohan
Staff Writer

WEST LONG BRANCH — Dorothy "Dot" Schulze doesn’t want to hear the noise or see the beach towels at the pool. Michael Garreau doesn’t want his reading of the Sunday paper in the back yard disturbed by shouts from the playground. Joseph Hornick doesn’t want the extra traffic.

These are neighbors who are opposed to the plans of Deal Yeshiva to build two swimming pools and a playground on the grounds of the Wall Street school.

"You’re going to hear the noise," said Schulze, head of the Dot Schulze Agency Inc., on Monmouth Road whose real estate office looks across the street, to where the recreational facilities will be placed if approved.

"They’re going to put the pool right there," she said. "You’re going have beach towels hanging all over the place. I don’t want to hear screaming girls in the pool. The pool is going to be horrible with the noise."

"How is it going to benefit the people of West Long Branch?" she asked. "Is he going to let the (borough) children use it? None of the kids go to school there. They come from Deal and Ocean Township."

"He" is Solomon Dwek, a consultant to and administrator of Deal Yeshiva, which wants to put in a regular swimming pool and a kiddie pool for students of the school to use in the summer and to relocate a playground on the site.

Dwek said the children will be playing out of doors and that the school will accept any reasonable hours the borough wants to put on the operation of the pools. He also noted there will be landscaping around them.

Dwek said the regular pool will be used by youngsters in the second grade and up, while the kiddie pool will be for the earlier grades and preschoolers.

Schulze was angry that Deal Yeshiva had bought several houses on Monmouth Road, which were razed to make room for the recreational facilities. She noted that the school’s purchase of the properties takes them off the tax rolls.

"Everybody should pay their fair share of taxes in this town," she said. "I pay taxes. There were four properties that could have brought in one policeman’s salary — $40,000. But the town let him buy those properties. He took four houses that were paying taxes and now the taxes of the rest of us go up."

"He just doesn’t care about the town," she asserted.

"I’m definitely against it," she added of the pool and playground plan.

Dwek said the Deal Yeshiva makes a payment in lieu of taxes to the borough for the school compound. He said he thought the amount was about $8,000.

Borough tax records show the school made a payment to the town of $5,000 last year and will pay $6,000 this year. The amount goes up $1,000 a year until it reaches a cap, set by agreement, of $10,000.

Garreau lives in one of two houses on Locust Avenue owned by his mother, Doris Adair Garreau. His mother lives in the other.

He too is opposed to the swimming pool. He said he and his mother went to all the meetings before the ordinance allowing swimming pools at schools was adopted and will be attending all the meetings at which Deal Yeshiva’s application for approval of the pools and playground will be heard.

"Basically, it’s the noise that they are going to create," he said of the reason for their objections. "There will be noise when the kids are on the playground for physical education and in the summer with the pool they’ll be outdoors more and that means more noise.

"There are well over 100 students at the school," Garreau noted. "That’s a lot of students over there. On a Sunday afternoon when I’d like to be sitting outside in my back yard reading my newspaper, the kids in the pool will be squealing and screaming as all kids do."

Hornick, who lives across the street at the corner of Locust and Cedar avenues, objects to the extra traffic he believes will result with parents dropping off and picking up children when the pool is open.

"With the way the traffic has doubled in this area, to put in a pool that will attract more people is ridiculous," he said. "It’s too much traffic.

"It’s just a bad location," he continued. "They say that it’s just for the children, but it’s going to attract parents" who will want to watch them swim.

"And the noise," he added. "They’re talking about 100 or more children.

"It’s a nuisance," he said. "It’s going to ruin my quality of life."

Dwek said those complaining about the children should consider the additional tax burden they would have if the 200 students were sent to public school. He said the cost is $12,000 per student. That’s for a high school.

Dwek pointed out the school’s lawyer had offered to sit down with Hornick and try to resolve his concerns, but Hornick had refused to do so.

"They’re not interested in talking — just making untrue statements," Dwek said.

Schulze, Garreau and Hornick also said they had heard of Deal Yeshiva’s possible expansion plans to buy up more properties in the area.

Schulze said Dwek had made an offer on her office years ago and she knew he had approached Ann Valenzano, of the office supplies store of that name on Locust Avenue. Garreau said real estate agents had called his house numerous times over the last several years wanting to know if he and his mother wanted to sell the two homes in which they live.

"The answer is no," he said, but quickly added, "and I have no idea if there is any connection with the school."

Hornick said he also has been asked many times by real estate agents if we wants to sell and reported he had just received a letter from Summit Realty Service Inc., in Neptune, saying that office has a prospective purchaser for his property. He said he called trying to find out who the prospective buyer was but Summit wouldn’t tell him.

"I truly believe it’s Mr. Dwek in disguise," he said.

"They’re trying to buy me out to get me out of the way," he claimed. "But I’m not planning on going anywhere."

Joseph Sabastano, who operates the McDonald’s around the corner on Monmouth Road with his sister Christine Sabastano, said Dwek showed up on the day of a fire at the restaurant on Jan. 3, 2000, and offered to buy him out. He said the fire broke out at 7 a.m. and Dwek was there not long after.

"What my father told me is he was there with a checkbook and wanted to buy the place," Joseph Sabastano said, adding that his father has since died.

He said his father didn’t want to sell and was affronted by the offer.

Sabastano said he felt it was inappropriate for Dwek to have come on the day of the fire to make his offer. He also took offense to Deal Yeshiva cutting down trees, which he said were big maples and oaks, in a buffer zone be­tween McDonald’s and the school’s property. He said there was a fence on both sides of the trees, but they be­longed to the McDonald’s property. He said he and his sister brought the tree-cutting to the town’s attention immedi­ately, asking for action to stop the oper­ation, but by the time borough employ­ees got there, the trees were gone.

"They did it all in one day," he said. "It was a pretty good shock."

Still, Sabastano has no objection to the pools or playground.

"We don’t have any comment about that," he said. "It doesn’t affect us ei­ther here or there."

Dwek responded that any trees that were removed were owned by Deal Yeshiva and said he never saw or spoke to Sabastano’s father.

Valenzano declined to say whether Dwek had offered to buy her office sup­plies store, saying that it was confiden­tial, but said she has no plans to move.

"I’m not going anywhere," she said, noting she’s been with the store for 37 years and her late husband was there be­fore that. "It’s been a long time."

Like Sabastano, she also had no ob­jection to Deal Yeshiva’s pools or play­ground.

"It doesn’t affect me one way or an­other," she said.