New Commissioner Says County Not Doing Enough To Solve Lakewood’s Route 9 Problems

Lakewood Alerts

In his first meeting as a member of the Board of Commissioners, newly installed Ocean County Commissioner Frank Sadeghi said that Route 9 should be upgraded to a four-lane roadway, adding that county officials can’t keep blaming the state for inaction on the issue.

Sadeghi noted that a drive of just a few miles on the portion of the 9 running through Lakewood and Toms River now takes 45 minutes “if you are lucky,” and that the Commissioners should be forging partnerships with local municipalities to demand that “the state of New Jersey live up to its responsibilities regarding the improvements to Route 9 as well as other state roadways.”

“Imagine if there was an Ocean County Improvement Authority where smaller townships, boards of education and fire districts could partner with, for their bonding needs,” he said. “In other counties, improvement authorities secure borrowing rates that smaller governing bodies could never dream of, allowing for capital improvements at lower cost to property taxpayers.”

He also urged his fellow commissioners to prepare the county for a massive increase in population in the coming decades, predicting that Ocean County would have 1 million residents by the year 2050.