New Ocean County commissioner disagrees with colleagues on his first day on the job

Asbury Park Press

By Erik Larsen

TOMS RIVER – In one of his first votes as a newly sworn-in Ocean County commissioner, Frank Sadeghi made it clear he wasn’t always going to agree with his fellow Republicans.

In a 3-to-1 vote on Wednesday, Sadeghi dissented from the all-Republican board’s longstanding policy to assign department liaisons based on seniority on the five-member panel. He explained that voters do not care who has been on the board for 30 years or 10 years, or whether the oath of office had just been administered to them for the first time. In his opinion, professional expertise and experience in a particular field should trump personal preference when a commissioner is assigned oversight of a department.

“So, for that reason I’m voting no,” Sadeghi said as three of his colleagues looked on, stone-faced. Commissioner Jack Kelly had fallen ill this week and did not attend the annual organizational meeting of the board, which was so packed with onlookers that the crowd spilled out of the first floor meeting room and into the lobby of the county Administration Building.

Sadeghi, 66, of Island Heights, had already remarked in his inaugural comments on Wednesday that he sought to bring an independent mind to the office and would speak up when he thought the board could do a better job for the people of Ocean County.

He wasted no time in outlining his vision: Ocean County needed to better prepare for a population of one million people by 2050. The county government, he said, “needs to recognize that change and rise to meet the challenges in front of us with bold thinking and innovative solutions.

“We can’t afford to be reactive — rather — we need to think proactively and govern with vision,” Sadeghi said, calling for “a renaissance or rebirth of Ocean County.”

“We must recognize that the promise of our community relies on providing the education and training for our children and their children to compete in tomorrow’s global economy,” he said. “There is no higher priority for us as elected officials to ensure that our kids have a chance at a bright future; one they can find here in Ocean County, not in Florida or Arizona, or North Carolina. As an engineer and builder, there’s no one more committed to making an investment in the physical infrastructure of Ocean County, but I’m also committed wholeheartedly to investing in the intellectual infrastructure.”

He said Route 9 needed to be widened from a two-lane road to a four-lane highway, particularly in the central and northern parts of the county where a 10-mile drive between Toms River and Lakewood now takes 45 minutes “if you are lucky.”

He said the county government could not keep simply blaming the state government for inaction on the issue, and the board should seek partnerships with Lakewood, Toms River and Berkeley 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,” Sadeghi continued. “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.”

Sadeghi also criticized what he said were waiting lists of students who seek to enroll in the Ocean County Vocational Technical School District.

“What answer do we have for the parent of a young lady who is interested in enrolling in the Vo-Tech programs and she’s told that there’s a waiting list of over a hundred kids in front of her,” he said. “Not everyone can go to college and frankly, not everyone wants to. Ocean County should be a statewide leader in promoting the trades for our young people and encouraging them to further their education in a way that makes sense for them and their families.”

He also said that Ocean County Airport at Robert J. Miller Airpark in Berkeley had the potential to be expanded into a transportation hub for shipping companies such as Amazon or FedEx, where vocational students “could work with aviation and aerospace companies based at the airport — bringing good-paying jobs and economic investments to our county, while remaining in compliance with Pinelands’ rules and regulations.”

“These goals may seem like far-fetched ideas, but so was the idea that a young man still a teenager could leave his birth country with $70 in his pocket; land at JFK, work odd jobs, find a place to live, put himself through engineering school, start a family and a business, create hundreds of jobs and one day hold elected office,” Sadeghi said, referring to his own personal narrative.

Sadeghi immigrated alone to the United States from Iran as a teen in 1976 at the behest of his dying father’s wishes that he make a better life for himself in America, with the goal of eventually bringing his mother and his three siblings here too.

With only that $70 and the address of a distant relative on him, he soon found an apartment in the Bronx of the late 1970s and took on multiple jobs to support himself — working as a painter, a piano mover, a valet and a cook at a fast-food restaurant.

Later, Sadeghi became a U.S. citizen and put himself through school, graduating from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. He would go on to earn a graduate degree in city and regional planning from Rutgers University.

In 1993, he founded Morgan Engineering — which today employs more than 100 local residents — and where he remains the principal owner; responsible for project management and design of municipal, residential, commercial and industrial projects, all according to his biography from the county Division of Public Information.

Sadeghi previously served three terms on the Toms River Regional Board of Education.

A practicing Christian, Sadeghi attends both the Jesus is the Lord Fellowship Church in Toms River and the First United Methodist Church of Island Heights.

He has an adult son and daughter, and “his partner in life,” Lauren Plump, his significant other.

Also at the meeting Wednesday, Commissioner Barbara Jo Crea was appointed director of the board for 2024 (her first time in the center chair since she was elected in 2021). Crea said in her public remarks that she was committed to maintaining a stable county tax rate and in preserving the county’s AAA bond rating.

“For the last seven years, the county property tax rate has decreased,” Crea said. “I anticipate it will remain stable in 2024 or continue to decrease.”

The new director said she anticipated that the county’s new Homelessness Trust Fund she lobbied for last year would raise between $275,000 to $390,000 annually, which is primarily earmarked for programs to keep people from losing their homes.

After more than a decade of resistance to the concept, the Board of Commissioners joined 12 other New Jersey counties last spring in levying a $5 surcharge on most documents recorded with the county clerk’s office. The fees provide a continuous revenue stream to the trust fund.

After the meeting when Sadeghi was asked about his earlier public comments, he said he believed his professional credentials and experience as a civil engineer would have best served the county if he had been appointed as liaison to the Department of Engineering or the Finance Department, for example.

Instead, the most significant role he was assigned in his portfolio as a commissioner will be as liaison to the Board of Social Services and Department of Human Services — a role that traditionally goes to the last commissioner elected to the board.

During his campaign for commissioner, Sadeghi said many supporters said they welcomed someone with his background as a leader in county government.

“Some of those people came up to me and said, ‘you know what? We need business people. I like the fact that you’re an engineer. Our roads need to improve and they need to be widened. … And I like the fact that you’re going to be on the Board of Commissioners.’ So, I think the seniority thing is only important to the senior members.”

Currently, Commissioner Kelly is the most senior member of the board (first elected in 1992) and remains the liaison to the Engineering Department and co-liaison to the Finance Department with Commissioner Gary Quinn.

The department liaisons were decided during a recent political caucus meeting between the incumbent commissioners, which Sadeghi had not been invited to participate in.

Nevertheless, Sadeghi said he would do the best job he could do as liaison to the departments he was assigned.

“Maybe I’ll see some improvements that we can make with, you know, the Board of Social Services,” he said.

He would continue to speak up when he disagreed with his colleagues, he said.

“The meetings are going to be a lot more entertaining,” Sadeghi quipped.