Threat to rebates draws out North Jersey seniors
as busloads travel to protest against budget cuts

Sunday, May 23, 2010
Last updated: Sunday May 23, 2010, 10:01 AM

BY KAREN ROUSE
The Record
STAFF WRITER

TRENTON — Fort Lee retiree Anna Lypinski, 78, stood among throngs of people Saturday afternoon, staring at a jumbotron and occasionally chanting as speaker after speaker assailed NJ Gov. Chris Christie as an abrasive leader with little concern about New Jersey’s elderly, senior or working-class residents.

Her gray hair pinned back into a bun and a water bottle strapped across her body, Lypinski said the governor’s plan to cut state support for free lunch programs for poor children and the Homestead Rebate that benefits seniors and the disabled was enough to get her on a bus from Hackensack to Trenton for Saturday’s massive rally.

Organizers said more than 35,000 people descended on the capital, hoping to present a unified front against Christie’s budget and win over legislators whom they want to intervene.

"The rebate will help me pay some of my bills," said Lypinski, who rents in Fort Lee. "I had a $66 increase in April," she said. Not getting the Homestead Rebate and not getting the Social Security cost-of-living increase has eaten into her budget, she said.

"We want Trenton — our elected officials — to know our voices will be heard."

Lypinski said she wasn’t there just for herself, but for the children in Fort Lee’s public schools who get free lunches subsidized by the state. "You would be surprised at the number of kids that get free meals," she said. "How can you take food from the kids?"

Lypinski was among 25 on the Hackensack bus, most of them elderly or disabled. Members of the Education Association of Passaic said 14 buses, each carrying 50 people, had traveled from Passaic County.

Matt Shapiro, president of the Hackensack-based New Jersey Tenants Organization, said his biggest concern is the elimination of the Homestead Rebate for senior and disabled tenants.

It has provided up to $860 to seniors that they often use toward rent, said Shapiro. "When you look at the low-income seniors — and they’re paying market rents — and you see what a squeeze it is to make the rents … a lot of them are going to lose their homes."

He called the governor’s veto of the millionaires tax "heartless" and said the point of the rally "is to demonstrate our desperation, to speak to the governor with one big voice and to speak to the Legislature … and say: You can’t do this to us."

"It’s empowering," said Marilyn Graham, a retiring Passaic High School math teacher who, with more than a dozen colleagues — all wearing red T-shirts — cheered from the steps of a nearby building.

Robin Holcombe, a basic-skills teacher in Passaic and a member of the New Jersey  Education Association executive committee, said the turnout didn’t surprise her.

"He’s impacting the people that can least afford it," she said. "Our senior citizens, our disabled." She said the 1.5 percent he has asked teachers to pay toward their health care is "a tax."

Magalye Matos, president of the Parent-Teacher Organization at Donald A. Quarles Elementary School in Englewood, rode on the Hackensack bus to the rally.

"As a student, as a mother, I’m deeply affected," said Matos, who attends Bergen Community College and has testified at budget hearings held there and at Fairleigh Dickinson University about cuts to
Englewood public schools.

She said she is particularly concerned about cuts to programs for special-needs children.

Matos said the district was forced to cut pre-kindergarten programs for students in April, and next year there will be none, she said. "Now you have parents scrambling to find child care for their child," said Matos.

"This is a time for us to stand together as a community, as parents in solidarity," she said of the rally.

"We have to let him know he has a state to serve. We don’t work for him. He works for us."

Originally found at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/state/94681384_Threat_to_rebates_draws_out_seniors.html