The Town Council may have its priorities wrong regarding children, said Rev. William Henkel, pastor of the First Reform Church in Secaucus, at a public hearing at the Sept. 24 council meeting.
Henkel’s comments came in response to the council’s passing of an ordinance that established the Secaucus Youth Alliance, a non-profit organization to help raise funds for a new youth recreation center. The organization would receive funds from a billboard posted on town property.
Not only is the name dangerously close to the name of the town’s drug and alcohol awareness program, the Municipal Youth Alliance, but the town is seeking a recreation center when it lacks a full time drug awareness officer, Henkel said at the Sept. 24 council meeting. Henkel said that considering problems that have been uncovered, the priorities seemed out of whack.
"While I salute this community and yourselves for the excellent recreation program that exists in the community and for your desire to improve it with the addition of yet another physical facility to house those activities, I am concerned that we have retreated in other areas of service to our youth," he said.
Henkel said a survey of local drug and alcohol use conducted in 1997 showed sharp increases in the number of students at risk.
"At the same time, we have discontinued a full-time substance awareness counselor at the high school following the retirement of Robert Hesterfer," Henkel said.
The school district has conducted three drug surveys, in 1989-90, 1991-92, and in 1996-97. They were administered by seniors, with no names used on any of the forms. The school tested grades four through 12. The survey comes from the Rocky Mountain Behavioral Science Institute, which administered surveys to more than 650,000 students nationally last year.
"Sadly enough, the findings in Secaucus between the 1990 survey, the first one taken, and the 1997 survey, the last one taken, indicate an increase of high risk youth in the community," Rev. Henkel said. "Those who get drunk or high regularly were from 8.5 percent to 27.8 percent, or over one quarter of our youth. At the same time, the low risk group dropped from 69.2 percent to 40 percent, a drop of nearly 30 percentage points, a staggering figure. Some 6 percent of our students are now within the moderate to high risk group, almost 50 percent of those in the high risk group."
Survey results from 1997 show problem
The survey results defined risk in three areas, as low, moderate and high involvement. Low risk kids are essentially those considered drug-free. Moderate risk are those who may be occasional users, while high risk are those who get drunk regularly.
The 1989-90 survey showed 69.2 percent of students at low risk, 22.3 percent at moderate risk, and 8.5 percent at high risk. The 1991-92 survey showed a rise in low risk and high risk and a dip in the moderate risk area. This latest survey showed only 40 percent low risk, 32.2 moderate and 27.8 percent high risk. This means that 60 percent of Secaucus students are at risk of using or abusing drugs and alcohol.
Alcohol was considered the most accessible drug, by 75 percent students in the lower grades and 97 percent of high school seniors, with 38 percent of fourth graders saying they could get marijuana, and 96 percent of seniors saying they could. Most who used those drugs said they used and acquired them at parties, hanging out with friends or driving around. The survey showed that 94 percent of seniors claimed to have tried alcohol, while 73 percent had tried marijuana.
The survey, which was done in the spring of 1997 and available during the 1997-98 school year, had been the subject of some speculation because the results had not been immediately released. But local officials said they delayed the release to compare results with a county survey done in early 1998.
According to a study done for a New Haven school district in the mid-1990s, substance abusers are often kids in conflict with the parents or school authorities. They often hang out with other troubled kids, where drugs are used frequently. In these groups, kids tend to have a stronger influence than parents or school officials. Most start by using alcohol and graduate through a series of steps until they are using hard drugs. The study also showed that the unstable a family, the more likely kids are to use drugs.
There have been no additional surveys in Secaucus since that time. They are usually done every four to five years.
What is the Municipal Drug Alliance?
In establishing the Municipal Drug Alliance grants more than a decade ago, the state believed that successful prevention efforts required both local and broad-based support. People living in the community were best situated to determine what that community needed and what resources might be brought to bear to deal with problems there. The goal of the Alliance program was to develop alcoholism and drug abuse prevention and public awareness programs and networks in every municipality in the state.
Alliance Programs are linked to the county system for planning alcoholism and drug abuse services. Each county maintains a Local Advisory Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse to determine the alcoholism and drug abuse services which it needs.
The grant money comes from the Drug Enforcement Demand Reduction funds (mandatory fines imposed on drug offenders). It is funneled through county treasuries to the municipalities. This money must be matched by the municipality. The formula is based on population and the percentage of young people in the town, the average income, and total drug arrests. Hudson County qualified for $587,838 last year, of which Secaucus received $19,000.
Town took control of drug program funding
In 1999, The Town Council and the Board of Health passed resolutions in order to have two coordinators, one in the schools and one in the community.
"In the past, the municipal drug alliance grant was largely used to offset salaries [of drug counselors]," Board of Health President Frank Mancuso said at the time. Now, it was hoped that the Board of Health could add its own resources to the effort, providing the community and the schools with a new experience in drug prevention.
But Mancuso, who was named co-coordinator with Bob Hesterfer, resigned, and Hesterfer retired. The program offered two drug seminars, but then seemed to fall into limbo this year.
Jill Preis, who has taken over as the new coordinator for the Municipal Youth Alliance, has been restructuring the Alliance and said that numerous activities are planned for the future, involving additional people not previously involved in the program in the past.
But Rev. Henkel said that Preis is overextended.
"[She] serves all the schools in the community [as a social worker], and not only in the area of substance abuse awareness, a monumental task," Henkel said. "We have one part time DARE officer working with only the lower grades. To my knowledge, we have no attendants assigned to Buchmuller Park such as we have in the past."
Buchmuller Park has been cited as a location where kids have used drugs in the past.
"What happens outside the school hours is equally if not more important than what happens in school," Henkel said. "We of the Municipal Youth Alliance have had our own problems as we dealt with appointed leadership that failed to call meetings for months on end, that submitted budgets over our name which we have never seen, and that has not encouraged … representation for all facets of the community that are required for such funding to continue."
Board of Education President Paul Amico, when interviewed about drug concerns recently, said the school has policy for dealing with suspected drug dealers.
"A team starts watching that person," he said. "That person’s locker is searched and that person’s activities are monitored."
Amico said the anti-drug program in the school goes beyond DARE or the Municipal Youth Alliance. The schools have a Child Guidance Team, which Hesterfer helped structure, which watches out for at-risk students. Indeed, the drug study done in 1997 by the school was a product of this team.
In an interview conducted by The Secaucus Reporter with several high school graduating seniors last June, students claimed nearly any kind of drug could be obtained in or around the high school, although most drugs were consumed off campus and before or after school. Buchmuller Park was fingered as the most popular place for consuming drugs and alcohol, followed by the former Tony’s Old Mill site at the end of Millridge Road, and Schmidt’s Woods.
While almost any kind of hard drug can be obtained, these students said, ecstasy was the most popular. Students claimed that drugs are purchased in New York City and transported back via bus to Secaucus.
Police Chief Dennis Corcoran said last week that his department is extremely vigilant in pursuing drug use and drug sales, but said that the police can only react when officers have probable cause. This means an officer must be tipped off to the activity or sees it going on. The police do patrol Buchmuller Park and other locations, he said.
"I want to encourage people to tell us what is going on," he said. "No one has to give a name. If you drop us a note or give us an anonymous call, then we can act. I want to know about what goes on and I want to do something about it. But we need the help of the public."
While Henkel does not challenge the town’s wish to build a new recreation facility, he believes personal contact is equally important to kids at risk, and wants the council to give equal status to the drug and alcohol program.
"We are concerned that human services, counselors, police officers, be assigned to the specific work of reversing the statistics that are indicated among our youth," Henkel said, "and reversing the lives that are headed for potential tragedy and even death in the short term, or the long term problems which will affect not only them but their children, their families and the larger community of Secaucus for years to come."
Town officials, particularly Mayor Dennis Elwell and Councilman Fred Constantino, say the best way to combat drugs is to give kids an alternative, which is what the recreation center would provide, getting kids off the streets and into regulated activities that have no drug-related component.