Freehold planning to shut day laborers’ muster zone

Freehold planning to shut
day laborers’ muster zone
Mayor: Throckmorton
location started as good
idea, no longer feasible

Day laborers wait for work at Freehold’s “muster zone” on Throckmorton Street.

FREEHOLD — Borough officials are planning to do away with the so-called muster zone on Throckmorton Street where day laborers gather and wait to be picked up for work.

Mayor Michael Wilson said in a press release issued Friday that conditions at the muster zone have made it an untenable situation and one that cannot continue.

The mayor said day laborers and those seeking to hire them have made the muster zone a regional destination. He said borough officials have concluded that is an unacceptable situation that must be stopped.

In a related matter, it was stated at a September meeting of the borough’s human relations committee that a federal immigration representative will be in town this week. The official will be on a fact-finding mission and will meet with municipal representatives to discuss issues related to the arrival and residency of illegal immigrants in the borough, according to members of the human relations committee.

Meanwhile, the mayor addressed the situation, saying, "Freehold Borough implemented a comprehensive quality of life enforcement program in June 2003. Additional code enforcement and police personnel were hired to combat the issues that threatened our quality of life, such as overcrowding complaints, littering, housing violations, abandoned vehicles, horn blowing and many other nuisances. Although we have achieved some success, much work still remains."

"We instituted a special court session to deal exclusively with these quality of life infractions. This has been extremely successful as $127,678 has been assessed by the court in fines and penalties for these quality of life infractions," the mayor said.

"Earlier this year we implemented a landlord registration ordinance that established strict regulations and accountability for all landlords in the borough to follow. Essentially, the regulations were established with the hope of eliminating unacceptable living conditions found throughout the borough which nega­tively affect tenants and neighbors alike," Wilson said in the press release, adding that 97 percent of the town’s landlords are comply­ing with the regis­tration requirements of the program.

"As you may have read in the news­paper, the landlord registration was re­cently used to identify and prove over­crowding conditions in a rental property. We remain in aggressive pursuit of the violators," the mayor said. "Finally, we are currently developing a strategy to ef­fectively close the ‘muster’ area on Throckmorton Street.

"What started out as an area designed for employers to pick up borough resi­dents looking for work as day laborers soon spread into a regional destination that has become abused with filth and litter. The original intent was to remove from residential neighborhoods the horn honking and traffic issues associated with the practice of employers picking up day laborers and to provide a safe set-aside area for this activity which would not impact residents.

"Unfortunately, it now attracts un­scrupulous contractors and landscapers from a wide area who descend on our community looking for a worker they can pay cheaply and under-the-table, if at all. It has also resulted in a major traffic hazard and the initial benefits are now outweighed by the problems it has caused," the mayor said. "We do not want to be a point of destination for workers and employers from as far away as Staten Island and Lakewood. Freehold has always been a diverse community, home to people from an ex­traordinarily wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, but it will not serve as a hiring hall for illegal, untaxed labor. We hope to close this area by the end of the year.

"I have often said that Freehold Borough does not have the legal ability to prevent the flow of people from enter­ing our town, legally or otherwise. However, rest assured that all people liv­ing in our community must abide by our rules — bar none," he said.

— Mark Rosman