To the editor:

At the Feb. 14 Galloway Council meeting, the status of the revised township website was questioned by a council member. In moving to complete this revision, I would like Galloway Council to consider including the following:

GALLOWAY - A very special and inspirational man visited The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey’s campus Thursday, Feb. 16 to talk to students, members of the military and people from the community. That man, J.R. Martinez, told his very emotional life story to an eager crowd that half-filled the 500-seat Performing Arts Center.

Scheduled to give a 40-minute talk, Martinez spoke for two hours, taking the crowd from laughter to tears as he told of a life that veered far from the hopes he harbored as a youth. The boy who once dreamed of a professional football career is instead a war hero with one ear, an acting career, and fatherhood impending. His fiancée is due to deliver their daughter in May.

GALLOWAY – With the municipal clerk leaving Thursday, Feb. 16, the Clerk’s Office will be staffed by a part-time Absecon clerk and fill-ins from the construction office, Mayor Don Purdy said Tuesday, Feb. 14.

Speaking at a Township Council meeting at the Municipal Complex, Purdy said Absecon’s part-time Deputy Clerk, Leticia M. Loeser, would serve in a similar role in Galloway.

Loeser has been in Absecon about three years and works part-time, less than 28 hours a week.

From left are Donna Clementoni of the New Jersey Committee Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, school board President Ernest Huggard and Superintendent Annette Giaquinto.
Galloway Township Public Schools was honored at its Monday, Feb. 13 Board of Education meeting for its support of the National Guard and Reserves by Donna Clementoni, director of employer outreach for the New Jersey Committee Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve.

Galloway Township Public Schools Business Administrator Timothy Kelley comes to the district from the Bridgeton Public Schools.
GALLOWAY – The new business administrator for the township’s public school district is a certified public accountant whose CPA could also stand for certified pupil advocate.

“While auditing is important, I like to see the fruits of my labor,” Timothy Kelley told The Current Tuesday, Feb. 7. “I feel like I’m making a difference with school children every day.”

That feeling turned out to be the difference for Kelley who was on a fast track career-wise, starting with a big accounting firm right out of college.

“I went to KPMG, a big accounting firm out of Princeton,” he said. “I was up and down the state – from Secaucus to the bottom. It was a great experience builder.”

After nearly three years with KPMG, Kelley moved to Swartz & Co. in Mays Landing in 2003.

To the editor:

With all the problems we have faced in the township over the past several months, it’s time for a change in Galloway Township’s government, specifically, the way it is set up.

Right now, we have seven council members who are elected by the residents, but the residents have no say in who will be mayor and not every part of the township is represented equally, if at all. What I’m proposing is a massive change in the way we set up government, a change that would put us more in line with how the rest of the municipalities in this area set up their governments.

GALLOWAY – J.R. Martinez, a motivational speaker, war hero and 2011 champion on “Dancing with the Stars,” will speak at Richard Stockton College 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16.

Martinez was 19 and serving as a driver for the U.S. Army in Iraq when his Humvee hit a landmine. The passengers were ejected and escaped serious injury, but Martinez was trapped in the vehicle and suffered burns over 40 percent of his body.