JCC MetroWest’s Leon and Toby Cooperman JCC, Ross Family Campus, is a recipient of a federal grant to improve its security.
August 7, 2008
Nine Jewish institutions in New Jersey have been named as recipients of 2008 federal grants to improve their security.
The schools, synagogues, Jewish community centers, and agencies will each have a share of the $835,000 given to a lineup of 13 institutions in the state, according to an announcement made last week by the NJ Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness.
Jacob Toporek, the executive director of the NJ State Association of Jewish Federations, pointed out that this was a drop from 12 Jewish recipients last year, and that the maximum individual grant amount has decreased from $100,000 to $75,000.
“I think it’s just because of budget problems, and the fact that the guidelines for the applicants have been made much narrower,” he said.
Though not involved directly in lobbying on behalf of the various federations in the state, he said he was encouraging leaders in the various communities to develop their lines of communication with officials involved in local homeland security — to enhance their chances of gaining grants in the future.
Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union, JCC MetroWest, and the Rabbinical College of America in Morristown are on the list. Other Jewish recipients include the Jewish Educational Center in Elizabeth, Anshe Emeth Memorial Temple in New Brunswick, and in Bergen County, two synagogues, the Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County, and Jewish Family Service of Bergen County and North Hudson, Inc.
Michael Hopkins, executive director of JCC MetroWest, said the $75,000 grant would be used at the Leon and Toby Cooperman JCC, Ross Family Campus, West Orange, to install a barrier arm optical turnstile, an electronic device that will allow members to simply hold up their cards for scanning as they enter the building. “It saves people from having to wait in long lines when there is a big event, and it makes it easy for parents with strollers or people in wheelchairs,” he said.
Though the center has never experienced a security threat, he said, incidents at other Jewish institutions — such as the shootings at a JCC in Los Angeles in 1999 and at a Jewish federation in Seattle in 2006 — were enough to make the case for the West Orange campus.
The non-Jewish recipients include the Liberty Science Center, Morristown Memorial Hospital, the Teaneck Volunteer Ambulance Corps, and St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Passaic.
The funding is part of the 2008 Nonprofit Security Grant Program of the United States Department of Homeland Security. Nationwide, DHS provided $15 million to 232 agencies and organizations. The $835,000 grant to NJ’s Urban Area Security Initiative program was the sixth-highest nonprofit grant total in the county. It was exceeded only by grants to institutions in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and the Bay area in California; New York City; Chicago; and Baltimore.
The grants require that the recipient organizations provide a 25 percent cash match, or the equivalent in related training. According to OHSP director Richard L. Canas, the funds are to be used for “target-hardening activities, like physical security equipment or security-related training of personnel.”
Since 2003, New Jersey’s UASI program has received more than $168.6 million in federal funds, all geared to protect institutions in the state’s densely populated northeastern region.
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