Sussex County facing serious issues

Sussex County is suffering from economic and demographic issues that are devastating the economy and life style of our residents. These issues are unique and specific to Sussex County, and are drastically different from the rest of the State. Our situation continues to move in a negative direction.
The population of NJ has grown more than 3 percent since 2007. In Sussex County the population has declined over 5 percent for the same period.
School enrollment has declined less than 1 percent in N.J. since 2004. In Sussex County enrollment is down 26.7 percent.
Today there are 10,400 lis pendens (pre-foreclosure) listings in Sussex County. 19 percent of the homes in Sussex County are in the foreclosure process. In Morris County it is 7 percent.
There are 1,600 vacant homes in Sussex County.
The growth rate for the millennial population for New Jersey since 2005 is 17.8 percent, in Sussex County the rate is less than 1 percent.
The average sale price of homes in the county is declining every year; and the County equalized tax value, the tax base, is down 21 percent since 2009.
While Sussex County suffers from these and other issues that are frustrating our economic recovery and destroying the personal finances of many of our residents. Our Freeholder Director George Graham and two other freeholders dismiss these problems by stating that it's not all that bad, the problems will eventually go away, and many of these problems are created by the victims themselves.
These are serious issues for all the residents of Sussex County and Freeholder Candidates David Gray and Kathy Gorman have conservative solutions to these problems and have promised to and are ready to work tirelessly to bring economic recovery to Sussex County.
I am enthusiastically supporting David Gray and Kathy Gorman for freeholder.
Richard Vohden
Freeholder