Mayor Veni Vidi Scripto is a blog that goes to more than a hundred and fifty countries, most of the continents and is read by hundreds of thousands of people a year. Some like recipes, some like the heart warming stories, others like the history or the travel stories.
Some soldiers and sailors read it simply because no matter where they are serving, it gives them a touch of home. Women especially like the stories on breast cancer and the little company in Israel who is now making headlines in the United States for its painless easy cure now available for some women.
Yet when it comes to stories about Highlands, there is no doubt a faction of people have their minds made up before even reading a story.
They want to say VeniVidiScripto supports one candidate over another.
They want to say VeniVidiScripto is too harsh on a particular school board member, or the mayor, or council members.
They simply don’t read stories, they conjure up their opinion of what is written, then go on nonsense Facebook pages where they do not identify themselves but freely criticize news. Simply because it isn’t news they like.
It happened this week where some unidentified blogger posted a story saying the news of all the new businesses in Highlands over the past five years was a press release that originated from the Mayor.
News Alert! It was not press release. And it was not originated by the Mayor.
It was plain and simple a news story. The mayor was questioned, of course, since she’s been the Mayor for the past five years. But she did not know the thrust of the story or why VeniVidiScripto was running it at all. She simply responded to the questions she was asked.
Let me tell you about Highlands. It is a town where, though the writer does not live there, her heart still remembers, and loves the joys of bringing up a family there, a close knit community where everyone cared for each other’s children.
In the mid 1950s, there were fewer than 3,500 residents, and names like Hartsgrove, Parker, Monahan, Higgins, Dominguez, Guiney, Black, Bahrs, Katz, O’Neil, Ptak, Dempsey; and more were families everybody knew.
It was a town where the police either brought home an errant youngster who had crawled out of bed and snuck out of his house to go early morning fishing or just checked on him to be sure he was ok.
It was a town where the kids would bring dog biscuits to the big St. Bernard who lived across the street from the catholic school. And it was a town that took high water in the street as a nuisance, and flood waters in the house as a bigger nuisance but something that would pass as the tide went out.
That’s the kind of Highlands VeniVidiScripto loved. Sure there were some empty stores, the business area didn’t look too terrific, the roads were in bad shape, the sewers were old and often clogged, and there were no life guards on the beaches in the summer.
Covid came and things changed. Families lost their homes, people whose families had been here for generations sold what was left of their homes and moved to less dangerous areas. Elderly people moved south or in with family.
But Covid also meant people could work from home. And it did not take long for New York couples to realize they could buy a three bedroom house here and pay the ferry or bus to get to New York the few days they had to get there, all for less than it was costing for that one bedroom apartment in a crowded area of New York.
Builders were the first to recognize it, and apartments cropped up. But businesses that were forced to shut down for lack of money or experience simply abandoned their properties and they fell into disheveled messes.
While the town had all the advantages of a spectacular view, historic sites and wonderful natives, it needed sprucing up for the new folks coming in.
That’s when stores that had been closed were scooped up by others, purchased, renovated and put to use. The governing body, itself shaken by Sandy and Covid, wasn’t up to speed in correcting decades old problems, right away. Things like an aging sewer system or unpaved or poorly maintained roads.
So yes, it did take a mayor and council who wanted to improve things, who wanted the borough to clean up, be better, and show its true face, a face of beauty, friendliness, and convenience. And in the past five years, Highlands had a Mayor, and a council, who took the necessary steps to bring its infrastructure up to a level that the newcomers would be eager to pay their taxes and appreciate everything about living here.
It apparently worked. The story is in the fact so many businesses did come into town, so many more adventurous property owners dared to take a risk, the town’s population as grown and word has been spreading Highlands is a great place to live.
And that, simply, is news.
You can also Find ViniVidiScripto on the Following Platforms …
Mayor
