Dover Township will fade into past. Voters reject name, favor Toms River
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
BY MARYANN SPOTO
Star-Ledger Staff

Dover Township, get ready to become history.

Residents in this sprawling Ocean County community suffer ing from an identity crisis of late voted last night to change the name of the town to Toms River.

“Now it’s official. We’re Toms River,” said Mayor Paul Brush, who co-chaired the committee pushing for the change. “We all feel we live in Toms River, we say we’re from Toms River and now the voters have spoken.”

The unofficial vote, 16,059 to 10,176, culminates a hard-fought and emotional battle over whether the town should keep the name it has borne for 239 years or take the moniker that many people have called it anyway.

The town officially takes its new name next Tuesday when the clerk certifies the election results. Toms River is a section of Dover that en compasses the township’s downtown district and the county seat. Though Dover Township has more than a dozen sections all with different names, Toms River is the one that became synonymous with the entire town.

The confusion was magnified when the U.S. Postal Service built a new post office in the Toms River section and gave nearly all residents in Dover Township a Toms River mailing address.

Proponents of the name change, spearheaded by Brush and a group of downtown business owners calling themselves the Dover Township Name Change Committee, ar gued that the change was needed to end confusion. The town also is frequently confused with Dover in Morris County.

Until recently, the U.S. Census considered Dover Township and Toms River two different communities.

Supporters of the change also argued that businesses would often pass over Toms River, because they considered it too small and didn’t realize it was a smaller part of New Jersey’s seventh most-populous municipality.

Opponents argued, however, that the confusion is exaggerated by business people looking for a new marketing strategy. They contended the town didn’t have to go as far as changing its name — and essentially wiping out its history — to clear up ambiguity.

The mayor has said the name change on all township-owned property, estimated to cost between $16,000 and $20,000, would be phased in over several years. Opponents insisted the cost will be much higher and will warrant a tax increase for a town already facing a $1.4 million budget shortfall.

Source: NJ.com

Categories: Current Events