Tiny NJ Enclave Votes to Join Neighbor After 53-Year Fight

For 53 years, roughly 450 residents of a 168-acre strip of New Jersey barrier island paid taxes to a township they could only reach by driving 13 to 16 miles through seven other municipalities. On March 30, the Seaside Park Borough Council voted 5-0 to end that arrangement, a unanimous decision completing what Donald Whiteman Sr. started in 1973 and his son finally closed.

The enclave, South Seaside Park, sits sandwiched between Seaside Park to the north and Island Beach State Park to the south on Ocean County's Barnegat Peninsula. Separated from Berkeley Township's mainland by Barnegat Bay and the Mathis Bridge, it has nonetheless been legally part of Berkeley for 128 years. Getting to Berkeley Town Hall required a 40-minute drive through seven towns. Snow plowing was so neglected that a single storm left residents snowbound for three days while neighboring municipalities were cleared the same day. School bus rides to the mainland ran 45 to 50 minutes each way.

"If we wanted to go to Berkeley Town Hall, it would take us 40 minutes," said Donald Whiteman, the South Seaside Park Taxpayers Association president who led the current campaign. "We're a beach community."

The legal fight was multigenerational. Donald Whiteman Sr. first petitioned for deannexation in 1973, and a court ruled in his favor a decade later, but Seaside Park refused to accept South Seaside Park at the time, leaving the issue dormant. Before he died, the elder Whiteman handed his files to his son: "Couple years before he died, he had all the paperwork. He said, Here son, take it. You may need it."

The younger Whiteman refiled in 2014, backed by a petition representing roughly 66% of South Seaside Park's 435 registered voters. Berkeley's Planning Board held 38 hearings before recommending denial. The Township Council followed. But courts sided with the residents at every level. On July 10, 2025, the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously upheld deannexation in Whiteman v. Township Council of Berkeley Township, with Justice Anne Patterson writing that the separation "would not cause a significant injury to the Township's well-being." The court also found that Berkeley's hired planner had improperly helped township officials build their opposition, a rebuke of the municipal process itself.

The financial stakes clarify why Berkeley fought so hard. South Seaside Park accounts for approximately 10.5% of Berkeley's total tax base, and the township's CFO estimated that losing it would raise the average homeowner's municipal taxes by $147.63 per year. Mayor John Bacchione raised concerns about errors in Seaside Park's impact study, which initially projected a 40 to 51 percent tax reduction for Seaside Park residents, later corrected to 8 percent. The same study found that Seaside Park's regional school tax allocation could increase by 62 percent.

Despite the vote, the transition remains unfinished. State law gives both municipalities 60 days to negotiate a settlement over assets, and Berkeley's ownership of White Sands Beach, a beachfront property within South Seaside Park's borders, is the central sticking point. High school students from South Seaside Park will still travel to the mainland, as both towns share the Central Regional School District.

The pattern plays out across the country when geographically isolated enclaves break from larger municipalities: Berkeley loses a significant slice of its tax base, Seaside Park inherits infrastructure obligations, and school district financing shifts beneath both communities. The New Jersey Supreme Court's ruling, finding Berkeley's denial arbitrary and harmful to a majority of residents, creates a legal precedent that other isolated enclaves may now invoke. South Seaside Park's 53-year campaign shows exactly how long that precedent can take to arrive.