Thirty-one people were arrested for trafficking fentanyl and other illegal drugs inside the Camden County Jail, authorities said Wednesday, ending what they called a “complex and potentially far-reaching criminal enterprise.”
The investigation, dubbed Operation Paper Trail, began in October 2025, prosecutors said, and led to the arrests of suspects both inside and outside the jail.
“The takedown of Operation Paper Trail disrupted a dangerous network responsible for distributing illicit substances and facilitating criminal activity,” Camden County Prosecutor Grace C. MacAulay said in a statement.
“This operation not only enhanced public safety but also helped prevent further harm, protecting our communities and sparing countless individuals from the devastating effects of substance abuse,” she said.
The drug ring operations. prosecutors said, were run in part by Howard Dunns of Millville, N.J.
Dunns, 50, who was incarcerated at the Cumberland County jail, was a lead organizer of the drug ring, coordinating with Camden inmates who peddled fentanyl, synthetic marijuana, PCP, and cocaine at the facility, prosecutors said.
Dunns was charged with two counts of conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute a controlled dangerous substance. It was not immediately clear whether he had hired an attorney.
Two Camden County Jail inmates, Wilfredo Santiago, 31, of Vineland, and Kyle Jones, 31, of Millville, were also accused of participating in the scheme by selling illegal substances to other inmates.
That included at least 58 grams of synthetic marijuana, which investigators seized in March, according to prosecutors.
The men were each charged with one count of conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute a controlled dangerous substance.
The remaining 28 people were charged with drug crimes, many for possessing illegal substances.
Prosecutors said Santiago and Jones managed to sneak the drugs into the jail using paper that had been laced with the substances and marked as confidential legal correspondence between inmates and attorneys.
Detectives with the Camden County Department of Corrections learned of the drug ring in late 2025 after intercepting an envelope addressed to a 21-year-old man who was incarcerated in the jail, prosecutors said.
Detectives found that the supposed legal correspondence was inauthentic, and the letter later tested positive for traces of cocaine.
In addition to charging the inmate with a drug offense, detectives arrested the sender, a 32-year-old Camden man, and charged him with similar crimes.
He was later placed in custody in the Camden County Jail, and within months, prosecutors said, he had instructed an associate to traffic drugs into the facility through similar means.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed the New Jersey budget for fiscal year 2027 Tuesday night, shortly before the clock ran out on the constitutionally mandated deadline.
The budget ranks as the largest in state history, but Sherrill also contends it is the most “fiscally responsible” in decades in part because it fully funds the state pension program and doesn’t come with widespread tax increases for residents.
Lawmakers approved the budget on Tuesday after adding millions in legislative add-ons Sunday night, a move that countered Sherrill’s earlier vows to change the culture in Trenton. But she softened her stance as the deadline neared and she conceded that lawmakers know their districts best.
South Jersey Democratsdefended the spending, which Republican lawmakers criticized as “pork.”
“I know sometimes it gets disparaging names, but I think one of our responsibilities as elected officials is to be responsive to the needs of our communities,” said Sen. Troy Singleton, a Burlington County Democrat.
But thelast-minuteshuffle didn’tresult in the transparency Sherrill originally promised, with some legislators saying they weren’t sure of the details they were voting on. The budget passed mostly along party lines in theDemocratic-dominated legislature. Sherrill and legislative leaders touted record funding for schools and property tax relief programs.
“I know the process needs work,” Sherrill said at a Tuesday night news conference. “It takes too long. It could be much more transparent, but we took steps in the right direction this year.”
Here are some of the winners and losers in the budget.
Camden County Commissioner Director Louis Cappelli, Jr., left, with Gov. Mikie Sherrill and Camden Mayor Victor Carstarphen, right, at SoccerFest26, the World Cup fan fest at Wiggins Waterfront Park in Camden on Friday.
Winner: Camden City and County
South Jersey obtained funding for projects across the region with Camden scoring one especially big-ticket item: $9 million for property acquisition and demolition. The funding is for a county-run program focused on removing vacant, unusable, or otherwise deemed dangerous properties in the city.
Louis Cappelli Jr., the director of the Camden County Commissioners, said in an interview that the county has demolished more than 1,200 residential and commercial buildings over the past decade as part of this effort, mostly with state money. He said the program’s mission is to encourage the city’s redevelopment.
“The city is in desperate need of new housing, especially market-rate housing, and by creating opportunities for development on these properties, we believe we will draw the interest of residential developers to build in Camden City,” he said.
The city of Camden was also allocated $250,000 for a statue of Martin Luther King Jr., which Sherrill promised the city ahead of her inauguration. This project was a priority for the governor, who systematically struck a pen through legislative projects but dedicated funding to the statue in her proposal earlier this year.
Several organizations that serve Camden city and county received hundreds of thousands of dollars in the budget.
The Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers received $500,000 for a program that connects emergency department patients to outpatient behavioral care and $750,000 for a program that helps people experiencing homelessness obtain housing. Joseph’s House, a homeless shelter in the city of Camden, received $600,000, and a separate spending bill also sends $650,000 to a new construction homeownership project.
The budget also allocates $300,000 for job training for youth and young adults, $75,000 for a program dedicated to improving school attendance in the city of Camden, and $25,000 for a new county program that supports formerly incarcerated people reentering their community.
It also includes $3.2 million for structural improvements for a bridge at Route 30 and Somerdale Road and $12.1 million for the Camden County LINK Trail, a planned 34-mile multiuse trail.
Loser: High-income seniors
Senior homeowners who earn between $200,000 and $500,000 a year will no longer qualify for the nascent Stay NJ property tax credit program under the new income cap. They just began receiving checks for the program this year.
Sherrill proposed scaling back the expensive program in her budget proposal earlier this year, which caused some tension because the new program was championed by Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin,a Middlesex County Democratand a key budget negotiator.
But Sherrill and legislative leaders found a compromise by giving higher payments than she proposed for those who make less money, and an even lower income limit than she proposed for the program.
Qualifying taxpayers will get refunded up to half their property tax bill up with maximum refunds ranging from $4,000 to $6,500, depending on their income, with those earning more getting less.
Rowan University’s Shreiber School of Veterinary Medicine Tuesday, April 14, 2026.
You win some, you lose some: Rowan University
Rowan University is receiving less money than it did this year, but significantly more money than Sherrillinitially proposed. At the end of the day it’s a win for the university, which saw significant cuts reversed.
Sherrill’s initial proposal included about $125 million, but legislators brought the total up to nearly $135 million — a drop from the $155 million the state gave the school this year.
Sherrill zeroed out funding for Rowan’s newveterinary school but legislators successfully got $6.2 million for the program — still less than the $8 million it received this year and a far cry from the $20 million the school requested.
State Sen. John Burzichelli, a Gloucester County Democrat, said the money is enough for the school to at least “keep the lights on,” for the veterinary school and the medical school funding is “sound.”
Sherrill also proposed cutting all state funding for Virtua Health College of Medicine and Life Sciences. Legislators restored $2 million to the program — half of what it received this year and much less than the requested $12 million.
The Rowan-Virtua Child Abuse Research Education and Service Institute (CARES) program, which provides medical and mental healthcare to children who have experienced abuse, had all its $1.85 million funding restored after Sherrill initially zeroed it out.
In anticipation of the governor’s proposed cuts, Rowan sent employees layoff notices and announced the closure of its Vineland office. A union representing CARES employees has called on Rowanto reverse these changes.
But Rowan spokesperson Jose Cardona said the university “will evaluate next steps and very soon determine the most responsible path for operations, staffing, and long‑term sustainability.”
The bill that passed alongside the budget with funding from this fiscal year sent nearly$15 million going to Cooper Medical School of Rowan University and support to Cooper University Hospital. That bill also sends $5 million to Cooper University Healthcare’s South Jersey cancer program, which got an additional $27.4 million in the new budget.
Winner: Parents
Legislative leaders secured a 25% increase in the state’s child tax credit program, which is claimed by 217,000 tax filers with children, according to the governor’s office.
The expansion, which will be in place over the next three tax years, bumps each tax credit tier by 25%. So, for example, a household that previously got the highest tier of $1,000 will receive $1,250 and households that got $800 will get $1,000.
Sherrill, a former member of Congress and mother of four,said she saw positive impacts of the national tax credit, “giving parents more money for childcare and summer camps, so their kids can thrive while they’re at work.”
Gov. Mikie Sherrill talks with state Sen. Troy Singleton (D., Burlington) as she arrives to meet with the South Jersey business community for a fireside chat event hosted by the Chamber of Commerce of Southern New Jersey in Mt. Laurel Monday, March 16, 2026.
Loser: Businesses
What Sherrill touted Tuesday night as closing “corporate loopholes” and asking employers “to pay their fair share in healthcare,” the business community saw as an attack.
The budget includes Sherrill’s proposals to introduce new fees for businesses with at least 50 employees on Medicaid,an effort that was led in part by Assembly member Carol Murphy, a Burlington County Democrat, in the legislature. It also imposes limits on two methods businesses use to deduct losses from their taxes.
Hilary Chebra, the director of governmental affairs for Chamber of Commerce Southern New Jersey, criticized these policies, as well as a bill passed by the legislature that bans food surveillance pricing as it’s written.
“Employers aren’t reacting to a single tax increase or one new regulation,” she said. “They’re responding to all of it at once.”
Tom Bracken, the president & CEO of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, said businesses were given “minimal support” and that the budget did not focus on supporting economic growth. He said the policies Sherrill championed in the budget “send the wrong message” to employers that New Jersey should be working to attract.
“The negative financial and reputational consequences of these policies will make it more difficult for New Jersey to be competitive — and competitiveness is essential if the state economy is going to grow,” he said.
BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, a Hindu temple on the eastern border of Cherry Hill, is preparing for a major facelift.
The Cherry Hill Township Zoning Board approved site plans last week during a 4½-hour meeting for an 18,330-square-foot expansion that would transform BAPS Cherry Hill’s exterior and add a gym, lobby, prayer hall, improved Sunday school rooms, new parking spaces, and more.
More steps will have to be made before construction can begin, but this approval is a majormove forward after what zoning officials say took more than a year of planning.
BAPS Inc., an international religious nonprofit, has more than 100 temples across the U.S., including eight in New Jersey. Cherry Hill Township approved a zoning variance back in 2002 to allow a former vacant warehouse building on an 11-acre property at 1 Carnegie Plaza, acquired by a real estate company for $1.9 million and conveyed to BAPS, to become a Hindu temple despite the lot being zoned Industrial Restricted. The temple is run by BAPS Cherry Hill, a limited liability company.
Decades have passed since BAPS Cherry Hill opened, and the mandir, a Hindu place of worship that neighbors King’s Christian School and Remington & Vernick Engineers, still looks like a warehouse.
But the new plans propose a more decorative exterior, including the addition of three shikharas, tall spires on the roof that would reach 58 feet at their highest. Aavart Patel, the project’s architect, said the change matches more traditional styles of Hindu architecture.
The current zoning rules put the building’s maximum height at 35 feet, but BAPS Cherry Hill’s lawyer, Damien Del Duca, sought a variance allowing for the boost.
“Metaphysically, the shikhara represents the spiritual connection between the earthly realm and the divine,” Del Duca wrote in a March letter. “It guides the eyes to move from the earth upwards toward the sky — representing heaven.”
Del Duca and BAPS did not return requests for comment about the projected cost of the expansion, but Del Duca said during the zoning board meeting that the temple had raised the necessary funds for the project.
Riya Patel, a BAPS Cherry Hill volunteer and youth coordinator, testified during the zoning meeting that the temple’s current structure poses a problem for its youth classes and group activities.
“It still serves as this warehouse layout,” Patel said. “So talking about some of our weekly activities, a lot of the space that we have doesn’t have much utility.”
Neel Patel, a lead volunteer and national coordinator for BAPS, has attended BAPS Cherry Hill for the last 22 years. He said the temple has 400 to 500worshipers on an average Sunday and offers scriptural studies, language learning, music, and sports programming for attendees from kindergarten age to adults.
The new additions would mean educational and sports programs could take place in designated classrooms and a gymnasium rather than in the current dining hall, makeshift spaces, or outside on the warehouse loading dock, which the temple converted into a basketball court. The addition of about two dozen parking spaces will accommodate extra visitors during the high holidays.
Under the current site plans, the building’s footprint would only expand about 3,000 square feet, and the remaining 15,000 square feet of additions come in the form of a second story to accommodate classrooms, offices, and the new gym.
Anand Bhatt with Arna Engineering, the project’s civil engineer, said the project will be completed in one phase, and the mandir will remain open throughout the process since construction will be limited to weekdays. The temple has little foot traffic except on Sunday.
‘A space where I can express my religious freedoms’
The BAPS location in Cherry Hill came to be in 2002 when Rishi Realty acquired the vacant warehouse space from Graphic Controls Corp. for $1.9 million and quickly conveyed ownership to BAPS.
Although the property is zoned industrial and accompanied by surrounding commercial businesses, the temple faces a residential neighborhood, Point of Woods, in Cherry Hill.
Three neighbors attended the zoning board meeting via Zoom last week to voice their concerns, mostly regarding the desire to protect the property’s wetlands and limit lighting at night.
Jody and Jenn DeMarco, who live across from the BAPS parking lot and its wooded area, asked the zoning board to deny the application unless the front facade of the new temple is reoriented to face away from their neighborhood.
“It’s a matter of preference, not a matter of necessity, that they are putting this giant variance that impacts our neighborhood negatively facing our property,” Jenn DeMarco said.
In 2012, BAPS Cherry Hill received violations from the township and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection for illegally removing trees in a wetland without proper permits, but BAPS Cherry Hill said in its zoning application that the organization remediated the issue by planting more trees.
BAPS representatives said at the zoning board meeting that they would follow N.J. DEP’s rules and make sure any lighting above the height maximum of 35 feet turns off by 10 p.m. Plus, BAPS Cherry Hill doesn’t anticipate increased visitor volume after the renovations, and they don’t plan to add any additional seating for its Sunday services.
Another Cherry Hill resident, Deepak Chhatwal, said he was excited about the upcoming changes.
“I’m very happy that there’ll be an organization and a space where I can express my religious freedoms, and there will be a better space for myself and my family and other neighbors who are practicing the Hindu faith.”
The six zoning board members who attended the meeting approved the site plans unanimously.
Brian Bauerle, the township’s chief of staff, said Cherry Hill still has to adopt a resolution confirming the decision and its conditions of approval at a future meeting on an undecided date.
As for BAPS Cherry Hill, the nonprofit will have to update its site plans based on the new approvals and satisfy remaining compliance items, which Bauerle said can take weeks to months. Then, the Department of Community Development can issue a zoning permit allowing BAPS to apply for construction permits.
A Tennessee-based packaging company is closing its plant in Barrington, Camden County, laying off 126 employees amid the business’ larger restructuring plan.
Workers at International Paper’s Barrington facility, whoconvert containerboard into boxes, are expected to be laid off on Sept. 24. The site is expected to close at the end of August, company spokesperson Jessica Seidner said.
The closure follows “a strategic assessment” of the Barrington facility, and International Paper’s larger regional footprint, according to a layoff notice filed with the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
“Based on the results of that assessment, and in order to operate our packaging business effectively to support our customer needs now, and in the future, we made the difficult decision to cease operations at our Barrington location,” the notice reads.
International Paper, headquartered in Memphis, was incorporated in 1941. As of December, the company had 62,602 employees — nearly half of which are based in the United States — and roughly 190 packaging mills, as well as converting and packaging plants, and recycling facilities across the country.
The company has several locations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, including in Kennett Square, Lancaster, Reading, Bellmawr, Thorofare, and Vineland, according to a recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
As part of its restructuring, the company announced this month the closure of four facilities, including the Barrington site, to “focus investments on the highest-value opportunities.” The company announced several more facility closures last year.
“These are difficult but necessary decisions that strengthen our network, focus investments where they create the greatest value and position International Paper to better serve customers and compete for the long term,” Tom Hamic, president for packaging solutions in North America, said in a statement.
In an April earnings call company leaders said the business had recently been facing financial pressure frominflation, the conflict in the Middle-East, and weather disruptions. The business brought in $23.63 billion in net sales last year.
International Paper announced in 2025 that it had acquired DS Smith, a U.K. packaging business, in a deal that was valued at $7.1 billion. Earlier this year, the company announced it would split into two separate businesses: one dedicated to the North American market and another for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The process is expected to be complete by the end of 2026 or early 2027, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
An unsuspecting property in north Camden that had a front-row seat to the American Revolution has become a multimillion-dollar museum.
Elected officials, history buffs, and local organizers gathered at the Benjamin Cooper Inn at 75 Erie St. on Saturday to celebrate the soft opening of the American Revolution Museum of Southern New Jersey. The project was funded by $4.6 million in grants from federal, state, and local sources, with the largest amount coming from the New Jersey Historic Trust.
The 18th-century stone building has taken on many identities, including a private residence, tavern, British Army outpost, shipyard, luxury yacht building site, storage unit, and dumping ground for toxic materials. In the 1760s, the land was witness to the mass auction of enslaved people. Until recently, the building was abandoned.
The museum hasn’t fully opened to the public and likely won’t for at least a little while, but leaders of the Camden County Historical Society, which has a 30-year lease with the building’s private owner, wanted to give people a taste of what the museum will be when it does. Right now, the museum is open for limited tours by appointment only.
The Inn still needs work. The building has a temporary roof installed after a 2012 fire. The floors aren’t finished, and bathrooms have no doors. The second floor, currently sectioned off, hasn’t undergone any renovations, which will require fundraising of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Dirt piles and overgrown foliage block any view of the Delaware River.
Visitors explore the exhibits at the soft opening of the American Revolution Museum of Southern New Jersey in Camden on Saturday.
For the past six years, the society has planned to unveil the museum before America’s 250th, said Jack O’Byrne, the society’s executive director, but they kept running into obstacles. The project’s success came years after the society lost the Hugg-Harrison-Glover House, a Bellmawr home that survived the Revolutionary War, to a highway construction project after a preservation battle.
“It’s been a race to the end,” said O’Byrne, who will retire from his role on July 4. “The project probably died like 13 times.”
Zed Fox, the incoming executive director, and the society’s board will determine the future official opening date, hours, and cost. Fox said Monday that the board will meet on Wednesday to discuss those options, but he expects the museum to ready to open at full capacity by fall.
The new museum doesn’t showcase many historic artifacts. Many gems kept in the society’s archives, such as a letter written by George Washington at Valley Forge and a dozen other Revolutionary War-era items, wouldn’t fare well at the Inn with the sunlight streaming through the windows.
But scattered amid walls of weapon replicas and educational text are hints of the real thing.
There’s some 19th-century furniture originally owned by the Cooper family, a British cannon featuring wood blown off an 18th-century Royal Navy ship in Gloucester City, framed New Jersey bank notes from the 1760s and 1770s, and a front door key from when the Inn was a saloon called the “Old Stone Jug.”
A bell hanging in one room rang to announce ferries landing at Cooper Street Ferry in 1800, and a cheval-de-frise, a sharp wooden log, once blocked British ships from sailing the Delaware River.
In the same room, there’s a mantel from Hugg’s Tavern in Gloucester City, salvaged in 1929 before the building was demolished. Betsy Ross married her first husband, John Ross, in front of the fireplace at the tavern in 1773, though the mantel at the museum isn’t the original.
Visitors explore the exhibits at the opening of the American Revolution Museum of Southern New Jersey in Camden on Saturday.
But local historians say the displays aren’t the main attraction.
“The building itself is an artifact,” O’Byrne said. “You know, it’s the most historic building in Camden.”
Before the house was built, a teenage Benjamin Franklin was said to have slept at the property while traveling from Boston to Philadelphia.
In 1734, Joseph Cooper, a Quaker, built a 2½-story Dutch Colonial stone home for his son and daughter-in-law, Benjamin and Hannah Cooper, at what became the historic building. Benjamin Cooper, a ferryman, also used the residence as an inn and a tavern.
In 1777, the Benjamin Cooper Inn was used as a outpost for British Col. Robert Abercrombie. Hessian troops, German auxiliaries to the British Army, marched through Cooper Point during the war, and at one time, local historians say Benjamin Cooper’s sons, Samuel and Joseph Cooper, were jailed in Haddonfield in 1778 on suspicion of being American spies.
But the property has a more troubling past.
In the 1760s, the site was used for the auction of enslaved people. Though some who were forced to stay on the Cooper’s property until being sold managed to escape, “all were pursued and re-captured,” according to the Inn’s 2021 historic preservation plan.
O’Byrne said the museum is working to educate people about that history. One of the museum’s few rooms, which the society has titled “The Declaration’s Promise,” informs visitors about how immigrants, Black people, and the Lenape, who lived in the region before white settlers arrived, shaped South Jersey’s history.
“What we’re trying to do is make this a balanced history and not just about, you know, white people,” O’Byrne said.
Camden’s ‘most historic building,’ under threat
When demolition crews tore down the Hugg-Harrison-Glover House in 2017, the Camden County Historical Society viewed the outcome as a huge injustice to historic preservation.
“That was a gut punch,” said Chris Perks, board president. “We had invested a tremendous amount of time and the community’s time into that site.”
Then, in 2018, a private company, 75 Erie St. LLC, purchased the Benjamin Cooper House from Agathon Realty for $1.1 million without knowing the building’s history. The house was in poor condition and graffitied. The windows were boarded up. It was difficult from the street to even know the building was there, because the house faces the river instead. The waterways were the real highways back then, O’Byrne said.
“When we heard this just got purchased, we were like, ‘Oh, my God, we can’t let Camden’s most historic house go under,’” O’Byrne said. “It took me two years, and I was able to get a 30-year lease.”
A view of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge from the newly opened American Revolution Museum of Southern New Jersey in Camden on Saturday.
That lease will last at least through 2051. Perks declined to share how much the historical society will pay monthly.
The 2021 historic preservation plan for the building estimated that if the building opened in 2025 as originally projected, museum operations would have required an operating budget of $300,000 full time, or $132,000 part time.
While several organizations came together to fund the Benjamin Cooper Inn’s restoration, O’Byrne said the society will require more revenue beyond the funding for the restorations to maintain operations. O’Byrne applied for an operating support grant from the state and is working to raise $750,000 to match a New Jersey Historic Trust grant to restore the tavern’s upper level.
“We opened this thing, and it’s a minor miracle that we were able to pull all the funds together and make it in time,” O’Byrne said. “But in some respects, capital fundraising is easier.”
Any Collingswood resident over the last 18 years can remember the fight to legalize backyard chickens. Or the second attempt. Or the third.
Gwenne Baile, 77, knows the efforts well. A Haddon Township resident and the unofficial “Chicken Lady of South Jersey,” Baile initially became interested when she saw Martha Stewart showing off her chickens on TV. After retiring in 2009 from a long career as an ob-gyn nurse, Baile decided she needed a hobby.
“I started looking into it,” Baile said, “but it was illegal here.”
Since then, Baile said, she has played some part in changing the ordinances in 35 municipalities across South Jersey, including in her hometown. She keeps a list of places with pro-chicken zoning rules, including the 19 municipalities in Camden County that allow them. Baile now has five hens, taken in as fosters, including those injured by predators or forced from owners whose municipalities do not allow coops.
One hen with arthritis lives indoors. Baile calls her a “mini me” since she hates the heat, doesn’t like exercise, and has golden feathers that match Baile’s hair.
Gwenne Baile, an advocate of backyard chickens, holds Mimi, a family’s hen in Audubon.
Baile and a small group of hopeful Collingswood residents have frequented Collingswood Borough Board of Commissioners meetings in recent months. At its last working meeting on June 17, the group handed over proposed language that they hope the board will use in a future ordinance supporting backyard chickens, informed by Baile’s years of advocacy.
The last major push for residential hens fizzled out in 2019 after several Collingswood residents spent more than a year regularly attending meetings to champion an ordinance that never saw the light of day.
But this time feels different, Baile said, and some locals and officials agree.
Dan DiVito, 42, has lived in Collingswood for six years and owns Front Yard Food, a business that teaches people how to grow their own crops and helps design the backyard infrastructure to do it. If Collingswood passes an ordinance, DiVito said, he will get chickens himself and join the new Backyard Chicken Advisory Board — a five-member commission that would oversee the initiative and investigate complaints.
“Chickens are a no-brainer,” DiVito said. “It’s a pet that makes you breakfast.”
Gwenne Baile in her backyard in 2014.
‘A change and an opportunity’
Collingswood did not always ban chickens.
But in 2008, Collingswood’s three-person board of commissioners — made up of a mayor, deputy mayor, and a commissioner — adopted measures prohibiting residents from keeping or breeding a long list of livestock and fowl, including chickens.
Local news records from 2008 do not give a clear explanation why the rules were adopted, other than comment from then-Mayor Jim Maley that the board wanted to “head off a problem before it presents itself.”
The maximum penalty for violating the ordinance is a $500 fine.
Repeated attempts to end the ban have been unsuccessful, even as neighboring municipalities passed ordinances to allow chickens. Some residents voiced concerns about the smell or the noise, or about Collingswood properties being too small to house chicken coops. Collingswood Chicken Uprising, the local Facebook group for the chicken resistance, was created 16 years ago and is up to 234 members.
But a recent political shift in Collingswood has meant hope for some local chicken advocates.
Maley’s 28-year tenure as mayor ended last May, when two progressive challengers joined Maley to win seats on the board of commissioners.
Daniela Solano-Ward became the first female and Latina mayor of Collingswood in 2025, and Deputy Mayor Amy Henderson Riley became one of only a handful of women to serve on the board in the borough’s history. That shuffling was one factor that brought on the chicken resurgence.
“Advocates and community members saw that this was a change and an opportunity to try this out with the new team and see what could happen,” Henderson Riley said.
Passing an ordinance takes time. There must be two separate readings of the proposal, and time must be given for residents to comment. The next commissioners meeting is not until July 15, and Henderson Riley said Tuesday that she was unsure whether the proposal drafted by Collingswood residents would make it to the agenda.
But with an organized, citizen-led group, Henderson Riley said, she suspects this is the most favorable effort thus far. Plus, with concerns like the cost of living and gas prices, she said, there are bigger things to worry about than banning chickens.
“Let the chicken people have their thing,” she said.
Maley and Solano-Ward did not respond to requests for comment.
What advocates are proposing
Suzanne Passante feeds her chickens inside the chicken coop in the backyard of her home in Haddon Township, N.J., on Wednesday, June 24, 2026.
Every municipality’s backyard chicken ordinance is slightly different. Most have strict requirements, including that coops are predator-proof, set a certain distance from other properties, and kept dry and clean.
Collingswood residents’ pitch to the commissioners would ban roosters, forbid residents from selling their eggs, and require completion of an online course teaching applicants how to care for hens. Collingswood could have only 30 households with hens at a time (of the 6,900 estimated housing units the U.S. Census Bureau estimates are in Collingswood), and new licensees would be capped at four chickens.
Chicken owners would have to pay $10 fees annually to renew their licenses. The Backyard Chicken Advisory Board would investigate complaints and help relocate chickens that are no longer wanted, since the advocates are calling for a ban on slaughtering hens.
Any violations could result in a fine of up to $1,250 or imprisonment of up to 90 days, a more severe punishment than the current ordinance gives for keeping chickens.
Henderson Riley, who has a doctorate in public health, took the three-hour backyard chicken course to learn more about the potential process residents would have to go through to get a coop.
She passed, but not without a bunch of red markings and a reality check that owning chickens takes time, money, and energy that she does not have. Henderson Riley said she thinks the long list of requirements, along with the difficulty of raising hens, will dissuade the vast majority of people from partaking in the hobby.
“It’s not like the hens are going to take over Collingswood.”
Words of wisdom
Lynn Parker, 52, has 10 hens in her backyard in Stratford Township, Camden County. When Stratford passed its ordinance allowing chickens in 2023 (an effort Baile helped with), Parker was the first person in line for a chicken permit.
She now chairs the township’s Hen Advisory Commission, which inspects new coops and educates residents. Fourteen homes in Stratford have chickens now, Parker said, and there have been no complaints.
Her advice to people who want to change their municipality’s chicken law is simple.
“Even if you get a no, do it again,” Parker said.
Suzanne Passante, 71 and Baile’s neighbor, chairs Haddon Township’s Backyard Chicken Advisory Board. She has four chickens and averages a dozen eggs per week.
It took time to educate residents about the benefits of hens and to quell misconceptions, like chickens attracting rats, but she said complaints have been nonexistent in recent years.
“Now, after 11 years, people don’t even think about it,” Passante said.
A 50-year-old Camden man is dead after being shot on the city’s east side Thursday night, law enforcement said.
Police responded to reports of a person shot on the 300 block of Morse Street around 10:20 p.m., according to a joint statement from the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office and Camden County police.
Officers found Cornelius Smith, 50, lying in the street with a bullet wound. The Camden resident was transported to Cooper University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about 10:46 p.m., officials said.
No arrests have been made. The investigation into the killing is continuing, police said.
Smith’s killing was the third fatal shooting in Camden this month.
Around 12:20 a.m. on June 9, police responded to a report of a shooting in the 200 block of Morse Street and found Luis J. Bonet, 24, of Camden wounded by gunfire. He was pronounced dead at Cooper University Hospital a short while later.
The following day, Eric Irizarry, 45, was charged in connection with Bonet’s death with first-degree murder, second-degree unlawful possession of a weapon, and second-degree possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose.
A week earlier, a fatal shooting in Camden, police said, was tied to a multi-vehicle crash in neighboring Pennsauken.
While responding to a shooting on the 3300 block of Westfield Avenue on June 2, police discovered multiple shell casings and an unoccupied vehicle that had been struck by gunfire, officials said.
A few minutes later, Pennsauken police responded to a crash involving five vehicles at Drexel Avenue and Route 130 in Pennsauken. One of the vehicles involved in the crash had been struck by gunfire and the driver, later identified as Izaiah Minzy, 36, of Westville, had been shot.
Minzy was taken to Cooper University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 8:11 p.m.
Six people in the other cars involved in the crash sustained minor injuries.
The prosecutor’s office has not announced any arrests in the case.
The violent June comes after Camden experienced a record year in 2025 with its lowest recorded homicide total in four decades and its first homicide-free summer, police said, in 50 years.
Camden recorded 12 homicides last year, down from 17 in 2024, and saw an overall 6% drop in violent crime compared with the previous year, including a 32% decrease in sexual assaults and a 12% decrease in robberies, according to police.
The decline came more than a decade after the city’s police department was disbanded in 2013. Since then, the department’s successor, the Camden County Police Department, has taken a new approach to community policing that includes pairing social workers with officers and supporting programs designed to help at-risk youth.
Homicides have dropped by 82% since 2012, the last full year of the former police structure. During that time, the city has also invested heavily in public spaces and infrastructure, including $100 million for parks and street repaving.
Earlier this month, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) visited the department’s headquarters alongside Camden Mayor Victor Carstarphen and Camden County Commissioner Director Louis Cappelli Jr. to get a firsthand look at some of the advanced tools and training methods police have utilized in recent years.
Booker is promoting federal legislation designed to help other law enforcement agencies adopt similar technology, like automated license plate readers, live cameras, drones, and more, which Camden County Police Chief Gabriel Rodriguez has said contributed to the reduction in crime across the city.
Officials asked that anyone with information about any of the recent shootings contact the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office Homicide Unit or the Camden County Police Department. You can also submit anonymous tips online.
New Jersey hospitals could lose an estimated $3.6 billion from Medicaid changes through 2032, forcing them to bring their expenses in line, Inspira Health Network CEO Amy Mansue said Friday during a panel discussion in Cherry Hill.
“That will only happen with dramatic changes in how we look at our business,” she said during the Southern New Jersey Development Council’s Annual Health Care Leadership Forum at the Legacy Club of Woodcrest.
Mansue predicted that health systems will close little-used programs. “There is no way to cut that much money out of the hospitals without doing some of that,” she said.
The $3.6 billion estimate from the New Jersey Hospital Association does not include hospitals’ losses from the growing population of uninsured people who show up at emergency departments because they can’t afford to pay cash for a doctor visit.
The hospital executives pleaded for state officials to reduce the red tape that makes it hard to implement programs needed to meet community needs.
“We need to be more nimble, we need to be more adaptable, we need to be more flexible,” said Aaron Chang, president of Jefferson Health NJ, which includes hospitals in Cherry Hill, Stratford, and Washington Township.
Jennifer Khelil (left), Virtua Health’s chief clinical Officer; Aaron Chang (center), president of Jefferson Health New Jersey; and Amy Mansue, CEO of Inspira Health spoke Friday at the Southern New Jersey Development Council’s Health Care Leadership Forum.
Inspira is adding a $220 million patient tower at Inspira Mullica Hill in Harrison Township, near the intersection of Routes 55 and 322. Construction is expected to be completed Oct. 1, Mansue said. “The reality is we’re not going to open until March” because it will take that long to get all the regulatory approvals, she said.
Inspira operates three other hospitals in Cumberland and Salem Counties.
Raynard E. Washington, who heads the N.J. Department of Health, spoke after the panel and said Gov. Mikie Sherrill is serious about making it easier to do business in the state. She told state agencies “to limit additional regulations and to look for opportunities to streamline,” he said.
Workforce development is a top priority
Six years ago, Virtua and Rowan University started working together to create the Virtua Health College of Medicine & Life Sciences out of Rowan’s School of Osteopathic Medicine, Rowan’s School of Nursing & Health Professions, and Virtua’s Our Lady of Lourdes Nursing School, plus a new school of translational biomedical engineering and sciences.
The institution officially launched in 2022 with $85 million in support from Virtua and $125 million from Rowan and has seen its class sizes grow steadily.
“We are now training about 360 nurse graduates every year, 300 medical students,” said Jennifer Khelil, Virtua’s chief clinical officer. Virtua operates five hospitals in South Jersey.
Workforce efforts also reach into high schools, Chang said. Jefferson Cherry Hill Hospital has a relationship with Cherry Hill West High School that brings 12 to 15 interns to the hospital.
“Because of the internship, their exposure to the hospital environment, whether it’s the ancillary departments and or the clinical areas, over 95% of those individuals get a healthcare job as a first foray into the workforce,” Chang said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the time period for the Medicaid cuts.
After more than a century as a dry town, Collingswood is considering lifting its ban on alcohol sales within the borough.
For months, the three-person Collingswood Board of Commissioners has been discussing whether to lift the long-standing restrictions on liquor sales both as a potential new revenue source for the borough and as a way to bolster the local restaurant industry.
Per the state’s population-based license cap 一 one liquor license for every 3,000 residents — Collingswood would be able to issue as many as four retail consumption licenses that permit restaurants or bars to serve alcohol, or one distribution license for a liquor store within borough limits.
If liquor sales are eventually permitted, the borough could receive anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 annually through licensing and renewal fees.
But discussions are still preliminary as the commissioners work to determine what is best for Collingswood’s existing restaurant and business owners, borough administrator Cassandra Duffey said.
“There’s a general sense that liquor can be a good thing, but there’s a concern that if it’s done in a way that’s unbalanced, it can also throw people off,” she said.
“Is there strength in the dry-town brand that has been around for years and years?” Duffey said.
Tracing back to its Quaker roots, Collingswood has prohibited alcohol sales by ordinance since the 19th century.
A change to the policy would require public approval through a referendum during the November general election, borough solicitor Caitlin Harney Norcia said.
To begin that process, the borough’s commissioners would need to adopt a resolution by Aug. 21 so that the Camden County Clerk’s Office has enough time to add the question to the ballot. In order to adopt the resolution, at least 15% of voters who participated in the last general election must sign a public petition in favor of putting the question on the ballot, Harney Norcia said.
After that, “repealing any kind of prior restrictions could all be done relatively easily,” Harney Norcia said, describing the logistics of updating local ordinances if a referendum passes.
If voters approve lifting the ban, Harney Norcia said, the borough could either award licenses in a competitive bidding process, which could generate one-time revenue for Collingswood’s budget, or enact an application and review process that includes annual fees and public presentations by prospective licensees.
But if the measure were to fail on Election Day, Collingswood would be barred from holding another referendum on alcohol sales for five years, according to state law.
Some business owners have expressed concern that the public bidding process could result in one of the borough’s few licenses being awarded to an outside business instead of an established Collingswood restaurant, Duffey said.
“The challenge is not to disrupt the balance of businesses that already exist here,” she said. “If you get a bidder that gets a license from outside of town, sure, you get the revenue, but then you’ve added somebody and it doesn’t necessarily benefit one of our businesses.
“The other option is to award [the licenses] directly, but then somebody must make a decision on who gets them, which is also a challenge,” she added.
The commissioners are in continued talks with the borough’s business improvement team, local restaurateurs, and others about the best approach, she said.
“Is there a way to distribute licenses or award licenses that is a boost for everybody?” Duffey said.
The internal debate in Collingswood comes less than two years after residents in neighboring Haddon Heights voted to get rid of its de facto ban on liquor sales. The town has set a $200,000 minimum bid for its first retail liquor license and is currently accepting applications ahead of a public auction sale in September.
Haddon Heights is hoping to leverage the new liquor licenses as a way to help boost a broader revival and redevelopment, Mayor Zachary Houck said.
The licenses “would hopefully draw in one or two additional restaurants or enhance existing restaurants and let us then continue to move that ball forward when it comes to enhancing our downtown historic district,” Houck said.
Making more, and more affordable, liquor licenses available statewide was a goal of legislation then-Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law in 2024. The measure was touted as an unprecedented reform of New Jersey’s liquor laws, long described by critics as arcane and antiquated.
“By easing restrictions and boosting the availability of licenses, we are creating new opportunities for small businesses, especially mom-and-pop establishments, to expand and facilitate development on main streets across New Jersey,” Stella Porter, a spokesperson for Murphy, told The Inquirer that year.
Consensa Francisca Silva Silva moved to Camden from Costa Rica more than two years ago knowing nobody. She lived on the street for two months, she said, and thenwas bouncing from house to house when a young man in the neighborhood told her to check out the Hispanic Women’s Resource Center in Camden, one of several such centers in the state.
She went. With help from the program, Silva received food, obtained a work permit, made a down payment for a studio apartment, and started a job at McDonald’s.
That statewide initiative is now facing detrimental cutsunder DemocraticGov. Mikie Sherrill’s budget proposal. The governor has proposed cutting nearly 80% ofits funding, and Silva worries that other immigrant women looking to improve their circumstances will not get the help she received.
“It was very hard to come here without knowing anyone, and it was really hard because at first I couldn’t find any work,” Silva, who is Nicaraguan, said in Spanish, translated by Jesselly De La Cruz, the executive director of the Latino Action Network Foundation, which funds the centers.
Sherrill and legislative leaders announced Tuesday they had come to an “agreement” on a budget totaling$60.7 billion, the same price tag Sherrill proposed in March. But it has not been made public and it is unclear how far into the details they have gotten. They have until Tuesday to figure it out.
And the process is still underway. State Sen. Nilsa Cruz-Perez, a Camden Democrat who sits on the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, has been a supporter of the centers.She was unable to speak Wednesday afternoon because she was in a committee budget hearing.
Client Consensa Francisca Silva Silva (right) participates in a workshop at the Hispanic Women’s Resource Center in Camden Thursday, June 11, 2026.
On a recent Thursday, Silva participated in a healthy life skills workshop in Spanish at the Camden center, where she learned about taking care of herself as summer temperatures get hotter in the city. About 20 adults clapped for one another with big smiles on their faces, and they received goody bags with sunscreen, lip balm, a towel to keep cool, and a little fan. A young girl played with magnetic tiles and a baby was kept calm, passed between women.
The governor proposed cutting funding for the center’s programs to$535,000, down from more than $2.5 million this year and more than $3 million in 2025. Murphy had proposed a similar cut last year, but the funding was restored during budget negotiations.
Hispanic Women’s Resource Centers were established through 1991 legislation to address the wage gap for Latinas. New Jersey is one of the states with the biggest wage gap for Latina workers, according to the National Women’s Law Center.
Staff members observe from back of the room during a workshop at the Hispanic Women’s Resource Center in Camden Thursday, June 11, 2026.
The Latino Action Network Foundation funds these resource centers in partnership with six nonprofits across 14 sites, including five in South Jersey. The Camden center is located at the nonprofit Healthy Families and Communities, and there are centers in Vineland in Cumberland County, Hammonton in Atlantic County, Pennsville in Salem County, and Rio Grande in Cape May County.
Sherrill’s proposal would “drastically cut” the number of resource centers, and sites in Hammonton and in Lakewood, in Ocean County, would likely be on the chopping block, De La Cruz said, adding that services would need to be cut in eight of 11 counties.
Martha Infante, 38, who lives in Pennsauken, said she was disoriented when she moved to South Jersey from the Dominican Republic. But through the Camden center, she found out how to apply for work online and learned basic English. She obtained coats for her daughters’ first U.S. winter, and a staffer accompanied her to a New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles center to get her driver’s license.
“I came here and my mind was all over the place, I didn’t know where things were,” she said in Spanish.
She now works as a home health aide, thanks to training she got through the center, and even participated in a program where she learned about advocating for her community in Trenton.
“Don’t cut these funds, Gov. Sherrill,” she pleaded. “Don’t cut the funds! This is like a family. It’s like a home for the community.”
Client Martha Infante (left) talks with staff member Chailienisse Vega (right) after participating in a workshop at the Hispanic Women’s Resource Center in Camden Thursday, June 11, 2026.
Some of the women in the program are fleeing domestic violence and seeking financial independence. Others are struggling to get a work permit, or may have lost a family member who helped pay the bills to deportation. A lot of former “Dreamers” — undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children — utilize the center as well, De La Cruz said.
The need for the centers has only escalated under President Donald Trump’s second administration, she said.
The social worker-turned-executive said she was surprised by the severity of Sherrill’s proposed cut, especially because of the governor’s efforts to push back against Trump’s immigration policies.
A 2023 Rutgers study funded by the Latino Action Network Foundation found that the most popular services at these resource centers were English-language classes and employment services, such as job referrals, assistance filling out applications, resume writing, and interview preparation.
Staff member Andreina Pardo pauses to stretch with participants as she leads a workshop at the Hispanic Women’s Resource Center in Camden Thursday, June 11, 2026.
“Aside from helping them with the technical aspects of job hunting, the assistance from the Centers seemed to provide a boost of confidence for many of the women, giving them an additional push to apply for positions even if they felt hesitant to do so at first,” the study said.
Gladys, 48, who declined to give her last name due to concerns over her safety, said in Spanish that the free English courses made her feel like she could “come up for air and breathe” after not being able to communicate.
The Camden resident had been an ecologist in Nicaragua and has gotten involved in the center’s community garden. She said she would love to pursue a career teaching children about the environment, but her plans are on hold because her work visa was canceled.
In the meantime, Gladys said, activities at the center like art classes have made her feel less alone. She has been able to connect with women in the same situation as her, and those who migrated to the U.S. earlier who can give her advice from their experiences.
“Maybe my circumstances don’t change, but my emotional well-being changes because I’m able to connect with others,” she said in Spanish.
