By Nick Sodano, Editor, The Mount Holly Reporter
The Facebook page called “Mount Holly News”, which has 2,800 followers, is published by Jason R. Carty.
Mr. Carty does not reveal his administrator status and Facebook does not require public transparency. The arduous path to discovering his ownership requires considerable sleuthing. The Reporter has testimony of people who have first-hand knowledge of Carty’s publishing control over Mount Holly News and from others who have made careful observation of his writing style and his post content which often mirror content he allows to be associated with his name. Its him.
WHY DOES IT MATTER ?
It matters because a publication with 2,800 followers can have significant influence over public debate, especially in a town with elections that turn out less than 5,000 votes on a good day. It matters because some content in the Mount Holly News is demonstrably false, such as a libelous charge Mount Holly News made against former Fire Commissioner Joseph Sams. And it matters because followers of Mount Holly News deserve the transparency of knowing who is trying to influence them.
LOCAL STRATEGIES
Besides owning a communication platform known as Mount Holly News, Mr. Carty owns a political consulting operation known as Local Strategies. The Election Law Enforcement Commission publishes payments made by campaigns to Local Strategies LLC in various elections. Carty is excellent at running political campaigns for his customers: setting design, content and timing of some startlingly effective mail pieces. The Mount Holly Reporter does not indicate that the “negative” mailer displayed here is true. But it is an example of Carty’s work. This is another reason why people should be concerned about Carty’s anonymity at Mount Holly News.
THE LATEST CAMPAIGN
Mount Holly News published a 9/8/26 post which pointedly left Mount Holly Fire Department out of any credit for its response to an apartment fire on High Street. Residents need to know that MHFD did arrive on the scene essentially simultaneously with other local departments and was part of the team providing services in that fire. The Reporter has more to say below about MHFD’s efforts to rebuild its forces and response statistics.
When a publication regularly fails to provide any reporting of positive work by an organization, readers can safely conclude that the publication is engaged in a political campaign to drive negative perceptions.
THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN
The Mount Holly Reporter believes that people can best make up their minds about which arguments hold water when they have more information, not less. Our mission as a 501(c)4 non-profit is to shed light into the government and civic life of Mount Holly. To that end, we present below the full “Strategic Plan” for MHFD which was authored by Chief Tom Mason during 2024.
During 2024, the New Jersey Division of Fire Safety [ see https://www.nj.gov/dca/dfs/ ]was singularly focused on the struggling Mount Holly Fire District which had inadequate response to fire calls. Those bad response statistics followed decades of decline and aligned with national trends for volunteer departments as modern economies saw people take work far from their homes. There were also circumstances specific to Mount Holly which hurt volunteer census as some members quit rather than accept fire company mergers into a single force at the Relief Fire House.
Regardless of the causes, the State of New Jersey was giving the MHFD an ultimatum: produce an acceptable plan of improvement or face a shut-down and requirements to provide fire services via financial agreements with other departments. And so, with a tight deadline, the “Strategic Plan 2024 – 2029” was presented to the State.
The Division of Fire Safety found that plan acceptable and Mount Holly Fire District was given a reprieve. The Fire District was faced with implementing the plan to improve or be forced into relationships with nearby fire districts at a significant cost.
DEVIL’S IN THE DETAILS
Just as the Five Year Plan emerged, the Fire District was in the process of selecting a new Director of Fire Services, which turned out to be Jason R. Carty during March of 2025. And so it was Carty who would interpret the critical language found on page 4 of the plan [see below].
“Develop incentive duty crew programs for tenured and new membership.”
The plan was designed with a duty crew program that offered limited paid shifts as an “incentive” to volunteers who would also have to provide unpaid hours to the district. But Director Carty did not see it that way and instead implemented a Duty Crew program with no requirement to work volunteer hours.
So without the volunteer hours requirement, responses to calls for service would stretch only as far there was money to provide paid shifts. While that attracted professional firefighters from distant towns and improved response at the Fire District, it was only a partial solution and came at the expense of volunteer hours which could be gathered if the program were aimed at local people.
With the departure of Carty, the program has been redesigned to align with the original vision of required volunteer hours. This caused the professional firefighters from remote communities to depart. But the District has attracted 18 new members, which is more than was lost when the new program was implemented. The program is not yet fully developed and new staff must be trained, but it is likely that significant improvement will arrive in the coming months. The Reporter will inquire whether the new program is paying off and whether the State of New Jersey is satisfied with the progress. Stay tuned.
