00:00:00ABIGAIL PERKISS: Great. So I'm sitting here with Jeremy DeFilippis.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: DeFilippis.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: DeFilippis. On May 12, 2015. Jeremy, can you just remind us
who you are?
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Yeah. I'm one of the founders of Jetty, and my current role
is CEO. And I'm also treasurer of The Jetty Rock Foundation.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Okay. You told us last time that it took you about a month to
get back into your house.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: That's right. Since then I moved from that rental to another
rental, spent just about a year there, and then I bought a house…
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Okay.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: … as of last July 15th. So I bought a house had about four
feet of water in it. Everything was replaced by the former owners. And now
that's where I live.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Okay.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: So I'm coming up on a being a homeowner for a year, and that
was my first house. I have a whole side story about that, trying to get that
00:01:00Sandy first-time homebuyer up to $50,000 and I went through all that and got
denied, and then…
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Can you tell me a little bit about that?
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Yeah, sure. I thought I was a perfect candidate. I don't
make a lot of money. It's my first time buying a home. I love Long Beach
Island. I love where I grew up and where I live, been renting for years, and my
girlfriend and I were in the market to buy something while prices were low. So
I applied for it, and we're not married, so I figured I really am the perfect
candidate. And they sent me a letter and said that they ran out of money.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Okay.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: That it was first come first serve. I documented all this
and actually sent it to the State of New Jersey just to see if they would ever
do anything and kind of heard back but not really.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: What did you hear back?
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Just that they're going to look into it blah, blah, blah,
typical political stuff.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Right.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: But then the part that hurt me was I said, "Okay." I was
00:02:00like, "I'm not going to get them." I'm still going to buy a house, bought the
house, moved in last July 15th, and then I got a letter that said, "Hey, we're
doing a second round of funding. Your application is already in. You just have
to update your stuff." I instantly updated all six months of bank records and
sent a big package, and they called me the next day and said, "Sorry, you don't
qualify. You already bought a house."
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Right.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: And I was like, "C'mon. That's the point."
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Right.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: To get people to stay here and spend money and live in Ocean County.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: This was a municipal sort of incentive program?
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: It was the first time -- I think it was SHAP, Sandy Homebuyer
Assistance Program, first time homebuyer. They were giving up to $50,000 -- not
loans, just up to $50,000 grants for the first time purchasing homes. And I
00:03:00didn't get it, but would've helped a lot.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Sure.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: But regardless, the storm provided an opportunity for people
-- bad for some people and good for others. I never thought I'd be able to
afford a home on Long Beach Island. I grew up on the mainland at Manahawkin.
It was a secondary home for two families that shared it for the last 20 years,
but for whatever reasons, they got out and we got in, so.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Did you have to buy flood insurance?
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Yes. Yeah. That was another big rumor. People were saying
that it was going to cost $5,000 or $10,000, and it was like $1,600.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Okay.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: It was totally reasonable. And we actually just renewed it
recently, and it only went up very, very slightly. And I'm still not really too
sure, to be honest, but the paperwork that came was a little confusing and it
was kind of a notice saying your flood insurance can go up to twenty-five
00:04:00percent, and I heard that through legislation that Obama passed.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Right.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: And the one thing they wanted you to fill out was whether you
were a primary or secondary homeowner. I live here, I'm primary. And it really
went up very slightly, and I guess that twenty-five percent or more so for
secondary homeowners. But I'm not going to argue with it.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Uh-huh.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: I really don't know.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Okay.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: So busy with everyday life and business that it was just so
much to keep track of.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Oh, sure.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: And I'm on top of it and I pay my bills, but when it comes
and it's basically the same amount as it was last year, that's great. Nothing's
changing, so no reason for my flood insurance to go up twenty-five percent or
fifty percent,
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Right.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Same house and it's in the same spot.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Did you find any other sort of wrinkles or opportunities in the
home-buying process because of Sandy?
00:05:00
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Not really because of the economy and what happened with the
whole crash with mortgages, it was tougher. The banks require so much
information. They want this, they want that, they want -- I'm an accountant as
well, so luckily, I have access to all my tax returns. I do all the business
tax returns. So it's easy for me to produce records, but I could see how it
gets really frustrating for other people who have to call their accountant or
call their financial consultant or whoever and get records of all this stuff.
It might take days, whereas for me it's attach a pdf and send it over.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Right. How do you find the community where you are now?
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: It's super strong and just in that continual rebuilding
process. I think LBI really got back rather quickly in comparison to the points
00:06:00north, to [unintelligible - 00:06:05] and the Seaside. They had other issues
like fire in Seaside, but we instantly pulled together and we had this
unbelievable group of people. Most of us were friends, at least loosely, to
begin with, and we had either business or surfing in common.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Mm-hmm.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Whether it was Brian Farias at Farias Surf Shop or Eric and
Mel Magaziner, who own a few restaurants, Mud City and the Black Whale and Old
Causeway, we all just formed this amazing group. And ever since then, it's just
growth in all those personal relationships and I think growth as a community
too, and just -- obviously, we'll never forget that. And I think our
community's on the way back. I think it's still not there yet. I think LBI as
00:07:00a tourist destination has definitely seen a few bad years recently, and
obviously, from '13 to '14, it got better, and hopefully from '14 to '15 it gets
better. But '13 and '14, if you look at those numbers compared to kind of the
heyday numbers for these businesses -- and a lot of these businesses are open
for three, four, five months. So if 10,000 less people are down or you have 100
less customers or your weekend sales are off, it's very detrimental to your
business. But we're definitely on the road back to having a nice little local
economy, and the off season is still tougher than it ever was.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: How come?
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Just I think weather and we're isolated geographically and a
00:08:00lot of stuff just closes down. There's really not a lot of reason for people to
go over that bridge on the LBI when there's a huge population on mainland with
box stores and chain restaurants and a lot going on over there, which is totally
fine. We have the ability to go off the island, of course.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Right.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: But there are still businesses on the island that are really
trying to make a go at it.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Is that different now than before the storm in terms of the
seasonal question?
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: I think the seasons are just shorter than ever.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Mm-hmm.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: The winter is just long, and January, February, March is just
so tough. The first quarter financially is so tough, even for our business.
There's just not a lot going on, and especially this winter, it was so cold.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Yeah.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: There's a big lead up to the holiday and sales are great, and
00:09:00then all of a sudden, New Year's passes and no one does anything for three
months. People just kind of hibernate and don't go out and spend money. That's
the tough part. From before the storm to after, with -- it's tough to say. I
don't know. It'd be interesting to see how many businesses are open year-round
before versus after.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Yeah.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: I'd be willing to bet that less are open now though. People
kind of just board up and go on vacation or hibernate, like I said.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Right.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: And that's that. And kind of do what they got to do. One
other thing is that they're building a new bridge right next to the existing
Causeway, so. Apparently, there's a portion of that budget that goes to
beautification of entrance to Long Beach Island, and they're also building a new
00:10:00hotel right when you come on. It's a really nice property already, but it's
going to be built into a hotel. So I'm hoping the beautification of Ship
Bottom, which is the gateway to the island, will attract more people.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Okay.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: That project's not going to be done for several years, but
it's in motion, so.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: That kind of leads to that interesting sort of dichotomy in
which we didn't focus on, the shore and the tourism industry, and then focus on
the residents. And being on LBI, you have probably a unique experience with that.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Yeah. I grew up working restaurant jobs my entire life, and
those jobs were only there because there are a couple hundred thousand people on
the island from Memorial Day to Labor Day every year. Are there bad years
versus good years? Sure. But sort of was a steady decline going on before
00:11:00Sandy, and then I think Sandy kind of threw the magnifying glass on it for LBI,
especially. And I'm sure for other coastal spots, they were in a decline and we
weren't really trying hard to get people to come to LBI and realize its beauty.
We were just banking on the '80s and '90s, when things were always busy and
people had a lot of money to spend. Every night, there are lines out the bars,
every restaurant's jam-packed, and no one really stepped up and realized that
that was on the decline. And then Sandy came and it was like everything was
just blown to pieces.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Interesting.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: So I got involved with the Chamber of Commerce right before
Sandy hit, and that's been a real eye-opening experience and a really good
experience, just looking at the tourism angle as well as the year-round angle.
00:12:00But the tourism on LBI from Memorial Day to Labor Day drives so much in our
area, whether it's in Manahawkin or whether it's in Beach Haven or Barnegat
Light. The impact of all those people that come down and bring so much money to
the region is -- that's why we can have businesses here. That's why we can live
here year-round. Otherwise, it might be desolate, completely desolate. So the
tourism part is super important.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: So do you think the focus on tourism post-storm is well placed?
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Yeah. There is another Chamber of Commerce that popped up on
Long Beach Island. I belong to the Southern Ocean County Chamber of Commerce,
which encases more of the region, and I think people are just awake to it now.
They realize that you really have to be proactive in your marketing, whether
00:13:00you're just a single business and you're -- does your single business have
social media and a website?
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Mm-hmm.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: You try to go out and grab all these people in this age, when
you can do it a lot more efficiently and easily compared to the traditional
ways. Or whether you're a chamber of commerce or a municipality, where --
everything just stems from basically those three months, and then you can build
from there. You can enhance the shoulder seasons and have events, and
obviously, Jetty runs events and we have our Hop Sauce Festival coming up the
week after Memorial Day, which is traditionally a terrible weekend. That's the
entire reason we curated the event and placed it the weekend after Memorial Day.
Memorial Day, the traffic's insane. Whether it's rainy or sunny, there's going
00:14:00to be a zillion people down here. You're not going to be able to get in any
restaurants. People are going to make money no matter what. It's at capacity,
but the following weekend is incredibly down, always, every year. So we started
this festival last year with craft beer and hot sauce and original music, and we
just wanted to try to draw people, give them a reason to stay down, whether
they're on vacation for a week or if they own a home and they're down Memorial
Day Weekend, why not come down again, because traditionally kids are still in
school and there's a big slump from post Memorial Day to basically high school
graduations in mid-June.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Hmm. I never thought about that. That makes sense.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: We're trying to stimulate that part of that early, early part
of the season after Memorial Day after the big spike. Yeah.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: You talked a little bit about the municipal government. How
have you found Tuckerton and LBI and the actual sort of people on the ground,
00:15:00the municipal workers, over the last two and half years once the immediate
aftermath of the storm dissipated?
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: I think they're working together a lot more than they were
before the storm. Long Beach Island has six municipalities, which is an
interesting case. I don't know of any other place where on an 18-mile barrier
island, there are six different police forces, there are six different mayors,
there are six different governments. It's crazy.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Right.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: But that's the way that it was drawn up years and year ago.
And especially with the beach replenishment stuff, we're one island, but it's
just kind of sectored, sectioned off by these municipalities. So it's important
for those mayors to talk to each other and meet and work with the chambers of
commerce. And I think they're doing that a little bit more. There's definitely
still -- Harvey Cedars is going to do what's good for Harvey Cedars versus Beach
00:16:00Haven's going to do what's good for Beach Haven, but they all butt up against
each other, so it makes sense to work as a whole and communicate. I think
there's a little more of that going on, which is good, kind of just more
positive than negative. No more infighting.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Okay.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Which is a good thing.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Yeah.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: And then also, with Stafford and Tuckerton as well, that's
bridging that gap is part of the chamber. The Southern Ocean County Chamber of
Commerce's deal. Everyone helps each other, whether it's people from the
mainland going to the island in the off-season, when they really need some
dollars over there, or vice versa, so. Yeah, I think overall it's moving in the
right direction.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Does it sort of feel like business as usual or there's still a
focus on Sandy at all?
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Well, I think it's impossible to say that there's not a focus
00:17:00on Sandy because everywhere you look on Long Beach Island or in Beach Haven
West, there are houses being rebuilt and raised literally every street, so. The
amount of construction is -- you can't look at it and not think, "Wow, this is
unlike any other time except back before I was even here when there was another
storm." You have to think about Sandy when you see these houses going up
twenty, thirty feet in the air. And I don't think there's as much focus as far
as raising money to help the people that are still suffering.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Mm-hmm.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: And I think there's obviously a lot less people suffering
than there were immediately after, naturally. But you have to get back to
business as usual. I knew we ran Jetty as basically charity for three or four
00:18:00or five months, and we were like, "Wow, we got to transition back to being a business."
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Mm-hmm.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: and getting back to what were our plans before Sandy on how
to grow our business. And we did that. We got back to normal life, but we did
start a 501(c)3 and we had done charity work before it, during it, and we
continue to do it after, so. I think you kind of stick to your program if it's
working. Sandy brought a lot of popularity to our brand, so luckily, we've been
able to continue to grow it while doing good stuff and donating back to the
community, Sandy-related or not.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Yeah. Tell me about what you guys have been doing since the
immediate crisis.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Well, right away, it was like, screw the rules, go and buy
food and get blankets and tools, the people and plywood and anything that people
needed, just immediate needs. So we did that. We had a trailer parked right on
00:19:00LBI basically for all of our supplies that we were bringing in, and we were
distributing them out. And we did everything from fill up shelters with food
and blankets to rebuild homes, and we slowly got away from that and got into
more community and youth-based programs.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Mm-hmm.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Because we just didn't want to pick winners and losers. Have
you helped rebuild this guy's house on block A? What's the reason you're not
helping the guy on block B, or the neighbor to the guy on block A? So, to some
extent, we helped the people that were within our circle, the people that were
actively helping everyone else, and we did everything we could to help as many
individuals as we could and empower as many other organizations and groups that
00:20:00we could, and then we slowly just moved into -- probably when it was like a year
to a year and a half, we moved in to just focusing more on the kids. We started
doing initiatives like all the kids who were affected by Sandy during the
holiday, we ran a [unintelligible - 00:20:24]…
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Mm-hmm.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: … donated to toy drives. We ran our own gift initiatives.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: So for the second Christmas, that kind of thing?
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Yeah. We did a lot of stuff based on the kids, and then last
year it was our first annual Hop Sauce and we raised a little over 25,000.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Wow!
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: And we were like, "Wow, what are we going to do with this?"
You know, how does it tie into Sandy? We donated it to the three grammar
schools on Long Beach Island in the form of technology.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Oh neat.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: So we bought fifty iPads for the Surf City School and kind of
erected like a tech lab. They gave us a room and put up some cool marketing
00:21:00pieces that inspired kids. We bought the cards, the licenses, and we donated
$5,000 to the Beach Haven School for the computers -- and they're not iPads, Chromebooks
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Okay.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: But just cool to be able to transition from helping
individuals and groups that were in the heart of Sandy to kids that were
definitely affected by it in one way or the other and just -- you know, still
helping but just helping in a more general way.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: So looking more proactively toward the future rather than
toward the immediate crisis?
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Yeah. Yeah. And that's not to say that there are people
that are still screwed out of insurance money and that are out of their home for
two and a half years now, and I feel really bad for those people. But we've
00:22:00just moved past that phase as a company and as a charitable initiative.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Sure. Do you have a sense of those people? Are you still
connected to them?
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Yeah, in a way because people within our group are active
politically and met some new people that run the NJOP, the New Jersey Operating
Project, I think it's -- organizing project.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Okay.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: What it's called. And they're super active with trying to
help those individual cases of the people that are being left behind..
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Mm-hmm.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: So we're still aware of it and we're still totally conscious
of it, and we do support it in different ways, but just not financially. We
just don't want to be tied in too much to the -- there's a lot of political
hatred, I guess, so to speak. I'd be really pissed off to if I wasn't back in
my home after Sandy and it was two and a half years later. I'd be yelling at
00:23:00the governor and I'd be -- I mean, I'm sending letters, and I'm in a home and
I'm just sending letters because I don't think they handled their program correctly.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Right.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: So I feel for those people. And I have a handful of friends
who either just got back in their houses or just about to get back in their
houses, and then you never know, like within their lives why that's happened,
you know. Is it partly their fault? Is it 100 percent the government's fault?
Did they not follow up enough, make enough phone calls? Did they not send in
the right paperwork? So, again, on the individual level, we kind of leave that
up to some other groups that are handling that, and I know the NJOP is one.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: You can tell me now sort of whether you're answering these
questions as Jeremy or as the CEO of Jetty, or if it's hard to distinguish.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: It's both. It's just -- I'm me. I don't come in here and
00:24:00put a suit on or put a different face on. This is what I think personally from
all my experience with Jetty, with the chamber of commerce, with dealing with
municipalities, with running events, with running my tax preparation business.
So it's just me. I'll always just give my honest opinion.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Okay.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: And it's not because I'm the CEO of Jetty or of anything else.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: It sounds like you think the municipal governments have done a
pretty admirable job.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Yeah. They cleaned LBI up, especially Long Beach Township,
who's the biggest municipality on the island. And I give Mayor Mancini a lot of
credit for doing just that, for cleaning it up and making it look nice again.
And Beach Haven has also done a tremendous job marketing. They've hired some --
some outside people have come in and promote the tourism and promote the area.
00:25:00I think Ship Bottom has some work to do as far as beautification, but they've
also suffered a lot of loss of business, so there are a lot of vacant buildings.
For instance, there's a supermarket in Ship Bottom that for two and a half
years now you drive by and it's an eye sore. So they have work to do in Ship
Bottom. Hopefully, that bridge project and that money filters in, and
hopefully, economically, we continue to have better and better summers. But
yeah, overall, pretty good job. And all the assistance with each other in the
north end of the island got hurt a little less just because of the direction of
the storm.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Right.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: So Barnegat Light, Harvey Cedars, and those guys up at High
Point where on the south end of the island helping, there's a lot of love. I
hate to talk about what's wrong because there's a very good sense of humanity
00:26:00and friendship and all that good stuff around here.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: What about at the state level, with the benefit of hindsight,
two and a half years? What do you think about how the state did?
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: I can't give them a thumbs up. Just bureaucracy at its
finest and just -- they want to talk so much about how much money was coming
from the federal government, how many millions of dollars they were going to
have to pump back in to help everyone, and they just handled it poorly. It's
not that hard to do.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Mm-hmm.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: Jetty is a very small company, and we had hundreds of
thousands dollars coming in from selling white T-shirts, and we accounted for
it. We bought the materials that we needed. We paid for the shirts. We had a
bunch of volunteers. We paid for the labor, and all the rest went to
initiatives. Every week, we met and we said who do we need to help, who do we
00:27:00need to get money to, who needs it the most, and then also, from day one, when
it was blankets and food to when it was nails and sheetrock and insulation to
when it was helping a specific person get back into their house no matter what
because we needed to get them in because they were part of our group, to helping
kids. I just don't think it's that hard. It takes leadership and
communication, and on the state level, they just -- I guess it's just the 305th
day. New Jersey turned 350 years old last year.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: It did, yeah.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: So for 350 years, they've just been getting worse and worse
and worse. And maybe it's not all Governor Christie, but he's the leader. So,
he could've made better decisions and put better people in positions to organize
the money. The number one thing would be to get all that money out and then
00:28:00market where it's going instead of people asking questions still two and a half
years later. So, I don't buy it. I think they did a poor job, and that's why
we had to do a lot of it on our own, especially here in LBI.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: Okay.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: And I know that the municipalities get money and get
reimbursed for stuff, but believe me, for the first year, it was certainly
[unintelligible - 00:28:29] it's like a black ops [unintelligible - 00:28:31]
sorry about that.
ABIGAIL PERKISS: No. It's not your fault.
JEREMY DEFILIPPIS: [Unintelligible - 00:28:42]. /AT/rj/es
