The deputy mayor of a Burlington County town resigned from her position earlier this month after social media posts about “Pineys” she wrote in 2020 resurfaced.
Natalie Stone resigned on May 9 as deputy mayor from Tabernacle Township Committee after service for only four months.
She resigned in an email sent to the township’s attorney, administrator and mayor, stating simply, “effective immediately, I resign.” Stone did not immediately respond to messages requesting comment Thursday.
Her resignation followed a controversial vote to demolish a local historic building and public complaints about her alleged use of the term “Piney” in a Facebook post from 2020.
“There is ACTUAL TRUTH to Pineys being incestuous, illiterate, mentally deficient, inbred imbeciles supposedly responsible for generations of morons and prostitutes,” she allegedly said in a Facebook post in a community group in 2020.
The term “Piney” has a mixed meaning, sometimes derogative, but it has also been reclaimed as a term of identity, describing people that live in the Pine Barrens.
Stone told the Philadelphia Inquirer that she wrote the post while reading New Jersey’s Lost Piney Culture, a book written about the people that live in the Pine Barrens. Tabernacle calls itself the “Gateway to the Pines” on its municipal website.
She told the Inquirer earlier in the week that “the reason I left was because I realized I wouldn’t be able to get anything done when it was apparent that people would rather spend more time ridiculing committee members than working together to find solutions to the many issues in Tabernacle.”
Stone, an actress who moved to Tabernacle from Medford, told the Inquirer that she apologized for the social media post at a public meeting.
She also told the outlet she was the victim of persistent bullying attacks online, including digitally altered photos of her and comments about her body and the death of her child prior to the Facebook post surfacing.
Stone was elected to the township committee in the November 2023 general election as a Republican and was one of three committee members that voted to demolish Tabernacle’s Old Town Hall, a building that was designated as a historic building by the township years ago, according to court documents.
Stone motioned for a vote on demolishing the building at the committee’s February 2024 meeting, a motion that passed 3-2.
Patrick Duff, a local activist who has organized public support for saving Tabernacle’s Old Town Hall, said Thursday he resurfaced Stone’s Piney’s post on April 18, the day before demolition of the building was scheduled to begin. Duff said that he sent Stone a screenshot of her post on April 17 asking for an interview in hopes that she and the town would pause demolition of the building.
A GoFundMe campaign raised over $10,000 to hire an attorney to save the building from demolition at the eleventh hour. Attorneys hired by the Tabernacle Historical Society and others filed a legal challenge to the committee’s vote to demolish the building one day before demolition was scheduled to begin.
Court documents show the court ordered an injunction against demolishing the building pending further structural review.
The Pine Barrens Tribune, a local newspaper that covers the Tabernacle area, has followed the developments regarding demolition of Old Town Hall closely, a story that includes Stone’s short tenure on the Tabernacle committee.
The publication reported that at an April committee meeting, other commissioners asked the township solicitor whether Stone could be “fired” or removed from office.
The solicitor answered that the only official action the committee could take was to censure her. The two-hour April 22 meeting was well attended by the community while Stone was absent. Public comment centered heavily against the demolition of the old Town Hall.
Tabernacle’s scheduled committee meeting for May 28 was canceled after the governing body did not have a quorum given Stone’s resignation, and that two other commissioners were absent.
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Matthew Enuco may be reached at Menuco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Matt on X.
