Question: Who do you think is more selfish? They guy who changes positions to accommodate an inferior player at the same position? Or the guy who where’s the captain’s tag but refuses to come to his teammate’s aid when the going is rough? Just a question.
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Record raises legitimate questions about one of the ideas making the rounds in Trenton these days: using the counties as a center of consolidated government.
Consolidation of services, municipalities and school districts not only makes sense, but is necessary to shrink the cost of government in the state.
That said, empowering the counties is problematic, because the same kind of disparities exist among the counties as do among municipalities. Hunterdon, for instance, is a rather rich county, especially when compared to an urban county like Hudson. And what about population difference? Middlesex is nearly three times as big as Mercer.
Of more significance, perhaps, is this point raised by the Record:
But making county government bigger and more powerful could be a double-edged sword. That’s because in New Jersey, county government is the seat of extensive political power and patronage, often wielded by party bosses.
The answer, the Record says, is campaign-finance reform:
An essential step in any plan to make county government more accountable and efficient must be to insist on comprehensive pay-to-play reform, so that numerous no-bid contracts are not awarded to political donors. There’s no point in turning over local services to the county if they are going to become plums awarded to political insiders.
The same could hold true in the case of large countywide school districts, which would have to award big contracts for transportation, purchasing and maintenance. Even if no political contributions were directly involved, patronage hiring and influence-peddling could easily occur.
This assumes, however, that pay-to-play and other campaign-finance issues are on the table right now. They should be, but they currently seem divorced from the property tax questions.
In the end, some kind of consolidation is going to happen — voters will not stand for nibbling around the property tax edges and there are few other ways to attack the spending sid. Talk of spending caps are foolish because they will only force a shift in costs to the state (not necessarily a bad thing because it would shift responsibility for services to the income tax) or irrationally constrain government from doing what citizens want government to do.
There also needs to be a discussion about revenues — about the income tax, about alternative local taxes, about revenue sharing and regional revenue schemes — or we will have created a mirage.
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
Lisa Olson in The Daily News sums up why it is that New York’s National League team is still playing and that other team from the Bronx has started its post-season vacation:
They are Los Mets, the New Mets, a team that radiates charisma and chemistry. On paper, the Mets still can’t match the Yankees’ cumulative talent, but on the field, the Yankees can’t touch the Mets’ collective soul. It’s not just their timely hits, their smart baserunning and bullpen excellence. It’s how they’ve persevered through a rash of injuries that has ripped apart the starting rotation, and subjugated their egos for the greater good. It’s a team that doesn’t need 25 limousines to get where it’s going.
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
I spent the afternoon at Von Thun’s Country Farm for its fall festival. It was a beatiful day with the sun up and the heat beating heavy on my black Mets sweatshirt (I had no idea it would be as warm as it was or I never would have worn something like that).
There were some strange sights — a goat on the roof of a small building, for instance (see photos) — and plenty of stuff for the kids (we were with my brother and sister-in-law and their kids). We grabbed some food and my nephew Joey did the obligatory sand and candy art (pictured with my wife Annie), while his younger brother Daniel spent a whole lot of time playing with the trucks in the sand box (see top photo).
And I spent about half an hour chasing the two of them through the hay maze, which inflamed my allergies but made the two of them quite happy.
It was a good time, though it is a bit sad to realize that this is what suburban farms have been reduced to. Von Thun’s, like most farms, have turned to different methods of agriculture (greenhouses that produce plants for contractors, for instance) and what they have called in the past recreational events. The farm is open to the public, a bit of a museum piece.
That’s OK, though. They are open and green and that’s all that really matters
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
I wanted to draw attention to something the Turnpike Authority said in our online story on Thursday about Route 92:
“The bottom line is that the whole Route 92 project is not really a priority to us right now,” he said. “Right now, the main priority is the widening of the turnpike.”
This was the reason, he said, that $175 million of the $181.5 million originally earmarked for Route 92 was diverted to the turnpike widening project in December 2005. With the upcoming direct connection between the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Interstate 95, Mr. Orlando said priorities have changed and it’s essential that the widening project be fast-tracked to handle increased demand.
With an eye toward awarding contracts for the final design of the widening project at the end of this year or in the first quarter of 2007, Mr. Orlando said the Turnpike Authority is in the process of expediting the DEP permitting process for that project. Ideally, he said, the widening project would begin in late 2009 with a projected completion in 2013.
What does this mean? Basically, the highway is dead — for now. As one of the locals said to me Thursday on the phone, this thing is still lurking, but now we may all be in nursing homes before it resurfaces. Then again, the state has been known to spend money it doesn’t have, so it could come back at any time.
This is my way of reminding everyone to stay alert and remain vigilant.
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
Hank Kalet 