Monroe – Hank Kalet

Bitter over local school budgets

While a majority of school budgets apparently were approved by voters Tuesday, voters in three of the four districts we cover here in the Princeton Packet’s Dayton office nixed their budgets — Jamesburg, Monroe and South Brunswick — a rarity around here.

We’ll have full coverage over the next two days and I’ll have a column on the flaws in the process, which is part of what I think happened. All three budgets were pretty tight, but voters are angry — property taxes are the issue of the moment in New Jersey, as it should be — and the school budget is the only one they can take it out on.

So, periodically, we get these votes, even in towns with a history of supporting their spending plans.

Editorial: Monroe should take steps to stabilize budget

Monroe taxpayers should speak up about the Monroe municipal budget. At a time when everyone in the state is complaining about property taxes, there is something wrong with a 5.9-cent tax hike.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Enough already: let Monroe build its high school

Opponents of the location of a land swap that will allow a new Monroe high school to be built on land that is now part of Thompson Park need to turn their attention to something else.

Their latest salvo — a letter to the DEP complaining about missed deadlines — is nothing more than a nuisance filing that offers little benefit to anyone. The best they can realistically hope for — as their lawyer, Richard Webster, admits — is to slow down a project down that will be built.

”It is unlikely that this will derail the project, but it is a possibility. At the minimum it should delay it,” Mr. Webster said Thursday. “We fully expect to get a letter from the DEP saying that township will have to go back to the state and get a new approval.”

If that occurs, then no one benefits — not the environmentalists, because the trade will still go through; not the taxpayers, because the delay likely will mean increased costs; and not the students, who will be forced to continue attending class under crowded conditions.

I’m sure there are bigger dragons for the environmental groups to slay.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Quite blue in Monroe– and more than a little insane

We found this blog today, an odd and cranky bit of nonsense that focuses on Monroe and more generally on the Republican Party (which he describes as the “Red Menace”).

In this entry, he introduces himself:

I am the Blue Bandito. I am announcing myself to mankind. I have dedicated my life to fighting against the evil red menace of Neo-Con Republican evil.

I am giving you fair warning, Evil-Doers, I am coming for you. I will denounce until you renounce. Your lies have gone on for too long. Your false allegations, corrupt tactics and politics of personal destruction will now be met with resistance. I am your nemesis.

Repent or face ideological destruction.

I will start where all Superheros begin, at home. My home is Monroe Township, NJ. Do not try to find me for I am an elusive ghost. I will sense you coming before you even know you are doing it. I am all seeing.

We must turn the evil red tide before it is two late. I will prevail. Where you see the blue “BB” know that the Blue Bandit has left his mark.

I am here to protect the weak, the elderly, the poor and the children. Should you need me, just write. I will defend you.

Good to know, though the entire blog reads as if its writer were a homeless guy with a signboard on a street corner in New York shouting “the end is near, the end is near.”

His next entry offers his list of evil-doers, which includes someone he calls “HK”:

This is the Republican editorial writer. He writes for the entire team and they put their names to it. Besides his awful tic, his figures are often wrong. He is married to an ugly person. We have yet to determine the sex of that person.

Of course, I’m curious as to whom HK might be, given that I am HK the editorial writer. Then again, I don’t have any tics that I know of, rarely get my facts wrong and am generally considered to be to the left of the Democrats on nearly every issue. As for my wife, she’s quite the looker, so I can only assume he has a different HK in mind.

Good to see that there are some truly sane folks in Monroe.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

Election, Part III: the broken GOP

Republicans in South Brunswick and Monroe can’t be too happy with the results of Tuesday’s election.

While Bill Baroni won a Senate seat rather handidly, he only squeaked by in South Brunswick — he bested a weak candidate, South Brunswick resident Seema Singha — a town that he has visited often and in which he has always been popular. Mr. Baroni was the top votegetter in town in 2005, as well, but only by 24 votes in his last Assembly race — plus, his runningmate, former South Brunswick Police Chief Michael Paquette, managed only a third-place finish, raising questions about Baroni’s coattails.

Taken together — along with Linda Greenstein’s huge showing in the township this time around (she was the top votegetter with 1,966, which probably helped put her over the top) — show once again how difficult it has become for Republicans to win in South Brunswick.

The same goes for Monroe, where a controversy over the proposed new high school should have inflicted some damage on the Democrats, especially with Mayor Richard Pucci topping the ticket. Instead, as has been the case for several years, the GOP offered only the barest of challenges (though, if the party can find a decent candidate for Ward 3 in 2009 and find some real cash to fund him or her and not come off sounding shrill and petty….).

There are several reasons for this, I think, including demographics — senior voters in Monroe, a more affluent, East Coast voter in South Brunswick. But the big reason is that both GOP organizations are broken (Monroe Chairwoman Sidna Mitchell has been working dilligently to repair things there, but the party does not have much of a farm system at this point) and have failed to offer decent candidates or a coherent platform in years.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.