South Brunswick – Page 4

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.

Fresh faces on ballot for SBGOP

South Brunswick Republicans just may have a pulse, after all. The party has nominated three fresh faces to run for Township Council in the fall — the first time before the township changed its form of government with the 1998 election that the party has three first-timers on the ballot.

Not that all three are unknowns. John O’Sullivan, of Monmouth Junction, is a longtime gadfly who has served on various local boards and has run for school board. The other two — Laura DeRuve and Rich Nasdeo — are relatively new to politics in the township.

The appearance of new faces is a good news for the GOP, I think, regardless of whether or not the trio turn out to be decent candidates. The party has given off an outward appearance of exhaustion as it repeatedly recycles the same names on the ballot. A strong Republican Party is essential — as is a strong Democratic Party — to ensure a vigorous debate of issues at the local level.

None of this should imply an endorsement or anything more than a recognition that maybe, just maybe, the Republicans are on their way back to relevance in South Brunswick.

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

E-mail me by clicking here.

Route 1, round 2

The state has put Route 1 widening back on the table — or, rather, it has put a study on the table that will determine if it wants to conduct in-depth design work and research on Route 1 that will determine if the project is worth pursuing.

Got that?

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

E-mail me by clicking here.

COAH blues spreading

South Brunswick weighed in this morning on the new COAH rules — see story tomorrow in the Post — saying that the numbers are inflated and would impose hardship on the township. While the numbers are not as extreme as what Cranbury says its facing, they remain shockingly high.

Under the original third-round obligation, we’ll be reporting tomorrow, South Brunswick would have been required to build about 606 new units. The new rules would inflate that figre to about 1,224.

Township Councilman Joe Camarota put it this way:

“I am all for affordable hous´ing, but this is too much for our town. We’d have to build a new little city.”

South Brunswick is suggesting that warehouse rules be changed from 1.5 jobs per 1,000 square feet with one affordable unit being required for every 16 jobs to a rate of .40 jobs per 1,000 square feet and one unit per 25 jobs. The town also wants the new rules to start in 2008, rather than having them be retroactive to 2004 — a requirement that Cranbury says would force the township to build nearly 500 units.

As Mr. Camarota, officials in Cranbury and the state League of Municipalties point out, this would put the burden on taxpayers because towns could not charge developers to cover the cost of the new units, as they could for new development proposals.

The township’s proposal is interesting one that essentially could knock about a quarter to a third off the latest numbers. More analysis is needed, but perhaps it is the kind of proposal that COAH can work from as it attempts to sort out this mess.

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

E-mail me by clicking here.

Editorials: budgets, budgets, budgets

We did editorials this week on the South Brunswick municipal budget — too much surplus being used — and the unfairness of the carrot-and-stick use of aid by the governor.

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

E-mail me by clicking here.