South Brunswick – Page 5

South Brunswick budget:Gambling with the surplus

You have ato wonder if the people who drafted South Brunswick’s proposed municipal budget have been paying attention to what has been happening at the state level.

The $49.5 million budget presented to the Township Council on Tuesday by Township Manager Matt Watkins follows in what has been a long line of South Brunswick spending plans, relying on its surplus account to offset what otherwise might be a tax increase.

The township is planning to use 95 percent of its surplus account as revenue, more than $9 million, which is about three-quarters of a million bucks more than it used last year. The problem, however, is that doing so leaves less than $500,000 in its surplus account with no guarantees that the account will grow enough over the course of the year to allow the township to use the same amount of surplus as revenue next year.

That could leave the township in a hole next year, before anything else is taken into account.

Recent history is our guide: The township’s surplus account shrink from $8.2 million in 2001 to $4.5 million in 2006, before a minibuilding boom helped drive it back up to $10.5 million last year. The council spent $8.5 million of that last year, with development helping generate enough new revenue to boost the fund to about $9.7 million.

That means that $7.7 million in new surplus was generated during 2007 — about $2.5 million less than was generated in 2006. If the township creates the same amount of new surplus in 2008 as it did in 2007, that will leave it with about $8.3 million or so in its account — almost a million bucks less than it is using this year. That’s a huge gap that would be difficult to plug.

Township officials are optimistic that surplus growth will be enough to avert such a gap, but external factors leave me dubious. The national economy is tanking, led by a sinking real estate market, and New Jersey’s economic woes have become legendary. The economic climate would not seem to favor new ratable construction — in fact, the ratable base has staganated (it actually shrank by a quarter of a percent in 2007).

Unless there are major projects in the pipeline that are likely to get their certificates of occupancy in 2008 and that will generate tax revenue, it seems a dangerous gamble to burn the surplus account like this.

Then again, keeping taxes from going up during an election year is not the worst policy — so what if the fallout won’t hit the budget (and taxpayers) until 2009.

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

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Beekman Road: Turn, turn, turn

The South Brunswick Township Council is considering whether it should add an extra turning lane from Beekman Road onto Route 27. The idea, as I understand it (I wasn’t at Tuesday’s council meeting where it was discussed) would be to designate a left-turn lane and set aside a separate right-turn lane (an accommodation would need to be made for drivers going straight into the CVS).

On a theoretical plane, I probably could support something like this. But the failure of this intersection is more than theoretical. We were driving home tonight at about 7 p.m. and turned onto Beekman from Route 1 heading west. When we got to Beekman, we needed to make a left and sat through about a half dozen lights.

So, the turn lanes make sense.

But more needs to be done. One of the major problems at the intersections is that the cars coming out of the CVS and heading straight onto Beekman create havoc — creating a dangerous situation (it can be difficult to see the cars that are heading straight) and stopping those turning left from Beekman onto Route 27 and holding up the line of traffic.

A turning arrow is needed, at the very least, to better regulate traffic. Realigning the intersection to line it up with the Franklin section of Beekman would have been the best approach, but the construction of the Mobile station (now a Lukoil) has pretty much ended that possibility.

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

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A tragedy of immense proportions

I can only imagine the pain that the family of Kylie Pinheiro (pictured) is going through today as they bury the 18-year-old college student who was killed in a car accident last week. I can only imagine because I do not have any kids, though I have numerous nieces and nephews — including three of driving age — and I can’t fathom how my siblings and their spouses or my wife’s siblings and their spouses might deal with a tragedy of this magnitude.

I am not a big user of the word tragedy, as a general rule. I tend to limit its use to the Aristotlian use, tied to Greek drama and the notion that the hero meets his end through his own imperfections.

But the horrific nature of what has happened here, the unnecessary loss of life, the too-soon ending that could have been prevented.

The driver of the car that struck the one in which Kylie was traveling — Kimberly Green, 32, of Somerset — has been charged with aggravated manslaughter and two counts of aggravated assault. Assistant Middlesex County Prosecutor Nicholas Sewitch says Ms. Green tested at a .159 blood-alcohol level — nearly twice the legal limit. She faces up to 30 years on the manslaughter charge and up to 10 years each on the assault changes, if convicted.

Ms. Green, according to The Home News-Tribune, is a single mother of two, making this all the more tragic. She has pleaded not guilty.

The thing that strikes me about this is that it did not have to happen. The lives that been shattered by this — Kylie’s, her family and friends’, Ms. Green and her children’s, did not need to be shattered. Accidents like this never need to happen. We all should know better, as we say in our editorial this week.

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

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South Brunswick’s rural roots

I offer this from the South Brunswick Police Department without comment:

The early morning rush hour was complicated with over a dozen minor accidents due to icy roads. Then at 9:06am a citizen called 911 to report a chicken down in the intersection of Timothy Avenue and Nancy Street. The chicken apparently tried to cross the road and fell, maybe because of the ice. Police and the animal control officer responded. The animal control officer returned the chicken to its owner on Henderson Road. It is not know how the chicken flew the coop.

Call this a reminder of South Brunswick’s rural roots.

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

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Science park on the horizon

This has been a development long in the making, a proposed science and research center on Route 1 at the township’s border with Plainsboro — a proposal that meets the zoning agreed to by the Township Council and Princeton University back in 2003 as part of a swap of zoning for open space that met little opposition at the time.

On first blush, this development seems a good idea: Loads of tax revenue should be coming our way, while muhc of the impact should take place away from residential areas.

But it is unclear what the traffic impact maybe — whether Route 1 will grow worse, whether Ridge Road or Route 522 will be affected, whether Kingston might find itself deluged.

Kingston residents had some early concerns, but were assuaged by the donation of significant open space, property that is part of a green belt designed to protect the village from encroaching development.

We’ve received one letter about the project — opposed — but it seems too early to react. Let’s see what the final plan looks like before we make up our minds.

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

E-mail me by clicking here.