The gang that couldn’t shoot straight

One of our citizens enjoys calling our Council members ”Desperate Councilmen” Since I would rather read than watch TV, I prefer “the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight”.

All of New Jersey’s municipalities were notified in February that their budgets were due in Trenton by close of business April 8. Most managed to do so, but Medford in a regularly scheduled meeting on April 4, announced that they were still working on theirs and that a special meeting would be held the evening of the April 7 to vote on the proposed budget.

In the newspaper, the meeting time was changed to 6 p.m., but on their web site in the late afternoon, the time had been changed to 5:30 p.m. and there was still no budget published.

If one were a conspiracy theorist one might conjecture that something amiss was up.

At any rate, about one third of the usual attendees were there at 5:30 p.m., and only to councilmen-no quorum.

At Monday’s meeting, one of the absent members had joined the meeting by phone and certainly knew of the special meeting as did the mayor who was now absent.

We were told that the two men would vote by phone, but they never did.

I’m not a Luddite, but if it were I, I would have reached them by cell to remind them of their obligation.

Since there still was no written budget available, the consensus of those in attendance was that the entire episode was a charade. We were dismissed to try again the next day.

As we left, those who were never notified of the frequent time changes were just arriving, and justifiably furious.

So, Friday morning at 8:30 a.m., three members were present and one on the phone, but still no published budget for the voters to examine.

It was a unanimous “aye” for all agenda items, with no input from the residents because the council, in their infinite wisdom, had decided sometime ago to change the procedure and allow public comment after the vote rather than before.

At this point, with scarcely hours left before the budget had to be in Trenton, we were presented with our alternatives.

There was no question what Council was pushing; we’ll raise your taxes 25percent or lay off half the work force if you don’t approve the Lennar deal.

What they neglected to state was that that rotten deal would save them for two years but destroy the town.

Bill Love, a CPA and CFO, had presented a statistical analysis of that deal, based on our own tax assessors projections and demonstrated that the schools and the taxpayers would lose millions if they went ahead, yet they refused to put him on their Blue Ribbon committee.

Don’t give me facts, I’ve already made up my mind.

Marlene Lieber