Common Sense For New Hampshire

Brendan Read.  Hmm.  We regular attendees of the Borough Council meetings might wonder if that’s a name or a sentence.  (For those of you who don’t go to the meetings, the joke is that Mr. Read speaks often at the meetings but never actually talks to us.  At every appearance he simply reads out loud a prepared letter.)

Read is a Manhattan liberal who moved to an apartment in Belmar only a couple of years ago.  He has never seen a Belmar property tax bill with his name on it.  But he sure has a lot to say read about how we should run our town and has been named Belmar Democratic Committee vice-chair and is also on the county committee.

This week he sent a letter to the Coast Star, forcing us to read it for ourselves instead of having him read it for us.  It is reprinted here with the permission of the Coast Star Newspapers with (my comments) added.

 The NO side of the Belmar pavilions vote biggest issue is a lack of credibility. (Isn’t that sentence missing a ” ‘s ” after the word “vote” or something?  Talk about poor sentence structure!  And I thought this guy was some kind of “professional journalist“.)  While the NO side preaches “accountability and transparency”, it has never provided to lengthy public scrutiny an alternative plan that would meet the pavilion projects’ rigorous standards and public needs. (Give us the hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money the mayor has spent on his ever-changing plans and we can put plans out there too. (Of course we would never be permitted to present them at a borough council meeting.)   And I guarantee they wouldn’t include “public needs” like rooftop golf, bath houses and a two-story banquet hall.)

Perhaps that’s understandable, because, in my opinion, the NO side’s most vocal proponents have largely been a dubious mix of failing and has-been politicians of all stripes, extreme right wing fanatics, and alleged criminals. (So let me see if I have this right.  The “NO” folks have not spent hundreds of thousand of dollars for detailed plans for the public to scrutinize because Brendan Read has a delusional and paranoid opinion of anyone who disagrees with him.)  The NO side’s “activities” have included harassing a borough employee,  (that politically motivated charge against Mr Ehmann was dropped, and in my opinion the charge itself would constitute harassment against Ehmann) making outlandish accusations against Mayor Matt Doherty and Governor Chris Christie, (like the ones made by the Coast Star, the Asbury Park Press, the Newark Star Ledger and the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office?) and publicly insinuating [by a prominent Republican, no less] that Gov. Christie hadn’t done his homework when he endorsed the Yes side. (He’s talking about Tom Burke and all Burke did was ask the governor if he had researched the issue before telling us how to vote.  And I believe he did research it.  He researched exactly what Mayor Doherty wanted him to say and then he said it.  After all, he owes the mayor a couple of favors.)

The NO side’s only Borough Council supporter, Jim Bean, has flip-flopped on the pavilions. Councilman Bean voted to allow Buy-A-Board to be used also for beachfront expenses and then he called it “a fraud” a year later. (That vote was taken before the boardwalk was even built.  I haven’t asked him, but I’m sure he thought it was just a formality, so the money raised could be spent by the town. It was the administration that put that dubious wording in the resolution.  But if that vote had gone “no”, we wouldn’t have even been able to buy boardwalk boards with it.  I guarantee Bean never thought that the mayor would hold on to the money, never spend a cent of it on an actual board, and then almost two years later use the money to help fund the taxpayer portion of a $7 million pavilion bond.  We weren’t even thinking about the pavilions back then.)  Then Mr. Bean voted against the pavilions bond, (Thanks, Bean!) but voted to approve Epic Management as the lowest responsible bidder when he could have voted against, if he really believed in his “principles”.  (Once it was decided that the pavilion plan was being enacted, Bean’s “principles” was to at least get the lowest cost for the taxpayers and vote for the low bidder, which was Epic.  I’m sure he had to hold his nose when he made that vote.)

There is also the suspicion, based on where some of the NO supporters live, including judging from the signs around Silver Lake and Ocean Avenue, that the NO side’s real motive is to stop the Taylor Pavilion from being restored in order to preserve supporters’ now-open views.  (What a ridiculous statement.  The “no” supporters live in every part of Belmar.  Probably fewer than one percent of them would see Taylor Pavilion from their house.)  “Postponing” the Taylor Pavilion is an all too convenient way to achieve the substantial cost savings the NO side claims.  (When it comes to spending other people’s money, liberals never want to postpone anything.)

Lastly, didn’t we the citizens here in Belmar, decide in favor of two pro-pavilions candidates, Brian Magovern and Janis Keown-Blackburn, and reject their opponents Tom Burke and David Schneck?   (David Schneck.  I think I know that guy.  As a matter of fact, I voted for him.  Anyway, (despite what Obama thinks) winning a popularity contest doesn’t give you carte-blanche to just do whatever you want.  Hitler was elected.  Does that mean it was OK to start a war that killed 50 million people?)  If so, then why did the NO side pursue this vote, which is costing us $17,000, if they truly believed in “letting the citizens decide” and in saving tax dollars?  (This is a total falsehood.  The election would not have cost a dime if Doherty had simply followed the law and allowed the vote to be held in the regular November election.  He’s the one who ignored the pleas from dozens of his constituents and called for a special election instead.  That $17,000 is on him.)

Given the above, then why should the people of Belmar believe anything the NO side says?   (Maybe because the “NO” side is putting out reasoned arguments and the “YES” side is putting out nonsense like this?)