Common Sense For New Hampshire

“One of the greatest favors that can be bestowed upon the American people is economy in government.”

Calvin Coolidge, 1924

Cal sure wasn’t talking about Belmar.  It’s becoming apparent, at least to me, that no one here even knows what “economy in government” is.  Can anyone out there give me one example of our current administration economizing on anything of any significance?  …………….. Didn’t think so.

But there’s plenty of examples here of extravagance in government.

Of course there’s all the no-bid, no-vote, rush, rush, rush contracts.  We all know about those.  But there’s so much more.

For example, when our old Crown Victoria police cars were damaged in the flood, our insurance paid us for used Crown Victorias.  What did we replace them with?  Impalas?  Chargers?  (Crown Vics are no longer being made.)  No, we bought brand-new Tahoes at a cost of over $90,000 each!  Remember, this is Belmar, not Buffalo.  It doesn’t snow much here.  And actually, Tahoes make terrible police cars.  They are dangerous for the drivers because they tend to roll over, especially during emergency maneuvers.  And they cost a lot more to run and maintain than regular sedans.  You know we could have bought Tahoes back when we bought our Crown Vics.  Even though we weren’t so deeply in debt then, somebody chose to buy the less expensive Crown Vics.  But that was when we actually cared about our budget.

As a matter of fact, the Democrats’ campaign slogan for 2013 ought to be “Don’t worry, FEMA will pay for it, and if not, hey, interest rates are low.”

Of course FEMA is not going to pay for all of it.  Neither will our insurance.  We who plan to stay in Belmar for many years will be paying for many years for the tens of millions in bonds this government has sold.  We will be paying higher taxes and we will be paying in the form of reduced property values because of the high taxes.

And much of what is in these bonds is highly questionable.  Ted Ehman, Belmar’s volunteer budget sleuth, has uncovered all sorts of strange things in the recent bonds.

Here is the make-up of the $1.8 million bond passed Wednesday night.  It was one of two bonds passed Wednesday that together total $3.5 million.  The far right column are the items Mr Ehman thinks are suspicious.

Many of them, like payroll, seem to be normal operating expenses, which are not bondable.  Others, like the wedding ring (the town was paid back after Ehman uncovered the expenditure), are just plain weird.  In all, Mr Ehman has questions about $1.2 million of the $1.8 million spent in this bond.  If anyone has a question about what Mr. Ehman found strange about any lines that he highlighted, leave a comment and I will get you the answer.