I applaud Richard Wright’s comparative analysis of Belmar’s and Manasquan’s budgets. I would have liked to see more detail in the document the Republicans have up on their site but it is clear that there is room for some savings. I hope he presents the details at the upcoming budget steering committee meeting. Particularly troubling to me is that he indicates that the budget for marina expenses is $2.1 million but that revenues are only $1.9 million. I plan to ask Richard about this the next time I see him.
I’m sure with Mr. Wright’s long years of executive experience he can find efficiencies either as our mayor or as a councilman although as mayor he will be better able to implement them. But the savings he envisions will only cut our tax bills by hundreds of dollars, not the thousands I would like to see.
I respectfully ask Mr. Wright if he could next do a comparison of our current budget with that of 2000. The town was here then. Police, public works, the school, everything. But my taxes are 80% higher than they were then. Why? There was no earthquake or flood or other act of God that did this to us. There hasn’t been inflation. (There certainly hasn’t been inflation in my paycheck!) No. It was politics. It was bad law. We did this to ourselves. We have allowed the politicians in Trenton to take over and destroy our towns. Shared services are not the answer. Merging towns is not the answer. Pennsylvania has a much higher percentage of it’s population living in small towns than New Jersey but it’s property taxes are much lower. The difference is that in New Jersey we have elected to our state government the biggest bunch of buttinskys on the planet. We need to get them out of our affairs if we are ever to see any real tax relief.
I hope that in whatever capacity Richard Wright serves Belmar he can continue to find and implement cost savings. I’m glad to see the emphasis on spending cuts rather than Matt Doherty’s approach, which is to try to increase revenues without raising taxes. We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem, 90% of which has been forced on us by Trenton.
Wright mentions in passing Trenton’s interference as a problem near the end of his report. It doesn’t need to be mentioned. It needs to be shouted from the rooftops.
If I could be elected as a councilman I would use whatever authority that gives me to be a total pain in the a** to our masters in Trenton, from Christie right on down. If we want to get back to anything resembling reasonable property taxes we must free ourselves from the chains that bind us. We are not their laboratory rats and we don’t want their social-engineering experiments performed on us. Trenton must be taught that they are our creation and we are not their creation. It is Trenton that must wear chains. A freer Belmar will be a more affordable Belmar.
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