Monday's Barnegat Township Commitee Meeting Wrap-Up

My first look at the “New Majority” in Barnegat.

There wasn’t much on TV this Monday, and my favorite shows, American Pickers and Pawn Stars don’t come on until 9 pm. I decided to check out “the change we can believe in” at the Barnegat Township Committee meeting. But seriously, I really wanted to see the promises that Ms. Conway and Ms. Taylor made during their campaign, namely web based or televised committee meetings, government transparency and the issue of tax payer funded medical benefits be addressed.

Just as a reminder for all of those interested, you can go to their campaign website www.barnegatfirst.com, click on the News and Issues page and see what the duo wanted to accomplish during their tenure as committee people. Hopefully for all of the voters (including myself) who gave our vote to them, these issues will be addressed soon, especially the televised meetings. This statement is taken right off of their campaign website: “There is no accountability to the Republican's current, closed-door policy. Without transparency, many questions go unanswered AND TAXPAYER MONEY is spent in a questionable manner. Technology is available to provide live council meetings over the internet at free of charge or minimal fee.” Let’s get it done ladies.

Also wondering if they will ever bring up the fact of the benefits to the rest of the committee. This was also taken from the campaign website : “ Democrats will NOT take taxpayer health benefits. The current republicans (and Lenny Morano, I figured I’d add him in) are costing the taxpayers thousands in benefits. Susan Conway and Elaine Taylor will not take tax-payer funded health benefits, saving thousands in taxpayer money.” Everyone who reads the Patch knows by now that state law says that you can’t collect tax payer funded health benefits if you do not work 40 hours a week for the town, Ms. Conway and Ms. Taylor say they are not taking the health benefits. Do you think that they will address this issue with the rest of the committee,? It seems a little unfair that they do the right thing while their committee mates continue to fleece the system and the taxpayers. I’ll be honest, the other three might be working 40 hours a week, the taxpayers might want a little proof, don’t you think?

There was some discussion on Monday about the recycling in our town. Now I personally do not have a problem with the current system, my family does not generate enough recycling material to fill a garbage can every week. The problem I had with the system is that I always forgot which week was recycle week. They could easily have advertised it on the Barnegat Township website, but that was never done. Now according to my official 2013 Barnegat Township calendar I see that we are now recycling every week (which is not the case). Now at Monday’s meeting, I heard that they are considering a change to that with a shared services agreement with another entity, and on the town website it says that the recycling was to go back to every other week as before until further notice. A little confusing to say the least, I guess the guy who prints the calendar didn’t get the memo.

On the same note of recycling, this seems to be an issue that the new majority wants to tackle. The plan is to farm out the recycling contract to a company known as the Atlantic County Utilities Authority (ACUA) and save the taxpayers money. Resident Marianne Clemente asked during the public session if we take on the new recycling company, will there be layoffs in the Barnegat Township Public Works department to offset the cost of the privatized recycling. Town Administrator, Dave Breeden made it clear that they will accomplish this feat without laying off employees. We will see how this plays out. This issue will also be a great way to highlight the new majorities promise of total government transparency. After Mr. Breeden irons out the details with the ACUA and performs a complete cost analysis of the proposed shared-services agreement (as they call it), copies of that proposal that will hopefully be sent to all members of the committee should be posted on the town website for the public to see and comment on, if they so choose.

I do have a question on this deal. In essence all we are doing is privatizing our recycling operation. The ACUA is a private, for profit company in the business of trash and recycle collection. How can we be in talks with this company alone without putting this contract out for competitive bid? At Monday’s meeting, they called this a shared services agreement, to me it sounds like privatization, which I believe would require competitive bidding.

Another topic discussed was the re-building of the public dock after Sandy. This will turn into a fiasco only because the federal government is now involved. We need to re-build and we would like to get some of that FEMA money. Resident Jake Taylor was all over this, saying the cost for rebuilding the dock in house 10 years ago was $500,000. It seems that we have already paid our new engineer $113,000 for engineering services for the dock to be rebuilt. When Jake asked the new engineer where he came up with that figure, he said that he based that off the percentage of the number that the previous engineer, John Hess had given for the estimate for dock repairs post Sandy. That number was over $1,000,000. You all know when the government gets involved with giving you “free” money, every public engineer, lawyer, architect and even some legislators will get a piece before it reaches the taxpayers. That’s just the way it goes.

So what’s going on at Lower Shore Road artificial turf field? The machines from 1-800-UR-RENTS are still sitting there. Hopefully we are still not paying rent on those. I believe that any Barnegat resident who needs a load of ¾ inch trap rock should be permitted to bring their truck down to the ball field and load up, it’s probably the only way that we can ever get our money back from the $700,000 wasted down there.

On a good note, the Barnegat VFW Post 10092 presented certificates and a “small cash award” as Jake put it, to a couple of Barnegat’s young citizen’s Charles Peterson and Keith Lee, who wrote winning essay’s on patriotism and what the Constitution means to them. A couple of good kids with an eye toward the future of this country, maybe they can turn it around.

So that’s what I got from the meeting. It was interesting to see the new make-up of the committee. Lenny was a little quiet in the center chair, but I did like the show of bi-partisanship with a Democrat and a Republican on each side of the dais.

I know it’s early and we’ve only just begun this new journey in Barnegat Politics. We’ll give the new regime time to show us that they are the change we were looking for. What we don’t need to see is, more of the same.