Barrett
Brick headed for financial ruin under mayor
John
Barrett
Brick headed for financial ruin under mayor
Back when Noah was building his ark, he warned about the impending floods. Those around him thought he was crazy until, as the story goes, the rain started. The Republican slate in 2001 warned about this day in Brick, when the spending would reach a point where the township would run out of cash. Many heard our message, but the majority didn’t buy it.
A local daily newspaper has reported that our tax collection rate will reach an all-time low this year, causing us to have a large tax increase in 2003. Without confusing the average Joe, every dollar in taxes that is not collected in 2002 will become a line item in the 2003 municipal budget known as Reserve for Uncollected Taxes. The millions in this category will mean greater taxes paid by every one of us because many haven’t paid their 2002 taxes by year end. The Scarpelli administration postulates that many have paid off their mortgages and aren’t paying taxes to the municipality as the mortgage companies had done before.
Now in the last few days of the year, Mayor Joseph Scarpelli is having a "Pay Your Tax Telethon," hosted by his council members. This time the candidates won’t be answering the calls, they will be placing them to delinquent taxpayers. Maybe at the same time, the Scarpelli team should explain why they have doubled taxes and increased our town’s debt by 75 percent. As they panhandle for money on the phone, maybe they will realize that more people are out of work, many have not received raises this year, and paying double in property taxes from prior years has become too much of a burden for families. Seniors have been forced to move out of Brick because the cost of living has left them poor.
Let’s face facts: many people are fat, dumb and happy. They never pay attention to what’s going on with the local government. To a major degree, Scarpelli has made many feel fat, dumb and happy with his comforting words and his ability to have parties with taxpayers’ funds. Please realize the following facts:
• The mayor’s TV show has stopped taking live calls in order to screen the criticism and pass through the praise.
• The mayor has refused to put cameras in the council chambers to air the council meetings, thus closing off the government to the homebound.
• When asked to request a state audit regarding the finances of Brick, which is a valuable free service from Trenton, he opted to let a student group from a college review the town as part of a term project. Their results, as meaningless as they may be, have never been released.
As we have seen from our corporate world, the CEOs of Enron and Tyco have fallen from grace with their accounting scandals. Now our local hero, Scarpelli, may be dealing with the same fate. As a self-declared CEO of a $50 million corporation, Joe has led us to a road of ruin. If left unstopped, our municipal debt will be downgraded to junk, and trying to raise money to buy new trucks and improve our infrastructure will all but become impossible.
Some will say that all the above is politically driven and only are the comments of a mayoral candidate who lost to Joe Scarpelli in 2001. The truth is that facts are facts, and I choose to express these facts for your consideration.
Rest assured that a member of the politically employed Scarpelli team will respond, distorting my findings, maybe even saying I was late in paying my taxes. What would be great would be if the mayor himself faced the music, instead of introducing the band, and responded to the issues raised in this letter. Don’t hold your breath.
John Barrett is a resident of Brick