BY KATHY BARATTA
Staff Writer
HOWELL — Republican mayoral candidate Joseph M. DiBella says Democrat Steve Farkas’ plan for saving Howell taxpayers money is flawed and would make for “bigger government that would cost more.”
Farkas and DiBella, who has been a councilman since January 2003, are in a race with independent James P. Garvey.
Township resident Rick Ryan has announced that he is running as a write-in candidate.
Democratic Mayor Timothy J. Konopka is not running for a third four-year term.
DiBella dismissed Farkas’ notion that hiring an attorney full time would save the township money. He said there is too much work for one attorney to do, and the township also would have to hire support staff and purchase books to stock a law library.
Similarly, DiBella said additional staff would be required to replace the township’s hired engineering firm with full-time employees, a move that was proposed by Farkas. DiBella said he had been informed by Township Engineer William Nunziato that an in-house engineering staff that could adequately handle all the work would entail hiring 12 to 14 additional employees.
Overall, DiBella said, Farkas’ proposal to cut legal and engineering fees by hiring in-house staff would actually wind up increasing municipal spending by $300,000 to $400,000 a year, due to the cost of salaries and related health and benefit packages.
DiBella noted that in 2003, the Republican majority on Township Council imposed a “hard cap” on spending for professionals, meaning spending was limited to a contracted amount.
He said by doing so, the governing body reduced the township’s spending on attorney’s fees by 23 percent and overall fees for all professionals by 10 percent.
DiBella also said Farkas was wrong to propose abandoning the commercial and light industrial re-development of Route 33 in favor of Route 9.
“Route 9 is designed for retail business and not the type of Monday-through-Friday, 9-to-5 traffic of a corporate park, which would be perfect for Route 33,” DiBella said. “We don’t need more big boxes on Route 9. Route 33 is the area for nonretail types of business — Monday-through-Friday traffic.
“We really need to evaluate what types of business we continue to bring to Route 9, and Route 33 needs an informed discussion about what to bring there,” DiBella said.
Farkas also is proposing to eliminate all bonding except for emergencies.
“Bonding is an effective economic mechanism,” DiBella said. “While we shouldn’t be bonding frivolously, at the
same time we have an obligation to continue to improve this community.”
For example, DiBella said Farkas’ idea to eliminate bonding and have the town provide for all of its spending in the annual budget is “irresponsible.”
“To suggest that we take the extraordinary amount of money it costs to buy police cars or pave our roads and to put it into each year’s municipal budget would cripple the town and under Farkas’ plan, would mean bankrupting Howell because we would never be able to afford to pay for the basic needs,” DiBella said.
DiBella defended his sponsorship of a 5 percent rate reduction in the township’s quarterly sewer charge. In fact, he said, it was Farkas’ party that allowed the excessive sewer surplus to build instead of giving relief to the ratepayers when the repeated surplus should have indicated they were paying too much.
Farkas had termed the 5 percent reduction an “election gimmick.”
“Instead of calling it gimmickry, the