EDITORIAL Back to business.
With the new year upon us, it’s time for the governments in Cranbury, Jamesburg and Monroe to get back to business.
After a hectic fall and a busy election season, municipal governing bodies and school boards typically slow down for the holidays. Sure, things do happen. Monroe recently hired a new chief of police and Cranbury has been trying to complete the sale of the Barclay properties.
For the most part, however, much of December has been spent with housekeeping and tying up loose ends.
But with January here, things are likely to get busy soon as elected officials look get off to a good start.
We offer a few recommendations for what needs to be done in 2005:
The Cranbury Township Committee should review its land preservation goals and set new priorities for the properties it truly wants to save.
The township does not have an unlimited amount of money and it has done a remarkable job over the last decade or so in keeping residential development to a minimum. But the number of available parcels has shrunk and there are a long list of other needs that will require a significant monetary investment.
That makes setting goals even more important so that those properties deemed most important do not end up full of houses.
The Jamesburg Board of Education and voters need to capitalize on last year’s success and approve a school budget that is more aggressive than in the past.
Last year marked the first time in three years that voters supported a school spending plan. The budget called for a 1.2 percent increase in the school tax. Passage of the budget allowed the district to maintain its programs, but did not undo the damage caused by recent budget defeats, which have left the district without a full-time librarian and forced the community to collect change to pay for the after-school program.
While we understand that Jamesburg taxpayers have been stressed to their limits, we also believe that defeating school budgets as lean as Jamesburg’s are counterproductive. When budgets are defeated, programs have to be cut, meaning that Jamesburg students will not have the same educational experience as their peers in Cranbury or Monroe. That’s not fair to them or good for property values.
Monroe needs to move aggressively on its plan to eventually preserve 50 percent of the town’s 26,752 total acres.
Monroe has experienced an uptick in development in the last few years, which has had its impact on the township’s schools and is starting to have its impact on local roads. The best way to combat development is to remove properties from the table.
The township has already acquired more than 2,000 acres of land for open space and farmland preservation since voters approved the creation of an open space tax and trust fund in 2002.
And it has 28 properties totaling about 693 acres targeted for open space or recreational use.
That’s a good start toward keeping the township green but it’s only a start.

