EDITORIAL The township’s goals and the costs of achieving them.
The South Brunswick school district was in a tough spot.
The district had outgrown its administrative offices, but it knew that building a new central administration building would cost a significant amount of money money taxpayers would not likely approve.
So it has decided to take over a Black Horse Lane office building no longer being used by Rhodia, the French chemical firm. The board and Rhodia have agreed on a lease that will cost the school district about $2.7 million over the next 10 years for 30,822 square feet, with an option to extend the lease for another 10 years for about $4 million, far less than it would cost to buy land and build.
There are those who will see this as frivolous, as a waste of taxpayer money, but anyone who has walked through the board’s central office on Executive Drive knows that the conditions under which school district employees work need to be improved.
Employee desks compete with boxes of files for space and the lone garage bay, where more than 75 buses are serviced, is used around the clock, with mechanics and auto parts sharing space with copier paper, computers and other technology.
Leasing the space at $8 a square foot allows the board to expand central office administrative staff will move to the new building, while the existing office will be converted into a maintenance facility without putting too much stress on taxpayers.
While not an ideal solution, it was the best one available.
The bad?
The Township Council wants Route 1 widened. It wants an intra-township bus. And it appears ready to spend $160,000 on three high-powered lobbying firms to make it happen.
We agree with the council’s goals, but we’re not sure we approve of its approach. The $160,000 it plans to spend would be used to lobby state and federal officials and to ferret out possible funding for the two projects, expected to cost about $335 million.
There are a lot of questions about the council’s approach, not the least of which is whether spending $160,000 on lobbying services is a good gamble at a time when the state is strapped for funds and faces a $4 billion deficit especially when the township will have to plug a potential shortfall in revenue of its own thanks one-time tricks (debt restructuring, unexpected state aid, the surplus) used to lower last year’s tax bill.
There also are questions about how this project was unveiled at a Tuesday afternoon meeting held at the St. Joseph Seminary Venetian Renewal Center in Plainsboro, rather than at the township’s regular Tuesday night meeting. This leaves us to wonder if the council was trying to limit public discussion.
Before moving ahead with such a plan, the council should make sure it gets a full public airing. Our belief is that the community would rather see its $160,000 spent on more immediate needs.

