To the editor:
Hank Kalet is certainly entitled to criticize President George W. Bush’s proposed budget, but I’d respectfully suggest that many Post readers feel he would be a much more noteworthy critic if he were to focus instead on spending and over-development in South Brunswick.
I’m content to let the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times and others hold the president’s feet to the fire on domestic spending issues, but where’s the fire-breathing advocate for taxpayers and residents of South Brunswick? There’s a host of stunningly dumb decisions on the part of the Board of Education and the Township Council that rate nary a critical mention in our local paper. Need proof?
Residents are routinely overcharged for water and sewer fees that are being used to improperly fund items in the operating budget. Taxpayers thought we had put a stake in the heart of this vampire long ago, but years later, the township has yet to implement accurate cost accounting that would close the loophole of tracking employees’ time.
The Board of Education has committed taxpayers to a long term, expensive lease of new Board offices that builds no equity whatsoever. Leasing conveniently circumvents what would otherwise require a public referendum on this $6.8 million issue, as Assistant Superintendent for Business Jeff Scott himself admits.
At a cost of $120,000 (maybe more), the township is contracting for lobbying services that would be entirely unnecessary if we had motivated and knowledgeable council members. Adding insult to financial injury, the meeting at which this decision was unveiled took place in Plainsboro in the middle of the day, presumably so that this untelevised and unrecorded official township meeting might fly under the radar of public scrutiny.
Mayor Frank Gambatese has embarked on a mission to saddle South Brunswick with a train station and an ambitious high-density development project. Mayor Gambatese can be forgiven for not understanding that a similarly unsuitable proposal was twice scuttled long before he moved to South Brunswick from West Paterson. What is unforgivable, however, is his demand that residents embrace his vision of the West Paterson-ization of South Brunswick.
By all accounts the township is prepared, along with Middlesex County, to spend millions on acquiring open space from a developer, Robert Stanton. This property, near a Superfund site, does not yet have an environmental Letter of Interpretation from the state DEP, so who can say definitively that the property is worth what the developer is asking?
Mayor Gambatese’s discussions with Home Depot came under the guise of a modest Villager’s Hardware store as appropriate for South Brunswick Square. However, Home Depot’s Villager concept had already been unarguably dead for several years, as it was unprofitable for the company. Why the need to mislead the community and open the door to another big box store with its attendant traffic problems?
I’d like Mr. Kalet to start asking the tough questions required of local officials. Your over-taxed readers frustrated by clogged roadways and over-development will thank you. Besides, it’ll be good practice in advance of landing that Inside-the-Beltway job where he might be called upon to grill White House policy makers in person.
Keith Rasmussen
Little Rocky Hill

