Glenn van Lier
Apparently there will be letters to the editor every week lying about the Charter Study Commission. Let’s look at some of these lies.
Lie #1 The new form, mayor-council, will raise our taxes.
From our research, the exact opposite is much more likely to be true. Most towns have had their spending drop following a change in government. Taxes either drop likewise or will increase, but at a slower rate then previously. This data is from a totally unbiased source. You can choose to believe current Committeeman Carl Suraci (see detail below) or you can believe the foremost experts in municipal government who have nothing to gain or to lose if Hillsborough changes its form of government. We heard testimony from many experienced, unbiased people, that mayor-council was much more efficient.
Lie #2 The mayor and council will be less responsive to the voters.
Again, the facts, the truth and the law show this to be completely false. In the mayor-council form you get to vote for your own mayor and so that mayor knows that he (or she) must respond directly to the voters. Since the functions are separate legislative goes with council while executive responsibility goes with the mayor, there is nowhere to hide! With mayor-council, the voters have much more power because they can actually overturn bad ordinances or enact their own ordinances, if the governing body acts poorly (as we see ours do every day but we don’t have the power to stop them today).
Lie #3 New government requires hiring more staff.
Hillsborough Township will not have any more duties and functions than it does right now. All that happens is that some of the staff, those supporting legislative functions for example, will report to the council, while the rest of the staff, those performing executive duties, will report directly to the mayor. No increase in staff is needed. This was confirmed by people from other towns who have direct experience.
Mr. Suraci claims we sued the township to stop their charter study ordinance when in fact we proved through our lawsuit that the Republicans on our own governing body held an illegal meeting to try to silence the voices of thousands of people who signed a petition! Mr. Suraci et al. wasted tens of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars on their lawyers to keep the petition question off the ballot in 2004 when the judges’ decisions were very clear the entire time. How can Mr. Suraci claim he supports the Charter Study effort when his campaign people put signs up that said Vote No on Charter Study and he has done everything to try to stop any change in government and any real study from taking place?
Vote “yes” on the new government ballot question to make our government more responsive and more efficient.