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JerseySmarts.com

Hey – We Just Had An Election!

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Early results show that there were no more than 35% of the New Jersey electorate that actually got out there and voted today. You can count me as one of the 65% that did NOT vote today. I did not go to the ballot box in some form of protest – I didn’t vote because I have to drive an hour and a half to Mount Arlington to cast my vote and then an hour and a half back. Not happening…especially when there are no national or statewide candidates on the ballot!

That said, it looks like nothing new happened in New Jersey. Of course, I am writing this about 30 minutes after the polls have closed, but it looks like the exit polling shows no major change in any of the races. My hometown of Mount Arlington had no change in local elected officials. My State Senator (Anthony Bucco) won re-election, too.

The only two folks that I hope did NOT win tonight are Senator Ellen Karcher, a Democrat from Monmouth County (my current place of residence) and Candidate Joe Hughes, a Republican from West Long Branch. Hughes is the gentleman who is dead set against Monmouth University advancement in any form that imposes on his concept of what their boundaries should be. And Karcher waged what I believe was an unethical campaign in 2004 to win her seat from then Senate President John O. Bennett – someone (who I consider a friend) that was thrown under the bus in that election by a biased media.

In any event, it seems that there are just fewer and fewer people who are voting in these local elections. What a shame. The following is from an Asbury Park Press article on this topic:

Why the disconnect between prospective voters and actually voting?

“Life is complicated and this is not important to me and I’m busy,” said Ingrid Reed, director of the New Jersey Project at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics, describing some of the reasons why people don’t vote.

Reed said the Garden State’s well-deserved reputation for political corruption is turning some voters off.

She added most voters don’t know which legislative district they live in, making for very little interest in an election topped by the state Legislature.

Turnout tends to be higher in elections with a statewide or national office up for vote. In 2003, the last time the Legislature topped the ballot, only 34 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.

It’s generally believed that voter turnout is higher when the weather is good. Tuesday’s morning showers probably did not help.

This article, written by the Associated Press, is probably right on here. Who wants to partake in a system that really doesn’t help the end-users equally around the state? That’s how it is in New Jersey – you vote for a candidate that you think will bring change and then you get more of your tax dollars pumped into Newark, Camden, Trenton, and other areas where it is apparently needed more than your pocket.

Ah…New Jersey.

Good Idea Alert: Foodshed Alliance

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Alright – is everyone listening? This is a good idea alert! I was reading the Roxbury Register online the other day and they had an editorial sent in from a Ms. Tamara Scully. Ms. Scully is a member of the Foodshed Alliance. According to their website, the Foodshed Alliance:

a grassroots, non-profit devoted to promoting profitable, sustainable farming and locally-grown, fresh, healthy food in northwestern New Jersey. We believe that the future of our health, our land, and our communities depends, to great extent, on the existence of local farms-that farmers are the keystone to our connection with our food, the land and our sense of place.

Anyone who is interested in this “going green” movement and the idea of making our bodies and lives healthier by eating sustainable foods should check out the Foodshed Alliance at www.foodshedalliance.org. It sounds interesting to me and is definitely something that I’ll be sure to look into the next time I’m up in the Northwest New Jersey area. When I was a little bit younger I had the chance to eat some home grown fruits and vegetables from Northwest New Jersey and they were good!

Anyway, check it out.

Following Up with the Dueling Reports in Mt. Arlington

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Here’s a quick follow-up op-ed that appeared in today’s Daily Record newspaper with respect to finding some way to lower property taxes in Mount Arlington. For those of you that are not up to curve on this issue, here is a previous entry that talks about what the proposal was in Mount Arlington (to eliminate their police force and share services with a neighboring squad). The op-ed as it appears in the Daily Record:

Mount Arlington officials have regrettably caved to pressure and tabled a reasonable idea to seek a cost savings by contracting with a larger town for police services. The plan would have eliminated the borough’s 13-member police force.

Opposition to the idea, which was intense, largely was based on misconceptions, the biggest being a belief that police service in the borough would have been reduced. Officials had no intention of doing that.

Of course, some criticism was legitimate. The report, which was done by former Washington Township Police Chief Ted Ehrenburg, seemed a little light for its cost of $43,500. Also, the council at times irritated opponents by not being more forthcoming with information about the plan.

Notwithstanding those problems, Mayor Art Ondish and the council were right to raise the issue. The mayor says he thinks he was ahead of the curve, and we agree with him.

If property taxes are ever going to be reduced, officials and residents have got to accept the fact that it can not be business as usual. The majority of residents who came out on this issue lacked vision, opting to remain trapped in traditional thinking. And politics being what it is, they got their way.

Over time, however, pressure to consolidate services, or even towns, is bound to increase. We may even see a day when such consolidations are ordered by the state.

“It’s going to happen in the future, It’s just not going to happen with this council in Mount Arlington,” Ondish said. That’s a shame.

Sorry, I had to post the entire thing because these Gannett newspapers are not making their online archives available any more. Rats!

Dueling Reports: What to Do About the MAPD…

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Last week the Mount Arlington, New Jersey, Township Council released a report from an independent consulting firm called Blue Shield Consulting Services. The purpose of commissioning the report was to ascertain whether or not the Mount Arlington Police Department should be merged with one of the surrounding localities. Since I grew up in Mount Arlington and my family still lives there (and I visit there quite often and have even thought about moving back at some point), I have some comments on this issue. But first, the rest of the story….

The report suggested that it would save Mount Arlington multiple millions of dollars to consolidate their police force with an adjoining municipality. There is a grassroots organization based out of Roxbury that disagrees, though (I think it’s Roxbury – the founder lives in Roxbury, but is a former Mount Arlington resident – not sure what the deal is here). On their website (saveMAPD.com), they show that they’ve got around 1140 signatures on an online petition. The problem with this, though, is that some of these petition signers are not Mount Arlington residents, but instead they are former residents like I am.

The folks behind saveMAPD.com commissioned a counter report that (obviously) disagreed with the Blue Shield Consulting Services report. As a side note, this just goes to show you that in the academic and consulting worlds you can get anyone to write you a report using facts that support your case! I think that’s obviously what happened with the saveMAPD.com folks, but I wonder if that’s how the Township Council prefaced their conversation with Blue Shield Consulting Services. Who knows this information besides those who are actually behind closed doors, right?

Anyway, that’s not my gripe with this situation. In fact, I don’t think I have a gripe with the situation as much as I have two comments to make about it all. First, the fact that consolidation of a police department that covers a few square miles is a debated issue has got to have our friends out in the Midwest and South rolling over with laughter. To those folks I say, “Welcome, friends, to New Jersey! This is a state that is made up of 566 fiefdoms that each fight, scratch, and claw for their territory! This is the state of the political bosses and good old boy system. This is – New Jersey!”

My second point is that you have to wonder about the legitimacy of the Township Council’s position on the consolidation. They’ve taken the stance that consolidating will save the township money. Okay, fine. As a student of public policy the very first thing you learn about taxes and local municipalities (and state governments for that matter) is that once they raise a tax rate, they NEVER lower it! Sure, you may have a few extreme examples from around the nation, but the chances of this “saved money” from the consolidation equating to a lower tax rate is slim at best.

So you have to competing sides arguing for two inherently awkward positions. New Jersey should be much more regionalized when it comes to service provisions. If done correctly, this would ease costs and (more importantly for those of us who live in the state) put an end to the abuse of power that is prevalent in the local police forces around New Jersey. At the same time, there will always be people who fight against regionalization because it means that some jurisdiction is going to lose some measure of power. Further, some folks will have hurt feelings about losing fiefdom-specific services.

My issue is that no matter what happens the one thing that you can be sure of is that the tax rate will NOT go down – and THAT, folks, is something worth getting mad about.

The Clean Out Continues!

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So…now I’ve cleared my buddy list down to 139 people. How low can I go?!? I just find it amazing how many people I had on that buddy list that I haven’t spoken to in years (and that hadn’t signed on in just as long). Again, I encourage everyone to do a cleaning out – besides, if you’re into seeing what people are doing you can get a better idea from Facebook and MySpace.