Dear Neighbors,
This issue is dedicated to the 2003 General
Election in Lumberton. After a month of debating with myself on whether or
not I should make endorsements, I decided to do so. The main reason I
decided to make endorsements is that several subscribers have asked me for
my thoughts on the candidates, and last year, a couple people contacted me just
before the election to ask the same question.
There are two specific areas on the ballot for
Lumberton - a Referendum on Increasing the Open Space Tax and the contest for
two Township Committee seats.
Open Space Tax Increase Referendum
There will be a ballot question asking to
increase the Lumberton Open Space Tax from $.01 per $100 of assessed value to
$.03 per $100 of assessed value. It is a binding Referendum which means if
the majority of voters vote "Yes", the tax increase will become
law. If passed, the tax will remain in effect for two years.
After which, it will "sunset" and the Open Space Tax will revert back
to $.01 per $100 of assessed value. However, it should be noted that it is
not uncommon for these taxes to be extended rather than rolled back.
Any time a Tax Increase is mentioned, my
inclination is to say "No". I think it is smart business and
smart government to look at (1) what we can do more efficient and (2) what we can stop
doing altogether because it is not really necessary, before we broach the question of increasing taxes.
However, we do not really have a choice between a tax increase and no tax
increase. The only latitude we have in this area is over how much our
taxes will go up over the next few years - a lot or something less than a
lot. Lumberton is under tremendous development pressure. TDR, down
zoning, and other ordinances only can do so much. There is still a large
capacity for further development on land not covered by TDR or already zoned for
higher density development. In these cases, outright purchase of the land
or the development rights is the only option for preventing more houses.
More houses bring more kids who require more classroom space. Public
education and school construction is extremely expensive. The costs are so
high that the typical single family home costs several thousand dollars more per
year in education expenses than the tax revenue it generates. This is even
true for the big, new homes being built in town. If we purchase land
before it can become single family homes (even at top market price), it is still
cheaper over a five year period than building new schools and supporting the
ever increasing costs of public education.
So in the long run, if the Open Space fund is
properly managed, our taxes will be significantly lower if we more aggressively
purchase open space than they would be if we just allowed more homes to be
built. For this reason, I am voting "Yes" on the
referendum.
Lumberton Township Committee
By now most of you have read the short Lumberton
Link biographies of the candidates and received at least a dozen
pieces of direct mail about the candidates. So, I will spare you the
general information and get right to my endorsement.
This is a difficult endorsement for me to
make. As a former Navy Officer, I placed a lot of promise and hope in
Preston Taylor when he was elected three years ago. Preston Taylor has an
impressive resume. He has had a distinguished military and civilian
career. Sadly, these accomplishments have not carried over to his tenure
on Township Committee and as Mayor. After aggressively cleaning house
three years ago, Taylor and Kaniki proceeded to fill many of the volunteer
and professional appointments with far too many people who politely stated -
"leave a lot to be desired". For example, their hand picked
professional planner put a TDR Phase 3 plan together that targets an island in the
middle of the Rancocas, the cemetery, and the homes in Sterling Chase and
Marriott Farms for open space preservation. It is obvious he knows
nothing about Lumberton. One of Taylor's hand picked chairmen for the
Planning Board who lives in Bobby's Run did not even know traffic was a problem
on Bobby's Run Boulevard and that re-zoning across from Bobby's Run School would
only make it worse. Another of his Planning Board Chairman tried to sweep
a seven house gift to Orleans under the rug for more than a year and did nothing
to fix the loss of open space. There are more examples, but I think you
get the point.
On the issues that I think are the most important
- open space preservation, recreation and traffic calming on Bobby's Run
Boulevard - Mike Mansdoerfer and John Pagenkopf - have a strong record and a
better vision. These are a few reasons why I am recommending them for Township Committee.
Pagenkopf and Mansdoerfer helped design and
improve the original TDR Plan. TDR is not a perfect plan, but it a good
plan that has preserved 840 acres of open space. On the contrary, last year
Taylor and Kaniki took a good idea, down zoning from a two acre minimum to a
five acre minimum, and let a bad planner and a very inexperienced Planning Board put a
haphazard plan together that rendered the market mechanisms built into TDR
unviable and put the township in a position where it will likely lose several
lawsuits only to be back where we were over a year ago, but with less
money.
On recreation, Lumberton's recreational
facilities have been substandard for quite some time. Ball fields are not
level, small trees are growing up through some bleachers and most of the soccer fields
turn to mud after the first frost when the weeds all die. Taylor and
Kaniki have committed very few additional resources to recreation and have never
communicated a vision for recreation. On the contrary, Pagenkopf and
Mansdoerfer are both active in recreation as coaches and have made recreation
one of their top priorities. John has served on the "ad hoc"
recreation committee and was one of the main champions for the new recreation
facility. As a local businessman, Mike brings a lot of good ideas on how
to get more generous sponsorships from local business for our
recreation program by better partnering with them.
On Bobby's Run Boulevard, I am pleased that Mayor
Taylor has seen the light on this issue since abandoning the plan to create a
general business zone out to WalMart. However, he has done nothing to
address the problem of speeding and cut through traffic. Every time
someone brings up traffic problems on Bobby's Run Boulevard at a Township
Committee meeting, Lou Kaniki makes excuses as to why the police
leadership can not focus their attention on enforcing the law. On the contrary, Pagenkopf and Mansdoerfer each have their own
ideas on how to better control traffic on Bobby's Run
Boulevard. Both have expressed their desire to hold a townhall meeting to
discuss the problem and have promised to commit the resources needed to
implement the solution the residents want.
I hope you found this issue interesting. Please
remember to vote on November 4th. If you do not know where your voting
location is they are listed on the township web site, www.lumbertontwp.com.
If you do not know what district you are in, there is a better list with a map on
the Lumberton Republican site, www.lumbertongop.org.
As always, please continue to share this with your friends and neighbors in
town.
Your neighbor,
Patrick Delany
Founder & Editor
Lumberton E-News
