Bleak, but Not Hopeless

I attended last night’s council meeting and was surprised in more ways than one. We taxpayers have paid for the sins of past councils for years, this is nothing new, robbing Peter to pay Paul has been the magic tool to create 0 budget increases, especially in an election year, without a care as to where the money comes from or what impact it will have later. This is voodoo economics and surely not the way to run a multi-million dollar corporation. The following are high and low points of last nights meeting.

HIGH

Councilman Schmidt and Councilwoman Sarcone actually brought ideas to the table.

LOW

No other council members had anything to add but negativity regarding the new Council members’ ideas.

HIGH

Councilman Schmidt offered a 5 point plan which included as his number one item to stop the practice of deferring school board taxes. He offered for a first, for Evesham to get out of the real estate business by selling off Twp. owned property that has no “strategic” value to Evesham. He also offered up combining the Planning & Zoning Boards to create a land-use board as other Townships have done at build out. He proposed to put limits on when the Township can use a professional and set spending caps for priority use, project management or other less critical requests. Councilman Schmidt also proposed a business privilege fee for commercial businesses with a codicil that this would be a dedicated fee for use only for defraying the costs of police, fire and Evesham road repair and/or maintenance. I believe Radnor Twp. did something similar here is their plan. www.Radnor.com/government/finance/bpt.html


Councilwoman Sarcone offered to cut 2 cents from the dedicated 3 cents for open space for this year only as a way to generate income. She also wanted to have the MUA give the Township a lump sum of money or “gift” for budget bail out.

LOW

The Mayor, the Deputy Mayor and our newest Councilwoman Olt added nothing of value. The actual dept for deferred school taxes in a whooping $8,000,000.
Everyone that contributed nothing, did nothing, other than rip apart Schmidt and Sarcone’s ideas.

In order to balance a budget, we must do something other than rely on the past to predict the future. We can no longer put a band-aid on a gaping wound.