| Taxpayers should not have
to pay to bail out politicians
Middlesex County taxpayers will soon
be assessed a new political tax, thanks to the
Democratic Party’s gross mishandling of the Halper
farm case. On Jan. 26 a jury said that the Halper family
is owed $18 million for its Piscataway farm — that’s
about five times as much as was originally predicted the
property would cost.
Several years ago the politicians told
us they could get the farm for a mere $4 million. They
miscalculated, badly. Besides the hefty price tag for
the land, the county and the township have to pay the
Halpers reasonable relocation expenses, and they have to
dig deep to pay for all the high-priced legal talent
that was assembled to guide the government through a
series of losing court battles.
The politicians would most assuredly
like the Halper farm problem to go away — but it
won’t. One problem they face is the fact that
Piscataway doesn’t have $18 million-plus to pay for
the farm. At best, the township says, it has about $6
million.
The Middlesex County Board of Chosen
Freeholders (at the urging of Freeholder David Crabiel,
the father-in-law of Piscataway Mayor Brian Whalen) has
agreed to chip in $8 million from the county open-space
trust fund to spare Whalen any further embarrassment.
That still leaves about a $5-million
to $6-million shortfall. Where will that money come
from? Is the county going to dig deeper into the trust
fund to bail out the Piscataway Democrats? If so, that
means all county taxpayers are going to be assessed a
political bailout fee to make the Halper farm debacle go
away.
It also means that some other worthy
open-space preservation projects in the county will not
get done. Instead of more open space, the county will
get more townhouse developments and strip malls.
Soon, I hope the voters of Middlesex
County will grow tired of paying for the corruption and
arrogance of the county’s ruling Democratic Party. We
just can’t afford to keep paying to bail out our local
politicians.
Joe Sinagra
Helmetta
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