Matawan Borough Council Mtg 9/16 @ 7:30pm

The Borough Council will meet at 7:30pm tonight at 201 Broad Street, the Matawan Borough Community Center. It should be an interesting meeting. Without going through the Agenda, we mention a few items the Council should reconsider on the Bill List.

The majority party on Council must learn to JUST SAY NO to unnecessary spending!

Legal fees-Borough Attorney-Ansell, Zaro, Grimm & Aaron - $7,693.74
Included in this amount is $299.00 for Red Light Cameras. Now here is where the Council should carefully consider what items they give to the Borough Attorney for review. This program was to cost the Borough nothing, zilch, nado, zippo, zero. As it stands right now it has already cost us in legal fees alone $299.00. That does not include time spent by the Police Department to further investigate this program. To date nothing has been accomplished. Councilwoman Clifton voted against this program on the basis of insufficient information was given to make an informed decision. Guess she was right. Wonder what we have paid in legal fees so far. We will have to check this out further.

Engineering fees - Maser Consulting - $21,303.85
Included in these fees is $13,835.00 for the 2008 Road Program so far. This is just a part of what the Road Program Engineering will cost. Part of the Road Program will be Bonded, the other part we will be using leftover money from last year's program. There were no grants for the 2008 Program. It is very disturbing to see the Council spending money, bonding, incurring further debt when property taxes are at an all time high and inflation can not keep up with it. Perhaps the Council can afford this spending. However, we taxpayers are having a tough time making ends meet.

With the property revaluations plus the tax increase, the Council should be prudent in how they spend our tax dollars. Stop incurring further debt that Matawan will have difficulty paying. We started out this year in a deficit and it looks like we will be starting out 2009 with another deficit possibly higher than last year.

The Borough Council should remember election time is coming and the majority party on the Council will not be able to prove they have acted in a prudent fashion.

Hope to see you at tonight's meeting....