If you're looking at the equity in your home as a retirement plan you might want to give moving soon some consideration. I'm pretty certain that high-school expansion will start the wreck-this-town dominoes falling. It seems unavoidable now that the sewage plant will have to be upgraded... which is just another word for expanded. Extra capacity will inevitably lead to more residential construction, highway gridlock, road rage, and an end to the tranquillity that makes the dirt here worth paying a premium for. In the end millions of Mendhamites will likely die and those of us who survive will live like giant cockroaches. Instead of looking on Mars for Marcions they should send one of those rovers to a Board of Education meeting.
from this Star-Ledger story:
Voters in the West Morris district voted 3,217 to 1,983 in favor of a $35 million referendum to expand and renovate the district's two high schools, West Morris Mendham and West Morris Central. ....
.....We're ecstatic," West Morris Regional District Superintendent Henry Kiernan said. "This is a landmark day." ....
......The West Morris district serves grades nine to 12 in Mendham, Mendham Township, Chester, Chester Township and Washington Township. Yesterday's referendum was its first in 30 years.
Construction will include adding nine classrooms, renovating the gymnasium and making improvements to the library, guidance rooms and administrative offices at Central High School in Washington Township. West Morris Mendham High School in Mendham would get an additional six classrooms.
Additional space is crucial, officials said, because by 2008 the district estimates an additional 300 students, pushing enrollment beyond 2,700 students. .....
Summation of the March 1st town council meeting:
There was a little conversation regarding the funding agreement concerning the consolidated library--kind of obscure issues like what month of the fiscal year such-and-such will be such-and-such.
Councilman Dolan reported on some budget deficit concerns. Because of some $300,000 in excessive expenditures the "surplus" is likely to dip below $1 million. There was some conversation regarding cutbacks in spending. For example: Doing without some computer extras to reduce the purchase price of a new police SUV to $45,000 from $60,000. Also mentioned was reducing the price for a new sound system for the meeting hall to $7,000 from $15,000 . [This seems a preposterous amount of money for a few microphones, an amplifier, and recorder] . It was decided there will be a "special meeting" of the council to discuss the budget at the Phoenix House on March 9th at 7:30. ]
There was some related conversation regarding a proposal to "lease" police vehicles. [the council seems sensibly doubtful of the long-term efficiency of entering such an agreement]
There was some discussion regarding entering another ten towns style compact to retain local-ish control over watershed issues.
Some "Eagle Scouts" were patronized with "official recognition" for presumptively being individuals of high character and good citizenship. [In other words, "good little American Nazi religious bigot youth"]
The contract for the tax revaluation was briefly mentioned. It was commented that the "town got another low bid". [What should concern the town is that it got two preposterously inflated bids-- indicating the perception that we can be suckered. The Township is paying about the same price as the Borough to do their re-evaluation "in-house" and the meeting minutes don't indicate they received any twice-the-price "sucker" bids.]
There was some conversation regarding an AT&T wireless request to install a cell tower in the Borough. Apparently the proposal is to "disguise" the 100+ ft. tower as a flagpole in front of the police station. The mayor, using the Township as example, seemed resigned to the futility of opposition, and suggested pursuing the best deal the town can get.
There was a little more conversation regarding the merged library. The owners of the property to be donated are sensibly going to require the stipulation that the property will only be transferred if a library is actually built. There was comment that the pond included with the property (Dunbar's pond?) will likely be converted into a wetland as the dam needs expensive ($300,000.00 ?) repairs. [Seems to me kind of a high cost estimate-- maybe I am just being nostalgic... but I used to go fishing in that pond as a kid (biggest sunfish on earth) and I would kind of lament the loss.]
There was discussion regarding the ad hoc consolidation committee. Apparently there will be some 12 to 15 regular members broken down into some subcommittees. The first meeting was March 4th. It was stated that there will be progress reports made to the town council at public meetings.
There was some discussion regarding fire safety issues and ordnances. A final decision regarding KnoxBoxes[?] hasn't yet been reached.
There was some discussion regarding sewage plant "flow" problems as they relate to the expansion of the Ford dealership.
A member of the public brought up the subject of the proposed high-school expansion and March 9th referendum. This led to council discussion regarding the letter mailed to all residents on the subject of the expansion. One council member commented that the letter wasn't strong enough. [ besides not being strong enough, the letter wasn't even labeled... there should of been at least some kind of "TAKE NOTICE" warning on the blank exterior. Unfortunately, the average voter isn't a whore for blandly presented details... the town should have just pointed out the simple fact that the $35 million School board plan will likely force expensive expansion of the Borough sewage facilities and make Route 24 more of a traffic nightmare. What more do you need to know, to know, to vote NO.] --subject discussion
Summary of the February 17th town council meeting
The meeting began with some discussion regarding the town permitting the various Baseball leagues to provide seasonal access to a couple of temporary batting cages at the Borough field/Park. It was decided that the recreation committee should look into the mater.
The next issue discussed was a problem the fire department is having with an increasing number of false alarms, and a waste of having to use forceable entry when no one can be reached to provide access. It was suggested that after repeated false alarms, commercial establishments should be obligated to install a "lock box". It was decided that the Public Safety Committee should compose a new ordinance to address the problem.
In another fire related issue, a state evaluation has determined some deficiencies in the town's fire prevention infrastructure. Most important among the new requirements will be a two-year inspection cycle for the town's 125 or so businesses. Businesses with a basement of more than 3000 square feet will be required to install a sprinkler system. Apparently all businesses will be required to have either a sprinkler system or a monitored alarm.
There was some discussion regarding the tax re-evaluation of all Mendham properties. Apparently three companies submitted bids to do the revaluation, the bid prices were $432,400 - $419,000 and $163,000. It was recommended by the consultant that the $163,000 bid be accepted. Some concern was expressed that the price was "too" good, but assurances were made based on the company's experience. The council passed a resolution that a contract be written.
There was apparently a slide presentation regarding the merger of the town's libraries. The "plan" is to raise some $3.5 million in private contributions (1.5 million of which will be set up as an annuity to fund operations) The two towns will contribute 1.5 million, and an annual contribution base of $250,000 for operations (It is anticipated that yearly operation expenses will be between 450 to $500,000) The new library will be 12 to 15,000 square feet and be designed to accommodate future expansion.
There was a lot of talk about getting the "community" involved in this project. Apparently there are a few dozen super rich people who don't use the current libraries but have indicated a willingness to contribute $100,000 or so. [Maybe I have watched too many episodes of The Simpsons... but I think maybe a monorail would be a better idea. 5 million plus a half million in expenses every year seems like an awful lot to invest in pretty antiquated technology i.e. paper.... for this kind of dough we could probably broad band the whole town or establish our own cable company]
There was some discussion regarding the budget, the current guesstimate is that there will be a 3 cent increase in the tax rate in spite of cuts in department budgets. Funding pensions, legal fees, and the revaluation were stated as causes for the increase.
There was final passage of a few ordinances, most notably, the 6 week FBI background check for relevant volunteers ordinance, and the no doubt will have to be changed again illegal fees for public information ordinance.
Alexa Lewandowski was appointed chair person of the Citizens ad-hoc committee regarding consolidation/merger of town services. Councilman Dolan will be the council representative on the committee. A final list of citizen "team players" who will be on the committee has not been developed yet.
There was more discussion regarding the March 9th referendum vote to spend $32 million upgrading the high-schools. There was a great deal of discussion regarding how far the Borough Council can go in encouraging Borough residents to vote no. There was agreement that some notice will be sent out to the public before the March 9th vote informing them of the issues relevant to local impact. Apparently Alexa Lewandowski of the Planning Board had compose a response to the school board that was particularly well written and the proposal is to have (pay) the "Mendham Messenger" publish a special edition newsletter incorporating that letter. Of course there was no mention of publishing any of the information on the town website. [it is my understanding that three-quarters of this money is going to be spent on West Morris Central High School-- it seems to me if the Central High School is going to be so substantially upgraded than any increases in student body population should be directed to that high-school and it should be just conceded that Borough infrastructure really can't accommodate high-school expansion]. subject discussion
I have requested of the Borough an official explanation regarding the nature of the "technical difficulties" that prevented the recording of the January 20th meeting-- no reply yet. As it is difficult to summarize meetings I didn't hear or ones so dominated by a single issue, I will just summarize recent events I found notable.
A January 29th appeals court decision pretty much ends the Township governments right to oppose the construction of the140 ft Cell Tower just off Route 24. One day you have equity in a house, the next day your neighbor sells you out, and the court says, capitalist corporations can destroy what you have, in the "public interest". --subject discussion
At the February 16th meeting the Borough Council will likely adopt their new fee ordinance for public documents. The $25 fee for cassette recordings of council meetings [which I claimed was basically unconstitutional] has been appropriately reduced to $1. Unfortunately, my advice to fix other illegal elements of the fee ordinance, was apparently not respected, and I suspect, in the not too distant future, the council is again going to have to re-write this ordinance. In another little side note to this issue, the old ordinance that provided not-for-profit organizations with an exemption from fees for copies of documents is being rescinded. This is a sad bit of collateral damage, I lament in-part causing. -- brief filed regarding my GRC complaint.
Facts regarding what exactly the plan is for the "joint library" remain scarce. The property will be donated, and as far as I can figure the building itself will be financed through donations, and money acquired through the sale of current library assets. The proposed annual subsidy the Borough will provide for operation of the library will be $125,000 [ the Township will also pay $125,000]. Personally, I in principal really like libraries, but the concept seems kind of archaic in the digital age. Libraries should be better integrated into the Internet, being more like information/learning centers than book storage facilities. From my narrow personal perspective, viewing the "face" promoted by the local library, it's looking more like Big Bird then Walter Cronkite.... and I kind of think schools are being paid enough to do the Sesame Street thing.
Speaking of schools, there is going to be a referendum vote on March 9th regarding expansion of the "District" high schools. The proposal is to borrow [20 year mortgage] $36 million [of which the "state" [the other you] will pay back 9 million] to expand the high schools to meet the crisis of some pending population explosion. Ignore-able personal tirade: Frankly, the dul, "institutionalized" education I received at Mendham High School wasn't something I would have purchased for 10 cents if it would have been up to me. "Education" is more about inspiration than forced feeding. Realistically, if you can inspire a kid, and get it hungry to learn, all you have to do to teach it, is get out of the way. During my last couple of years of high school I worked 3 or 4 nights a week at the Black Horse Inn-- the sad truth is I actually "learned" more washing pots there, than I did during my daily incarceration in school jail.
Regarding the "overcrowding issue" I say wait till it's really a problem-- burn some inefficiencies out of stupid sports programs and other extracurricular junk. Once the school is operating as efficiently as possible, then, if the district absolutely has to do something about overcrowding, have it offer parents maybe a $5,000 scholarship to "teach" their kids at home half the day, or to send them to some other private jail.
In Less important News:
On Sunday, February 8 The Borough Environmental Commission hosted a Winter Ecology workshop. As this event was essentially taking place in my backyard (India brook) I thought I should attempt to do a little public-interest news coverage. Unfortunately, I wasn't having a good enough anxiety day to complete the assignment. I did show up at the appointed time and saw 6 or 8 people arrive, the problem was I couldn't get myself any closer than a few hundred yards away. Realistically, I suppose I didn't miss much, 
I mean what more do I need to know about winter ecology than the fact that most of the "ecology" isn't stupid enough to be stomping around in the icy cold, almost attending workshops. The adventure wasn't a total loss as I did capture this picture of these mysterious, ecology defacing "snow circles"-- apparently extraterrestrials in SUV's are easily entertained.
As a kind of funny side note, barely related to all the Township cop bashing that's been going on, I got into a pretty good argument/fight with a Township cop on the day of the minor ice storm. Sometime around midday the power went out, so I went up to the road to sensibly ascertain if it was a local problem. Surprisingly, considering that only a few minutes had passed since the power went out there was a couple of emergency vehicles a little ways down the road, one of the vehicles was a Township SUV and it pulled up to my location. I was just moving around a vehicle to get to the driver's side to inquire what had happened, and this kind of hysterical cop flies out the door, ranting about how I was in imminent danger of being 
electrocuted by 300,000 volts and insisting that I go back to my waterless, cold, dark house and call the power company. I suppose the fact I didn't immediately turn around and head for home and had the audacity to try to solicit a little more information was an affront to his author-i-tie, and he went into do-as-I-say-or-I-will-arrest-you mode. My reply was to go into oh-yeah-you-and-what-army mode. For the next two minutes or so I ridiculed his 300,000 volts BS [roadside transmission lines carry about 7000 volts--still more than enough to blow your head off] and defended my constitutional right to get electrocuted if I felt like it. He summed up his argument with five or six sarcastic Have A Nice Day Sir's and I might of made the point that he's getting paid enough to be a little more GD polite, and we parted company without any fatalities.
As it turns out, things were as un life threatening as they looked. What had happened was, an icy tree branch snagged on one of the uninsulated 7000 volt transmission lines and swung down hitting the 240 volt lines going out from the transformer, thus creating a short that basically melted a couple of the three wire 240 volt lines.
Considering that this meeting just happens to be the meeting at which it was decided to end the Police Merger Feasibility Study--an issue of some controversy-- that did receive a fair amount of media coverage, the coincidental timing of this incident of "technical difficulties" does make one wonder. It seems obvious from the clerk's 8 word "euphemistic" reply that wild speculation is being encouraged-- so I have been speculating. My first thought was that a hammer might have accidently fell on the tape... repeatedly... but no... the statement says "no audiotape was made." so speculation has to be narrowed to a "difficulty" happening before, or as, the meeting took place. I did think for a moment that maybe a hammer repeatedly fell on the tape machine itself... but no... the scattered bits of tape machine would have been too obvious an indication of probable malfunction. It seems logical to assume, that whatever the difficulty was, it wasn't known to exist. If they knew for example that the tape machine wasn't working before the meeting started they would use some backup system, like borrowing a cassette recorder from a reporter, or maybe asking one of the 20 cops present to drive the half mile to the station to pick up a tape recorder. I supposed it might be possible that the tape recorder wasn't plugged in, or something like that, but on older tape machines their is usually some little red indicator light that would make that kind of an improbable oversight. One possibility that isn't obviously improbable, is that no sound test was done and the microphone[s] were not properly connected or were turned off.
I think one reasonable bit of speculation, would be to conclude that this "technical difficulty" involved some measure of human error even if it was just an honest mistake. If the alternative, more intriguing, explanation of dishonest un-mistake is the truth-- this Mendham-Gate iceberg will probably never have enough of a visible profile to give itself away.... then again, maybe "Deep Throat" will come to the rescue and let us know what whispers were recorded, on the tape that never was. ...maybe I should get me a trench coat just in case.
- G. Woodstein InMendham.com
An irritating side note, to the ending of the Police merger feasibility process is the fact that I wasted $10 securing a copy of the Phase one report. The fact is, the $7,000 report was probably a waste of paper before it was even written-- considering the fact that there was nothing in the report that could be used as an argument against a police merger. Obviously, council members found reason to be opposed from sources outside the feasibility process. A personal irritation for me, was the duplicity of both town governments that resulted in me getting suckered out of $10.00. I've come to learn that at a press conference regarding the Police merger that took place a few days after I requested the document from the Borough, and was quoted the price of $19.25, the document was given away to the "press" for free. A couple of days after the press conference when the Township charged me $10, I thought I was getting a good deal, unfortunately it's now all too obvious what I was really getting... The government game-players win again.
In less-government related news, this website is now back to being ranked in the 80s on the keyword "Mendham" at the Google menace. Having a completely unregulated "search industry" running the Internet provides a pretty clear example of the opposite evil of too little government. The Internet has been converted into a marketing whorehouse, empowering the worst of capitalism, and leaving the ideals of fairness, and enhanced efficiency as a dead, last century dream. If we can land a glorified digital camera, on Mars every 10 years to look at the same old stupid ugly rocks, why the hell can't "we the people" build a complete and honest "index" of the Internet.
Website additions: The Township has a PDF version of an "open space" brochure it produced. The PDF file is very large (over 1 meg) and because of the way it vertically formats what was a horizontally formatted brochure it doesn't read very well. I've reformated most (75%) of the information into this much lighter HTML file. Eventually I expect to grow this page into a complete Index of Parks and Recreation in the Mendhams.
In four years of regular contact I've never given knowing who Ralph Blakeslee was much, if any, thought. As far as I was concerned he was the guy between me and the information I wanted and that is as far as my interest took me. Upon recently reading a closing paragraph of the Mayor's reorganization speech that attitude started to change.
from the Mayor's speech:
This "exemplary" Ralph Blakeslee that sees purpose and value in using the Internet to "educate" and enlighten sure didn't sound like the Ralph Blakeslee I knew-- I thought maybe I should do some investigating some day. That someday turned out to be the day before yesterday as I noticed a strange link on the Borough home page to the New Jersey Municipal Management Association. in the borough's link directory it is in the "interesting sites" category. [if you're curious regarding what is in the Borough link directory the "by popularity" link is the easiest way to view the entire directory]
Although I had my doubts that the NJMMA website would be interesting, it turns out it was. Yes it is just another, content thin, self glorifying, aren't-we-wonderful Professional Association site... but there were some curious "irregularities" to peak curiosity. The bottom of the home page describes the site as "the official government web site of the New Jersey Municipal Management Association, Inc.". An "Association Inc." with an official government website? No... I don't think so. Maybe state government has conferred some honorary do-gooder sanction on this Association but I'm pretty damn sure it hasn't been incorporated as a branch of government. Ironically this Association claims as a "community service" teaching high-school students civics-- I guess it's the lying political side of civics.
Also on the homepage I noticed Steve Mountain [the townships administrator] listed as secretary--How much you wanna bet he'll be getting an "exemplary" Award in 2004. On the subject of the Township the calendar page lists Sue at the Township "offical government" offices as the person to RSVP if you're going to be showing up for a meeting. Maybe they have a "we can run our private trade organization" from "work" clause in their contract with the Township.
Also on the calendar page is reference to a February 19 luncheon at which Ralph Blakeslee will apparently explore the subject of training via the Internet. Here it was again, a reference to Ralph Blakeslee connected to the Internet as a learning tool. This can't be, the Ralph Blakeslee I've been fighting with for four years hates the Internet and has done all he can to prevent anyone in Mendham Borough from learning anything about Mendham Borough on the Internet. I decided I must resolve this contradiction, so I went back to the Mayor's speech to see if I could find something to go on. The quote "Government Educators" seemed a title worth looking into.
It turns out governmenteducators.com is a website produced by Ralph Blakeslee of RGB [Ralph & Gina Blakeslee] Consulting . So our $80,000+ a year administrator is so under taxed by the burdens of running this town's government, that he needs to start up a couple of Internet Enterprises to fill his day. Maybe the Association should give him the Arthur B. Reseller "Brilliant Early Retirement Plan" Award next year. Although these web sites, have abundant deficiencies I could pick on, I suppose the only town relevant question is if Ralph has time to maintain these two websites why is the Borough website always outdated and archaic. At least the contradiction is resolved, Ralph doesn't like using the Internet as a tool for social improvement by "giving" information away, he likes to use it as a tool for self financial improvement by using it to sell the knowledge we have been paying him to acquire-- hardly something I would give anyone an Award for. The funniest part for me is the idea of Ralph Blakeslee TEACHING "Elements of Municipal Web Sites". On the message board [something else the town site doesn't have] for this "Course", Ralph to my "dismay" makes the following remark:
No doubt about the fact that the use of the word "using" wasn't an accident of poor verbiage. I don't know what his statement is implying-- you think he really was surprised that a volunteer might resent being lied to? Damn Uppity Volunteers!
