EDITOR:

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the League of Women Voters for sponsoring the debate between the candidates for Bernardsville Borough Council Tuesday evening, Oct. 11. I, for one, was having a difficult time differentiating between the four candidates. I don't have that problem anymore.

Denis Dooley appears to be a fine person. Still, he, his running mate Charlotte Foster and their campaign manager Mark Salisbury were all adamantly opposed to the school bond referendum that was passed last year. There is little question that the school renovations and expansion of our educational facilities currently under way were desperately needed and long overdue. Their opposition was misdirected and wrong. Wrong for our community, wrong for our home values, and wrong for the educational needs of our children.

Foster also seems to be a fine candidate at first blush, but is she?

She wants to give our senior citizens property tax relief, yet she is opposed to any revision to the current farmland tax situation even though she is aware it serves as a tax loophole to many. To give her credit, she was quick to point out that any senior citizen tax relief and revamping of the qualifications for farmland tax treatment are state issues, not local ones, and would have to be addressed at that level.

Foster should have also done more homework on the issues. During the debate, more times than not, she either didn't know enough about a particular topic to answer the question that each candidate was asked or she "agreed with what Denis has said."

She also had the audacity to claim that having safe sidewalks and roads for our children and seniors was a "perk." Is this what we need?

John McCrossan related to us his commitment to recreation, his work as a volunteer over the past seven years, and his very successful business career. He has held his employees, and had been held by his superiors, accountable for achieving results both on time and at or below cost. That's an attribute our council is in desperate need of today. Not someone so fiscally inept that he admits to something as simple as not ever having balanced his checkbook as Denis Dooley stated at the debate.

Councilman Joseph Rossi campaigned three years ago and is campaigning today on a platform of improving our borough's infrastructure while keeping our taxes flat. These would be a reality as we speak, if each and every proposal to get our borough properly repaired and kept up was openly discussed, and not met by blind opposition of three or four members of the current council that don't want anything done.

Whether you like him personally or not, Rossi tells it like it is. The current council is either incapable or incompetent when it comes to public works projects. Since I have moved here years ago I have never seen the borough in such poor shape. The streets, sidewalks, rights-of-way and general order of the borough are in state of disrepair.

Rossi has tried to have these infrastructure issues addressed time and time again. He can't do it alone. He is only one of six on the council. We need him there to continue the fight.

With all that was said during the debate and looking at the issues we are facing, I have changed my vote on Nov. 8. I'm voting for the future of our children, for real work experience on the council, for improved infrastructure and for those who care about the future of our community. I'm voting for John McCrossan and Councilman Joseph Rossi.

PADDIE DONOHUE
41 Mine Ave.
Bernardsville

 

©Recorder Newspapers 2005