Saturday, September 18, 2004

Patricia Quattrocchi
H 908-789-9078
W 732-382-5505

Freeholders think taxpayers have poor memories

A little more than 2 months ago the Union County Freeholder Board reached a milestone. The board is now spending the taxpayer's money at a rate of $1,000,000 per day. I had to actually stop typing and count the zeros out loud. Like a lot of working people, in Union County, I don't normally deal with numbers that large. Even when reading newspaper or magazine articles it is more likely that I would encounter an abbreviation such as $1M or $1Mil or even spelled out, "one million". Somehow it just doesn't seem to be quite as much money to say "his net worth is in the neighborhood of $40Mil" rather than "his net worth is in the neighborhood of $40,000,000". What comes to mind is the retailer's trick of pricing an item at $9.99 rather than $10.00. To think that this Freeholder Board has nipped, tucked, added, subtracted and tweaked the figures to arrive at an operating budget of about $366,000,000, is a mind blower to say the least. Just what are they spending all of this money on?

In January of 1997 the board came to be totally under Democratic rule and has remained that way for the last 7 years. A few months prior while campaigning these Democratic candidates said that the Republican majority board, the previous year, should have actually delivered a tax-cut in '96. They apparently were not satisfied with the no tax hike budget of $276 Mil which they were inheriting. Somebody enlighten me, please, as to what they did between then and now to bring about a $100,000,000 increase, when 7 years prior they were complaining about a no increase budget. Why have they found it necessary to increase the county tax levy an average of 10% annually and what has all of this money been used for?

It seems to me that they were gifted with a true money saver in 1995. By 1998, the state would be bearing the total cost of operating the county courts sounds great the voters said, but now where is the money? The county administration is said to have encouraged department heads to leave positions unfilled as they became vacant as a cost saving measure, a hiring freeze. If this is indeed so how is it that after factoring in seasonal employees there are considerably more people on the payroll now, in 2004, than there were in 2000? Where is this promised savings? Also, guess what happened after the voluntary layoff of a few years back an action which was to save more money. The county gave workers payouts and continued to pay their benefits however, they also brought back a significant number of these laid off workers as "consultants", paying them even more money. Corporations doing this can cut the total payroll figure down while increasing miscellaneous business expenditures within some departments, Tell me that this isn't attempting to pull the wool over the taxpayers eyes.

Remember, not included in the $1Mil a day is the new Union County Police Headquarters, the renovation of the soon to be acquired Union County Arts Center and the Juvenile Detention Center. These projects a re being funded through the sale of bonds, which very simply means borrowing money. Both the acquisitions of the Esposito farm in Clark, and the Ponderosa in Scotch Plains went through the Open Space Trust Fund, as have other qualifying pieces of Real Estate and park improvements, these are not included in the $1Million a day.

The operating budget, very simply put is the cost of operating the county and keeping the doors open. The last three annual operating budgets were over $300,000,000 each, totaling over a billion dollars collectively. The team of Joe Renna, Patricia Quattrocchi, Frank Arena and Bruce Paterson want to know "Where's the Billion Dollars?" Please support us in November so we can answer the question and locate your missing money. Please visit our website at UnionCountyGOP.org or call us at 908-789-0200.