The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
By Bill Connell, Somerset.
I am a citizen member of the Open Space Committee, and I would like to talk to the good citizens of Franklin.
Tuesday night, March 18, the Township Council reviewed the 2025 budget for Open Space. While discussing increasing the Public Works burden on the fund by more than 50 percent, Mayor Phil Kramer implied that the Committee has a tendency to resource-guard like dog with a bone. Every time Council takes money out of our annual budget, we get snippy. To that I say, that is why we are there. We stand between the fund and the ideas, and challenge the need and the cost. Thank you Mayor for the compliment.
I also found it ironic that at the last Council meeting they put a South Brunswick fire chief through his paces over a shared services agreement, but our committee is not supposed to ask, do we need this in our budget?
Anybody with children 25- to 30-years’ old knows a book called “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie,” the next line is, “he’s going ask for a glass of milk to go with it.” The Open Space Committee is approaching 30 years’ old. In my time on it, it has transitioned from mostly land purchases to upgrading parks, building parks and adding little quality of life niceties, using your open space tax dollars. The challenge for the committee is watching everything from labor to gloves for public works employees be added to our annual budget. It doesn’t matter what our annual revenue is, what matters is, is the budgeting action correct .
As for Public Works labor, Township Manager Robert Vornlocker implied it could be worse because they don’t charge benefits and pension. He was only trying to make a point, but the I don’t think you can put benefits and pensions on the open space fund. Yes we have more assets that need to be maintained, but the committee wants to have a level of comfort and transparency knowing we are not actually subsidizing pothole filling or unneeded overtime. It is not as simple as resource-guarding for land purchases.
I tried to stay on point here, but we just don’t buy open space. We manage historic properties, hunting, recreation, trees, environmental and agriculture issues and land purchases. Calling it open space is short-selling what our responsibilities actually are.
I am a bad, bad dog mayor, come get my bone.
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