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Freeholders Feel the Wrath
By Sergio R. Bichao, dahiller.com
Over three-dozen unhappy county residents packed the Union County Board of Chosen Freeholder's meeting last Thursday. A few of them were there to protest the County's action of gassing county Canada geese to death, some came to ask why the County would allow chemical spraying without alerting citizens beforehand, and all of them were there to protest the County's move to reactivate a trail line that runs through several suburban towns.
According to county officials, reactivation of this freight line will somehow bring an economic boom to the county. At this meeting, the two speakers who favored the County's position claimed that there are businesses along this line that will benefit from the train traffic. Officials are quick to add that the line will "take trucks off the streets".
But residents don't buy it. And neither do the mayors and councils of these municipalities who are now suing the County.
The Freeholders' actions have ignited a grassroots citizen crusade that is exposing the County's lies, manipulations, and ignorance left and right.
Apparently, there are no businesses along the line that could benefit from the line. But there are parks, churches, backyards, and a Girl Scout camp - none of which will reap any reward.
Quality of life aside, taxpayers don't stand to benefit much either: the County will only receive two bucks a year for the deal, while the rail line gets the rest of the millions. How much will the Million-Dollar Democratic Party be getting?
THOSE LIARS!
Residents are also upset because the Freeholders lied to them about the rail. [What? County politicians lying to the people? You don't say!]
Before his reelection bid last year, Freeholder Nick Scutari of Linden sent out a letter promising that he and his compatriots would not reactivate the line. Voters bought it, but were stabbed in the back as soon as the Scutari's winning election results were certified.
Actually, the voters may have been betrayed long before the campaign promise. As freeholder candidate Joe Renna shows, the rail line reactivation had been in the works for years. But the county government had never bothered to inform the people who would be affected by it.
Residents who spoke out at the meeting were given the silent treatment. Not one Freeholder bothered to answer a question posed to them despite several speakers' pleas for the Board to at least explain why they wouldn't answer questions.
I had not been to a Freeholder meeting in long while, but I saw that nothing had changed. The Freeholders continue to ignore genuine concerns from the public and they continue to behave despotically. In fact, at one point Acting Chair Nick Scutari threatened to close off the public portion of the meeting when a speaker asked him to explain his apparent lie.
LESSONS LEARNED
One can only hope that people are beginning to wake up to what their county government is doing. Unfortunately, these citizens are a little too late. They are paying the price of not paying attention to their elected officials and of not making informed decisions at the ballot box.
Many of the speakers at the Freeholder meeting were Democrats, which is ironic because the county Democratic organizational machine controls the entire Freeholder board. These voters are paying the price of "party loyalty", that is, voting down party lines regardless of who is running or what the candidates stand for.
Hillside voters are guilty of the same offence, voting for someone because he or she is a "Democrat". Sadly, these voters are completely unaware of what it means to be a "Democratic" politician in Union County, and most never will until they have a freight train rolling through their own backyard.
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