Six weeks ago I submitted a letter (actually two letters back-to-back) to the West Windsor mayor encouraging his attendance at Council meetings.
I have received no response to my written queries to the mayor. As such, I believe this sustained silence is newsworthy.
If numbers are the scorecard of business (including our own), I remain confounded with the sustained lack of numbers in the mayor’s 2015 State of West Windsor Township presentation. There is so much relevant information missing. The township administration is over-staffed with often two professionals hired to do the work of one, to wit: township engineering and finance, outsourced landscape architect and full-time recreation director. Whenever real information is needed, the township contracts with consultants and no-bid professional service contracts. However, if external consultants are doing the work, why do we pay twice for township staffers?
For example, if the township/mayor’s address is claiming: “A complete reconstruction of the Big Bear Brook Bridge along Princeton-Hightstown Road and the Assunpink Creek Bridge along Old Trenton Road,” why would something as simple as doing the site work for the Cranbury Road and Washington Road sidewalks have to be put out to bid? Surely that $200,000 heavy construction payloader could do the sidewalks along Washington Road in a weekend. Everyone laughs when I offer to borrow this machine for a weekend to complete what the mayor is not present to hear. Why cannot Department of Public Works personnel accomplish more than simply capturing leaves and twigs and enjoy a lifetime subscription to the East Windsor Deli?
As long as I remain a township taxpayer, I believe we should hold our compensated officials accountable. For the directly elected, fully accountable mayor not to be present when township business is being conducted is an abomination. No other township would permit this. This remains taxation without representation.
Since when does a township and mayor consistently claim responsibility for the work of others? For Mayor Hsueh, this has been his hallmark! Hsueh has nothing to do with the Marketfair upgrades nor the NRG headquarters. But he WAS responsible for the $500,000 destruction of the Grover Farmstead without explanation and the absence of the Millstone River Stormwater Management Study presented in June, 2014, with the final presentation due in September, 2014. (This final report is still outstanding.)
The West Windsor Historical Society, sans 501(c)3 non-profit designation, has been the beneficiary of $1.8 million in taxpayer funds yet there is no financial accounting to taxpayers. We see no return on the taxpayers’ investment in a $166,000 outhouse or the Schenck catering operations. The mayor is responsible for runaway legal expenses with litigious counsel. He is ultimately responsible for the deplorable condition of our township’s trees (Tree City, USA?) and roadways due to his failed supervision. Township employees are still using township vehicles as commuter vehicles yet he is building bicycle paths to nowhere. For most, a township employee’s job begins and ends within the township.
As my friend Benjamin Franklin states, “What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.” For the mayor’s “I think, I feel, I believe” State of West Windsor Township Address, there is much more information being buried.
When the president makes his State of the Union speech, it is followed by another perspective to provide balance to the plethora of superlatives. As such, it would be equally important to know what the mayor, as the township representative, is doing to provide input to our onerous county and unbridled school taxes, especially since he does not have the time to attend twice-monthly Council meetings.
Pete Weale
Penns Neck
