LETTER: Pick off the low-hanging fruit

[Resident Letter]

Jack A Frohbieter, Cranbury

I believe the Cranbury Zoning Board of Adjustment and Planning Board made bad decisions when they both reappointed Hatch Mott MacDonald Engineering’s Cathy Marcelli as their board engineer without competitive bidding. The process was not at all transparent.

In contrast, the Township Committee conducted an open bidding process for township engineer and the resulting contract provides support at rates 28 percent lower than those bid by Hatch Mott MacDonald.

Rates aside, there are other issues with the reappointment of Ms Marcelli. For whatever reason, Ms Marcelli long ago adopted an adversarial style of dealing with applicants to the various boards. The result has been long delays and increased costs for township businesses and residents’ projects. Increased costs for businesses and residents are the same as increased taxes except they more pointedly discourage people trying to start or improve a business or improve their residence. We are all familiar with the many problems our town businesses have experienced as they tried to open or expand. This is not exactly what we need in our town.

Inevitably, there will be situations where items will necessarily be examined by the zoning, planning and Township Committee’s engineer resulting in the taxpayers paying at least twice for the same work. In small ways and large ways, we need to reduce the cost of government in our town. The Township Committee should demand that the zoning and planning boards replace Ms. Marcelli with the lower-cost township engineer. This is low hanging fruit. Pick it.


Jack A Frohbieter

Cranbury �

http://www.centraljersey.com/articles/2010/03/12/cranbury_press/your_views/doc4b9975aa26198093316355.txt