Letter: Middletown needs Patrick Short and a Democratic majority too

I have resided in Middletown my whole life, which amounts to 75 years, the better part of a century. I have seen Middletown transformed from a beautiful place, filled with farms and woods, changed forever by over-development. It’s been since the early 1980s that this has happened, since Republicans have ruled in town.

Today, the highways where businesses should be located are where home developments are. Somehow, in the minds of Republican leaders, this allegedly represents "class." I haven't seen a highway development yet that was what a conservative person would refer to as classy. And, it is all because of the way the Republican majority has run the town. I do not like it at all. There is a place for housing, and it isn't along a highway.

Then there is the issue of how these Republicans finance their budget that bothers me. For the past 18 years, Middletown, like many towns, has balanced their budgets through deferred taxation: a terrible financial practice really, since before the Florio administration in Trenton. The bottom line is that some of the money collected for school taxes is used by the Township Committee: the school board takes the blame and the committee takes the money.

How much money has been involved in this practice? Well, the town governments that use this means of finance for their administrations are not exactly forthcoming about exact figures but, in Middletown, it is somewhere over $55 million right now. It's a gimmick. A cheap trick. And it is the way my town has been doing business for almost 20 years. I don't like it.

Government has become too "slick" for my liking. Government at every level should be smaller, but it will not get that way by adding an army of overpriced lawyers, or appointing political bosses into office, such as is in the case of Middletown. GibbonsLaw, PC, in Newark, has the bonding work in Middletown, and has for decades – ever since the Republicans took over. They have something else too, and that is the Middletown Republican chairman, Peter Carton, as an employee.

It is not one party that is going to return Middletown to real prestige again. It is two parties that will, and Democratic Committeeman Patrick Short has already helped to stem the spending of over-priced projects on the committee. And, he has actually been concerned about flooding in the Bayshore. This is the kind of help that Middletown needs, and that is why I would like him returned to office and to see even more Democrats join him in my town.

Joe Caliendo
Chairman, Middletown Democrats