Letter: Scharfenberger's Budget "Plan" Isn't Working

The Middletown Township Committee introduced a budget recently that results in an almost 13 present increase in property taxes. This is outrageous given the fact that there are many towns that have controlled their spending and see minimal increases, if none at all.

One could ask how this can happen in these times. A good response would be that there is a mayor that insists that he can handle the budget process. Mr. Scharfenberger began this fiscal year, in January, stating that he does the budget by osmosis. When there was a call to develop a plan to deal with the increasing costs and the reality of including costs from the previous year, Mr. Scharfenberger simply said that he already had a plan.

The mayor's plan is to rely on everyone else to bail him out. If that does not happen he will just blame others, as he consistently does when things do not go the way he expects. It is time to rid Middletown of this type of thinking for it is not putting the taxpayer first. People need to realize that the current system that has been in place for over 25 years is not working.

Dora Crisafulli
Middletown