Out of the Ordinary, Middletown Budget Hearing Scheduled For May 6th Workshop Meeting

This coming Monday night, May 6th, the Middletown Township Committee will be holding a hearing on its proposed 2013 FY budget (after it had been introduced back in March). This year's budget hearing is a little out of the ordinary, in the sense that the Committee will be holding this hearing on a night scheduled for a workshop meeting as opposed to during a normal monthly business meeting. Why is that?

Workshop meetings are generally held in the small conference room next to the Clerks office. This room is cramped, has limited seating and very often fewer than a dozen people attend this meeting.  It should really be held during the monthly business meeting which is on the 3rd Monday of each month. It's as if the Township Committee is trying to hide something and doesn't want the public to know about it. As of today, there is still no notice of the hearing on the Township's website and nobody bothered to mention it at the last two Township Committee meetings on April 1st & 15th, which is strange seeing how public notices were sent out prior to the April 15th meeting (but you'd have to do a bit of research at this point to find them).

While the attitude may be who cares? And this isn't any big deal, it really is.

People do have a right to know about this meeting and trying to keep it quiet to discourage public participation is wrong. Very few people today look at the public notice section of the newspaper anymore, making a public announcement at a meeting in this instance, is more than warranted and is just common courtesy. After all, public announcements by the Township Committee are made all the time when a public hearing needs to be held on a new township ordinance or resolution. You would think that something that affects residents tax dollars such as a hearing on a proposed budget would be given the same treatment.

Evidently not.

(TRT Public Notice Middletown FY 2013 Budget Hearing)