The Colts Neck Township Committee wants residents to attend a meeting on July 12 to discuss their decision to place a proposed increase in our open space tax on the ballot this November. We voted down a similar increase last year which would have doubled the amount an individual homeowner would pay in open space taxes, but the Committee is convinced that we did not understand what we were voting on. We did understand, and, quite frankly resent the fact that they assume if we attend another meeting we will be educated enough to vote yes.
Many Colts Neck residents have given up attending such meetings because we can spend hours and hours researching our position on an issue, give our speeches and our facts and figures and opinions, and they just go ahead with what they were planning anyway. Here are several examples:
Large numbers of community members attended meetings to speak out against lowering the acreage restrictions for hunting in our community because we thought five acres was too little to allow the discharge of lethal weapons. They responded by not only lowering the acres to five, but, just recently, with very little fanfare, lowering it to three!
Find out what's happening in Marlboro-Coltsneckfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Large numbers of community members attended meetings both in Colts Neck and Holmdel delineating the health hazards of artificial turf. The Committee responded by including a hazardous type of artificial turf in a planned ball field in one of our parks.
Residents concerned about our ever- escalating taxes, proposed to the Township Committee that they petition the Superintendent of Schools to review the currently applicable Freehold Regional High School formula because Colts Neck pays a disproportionately high per pupil cost. Thus far, repeated requests have been ignored.
Find out what's happening in Marlboro-Coltsneckfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
While their service is appreciated, I feel that they are disingenuous in their desire to truly listen to their constituents. They seem to feel it is our job to attend meetings to convince them to change their minds, which are already made up! This is no more evident than when they put a question to referendum, do not get the result they want, and then assume that we really didn't understand! How insulting!
