It is extremely disheartening to see the State of New Jersey once again try to balance its budget at the expense of municipal budgets. It is getting extremely tiresome to hear that municipal government is wasting money and should tighten their belts when we can read about state waste every day in the newspapers. A State budget reduction is not property tax relief when the very appropriations that are cut are those used to offset property taxes. The citizens of 330 smaller municipalities have been robbed. They pay their income tax, sales tax, gasoline tax, etc. to the state but the state is now saying they have no right to be citizens of small towns in the first place. The state is trying to force consolidation by bankrupting small municipalities. Never mind that there is no proof that consolidation saves money. The smaller municipalities already have numerous cost saving shared service agreements in effect and have for many years. We also run extremely efficiently already out of necessity. There have been no reports that show bigger government runs better. With the proper state aid funding throughout the years, municipalities would not have a property tax issue. We need to call on our state representatives to treat ALL of their citizens equally. Sincerely,
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