Manalapan incumbents’ records raise a lot of questions this year

I was surprised to read in your recent News Transcript that Manalapan Mayor Rebecca Aaronson is running again for Township Committee along with (Committeeman) William Scherer. I am trying to figure out exactly what she thinks she has done to warrant a second term.

After running on a promise to dramatically reduce our taxes, she just raised them more than any time in recent history, while simultaneously reducing our services. Last fall, she and Mr. Scherer took $120,000 out of our public safety funding to pay their record $400,000 legal bill.

There was the matter involving a $100,000-plus deposit that got lost.

In addition, they failed to take any steps to avoid the redistricting of our children to attend high school outside of Manalapan. Instead of working toward farmland preservation, they passed a downzoning ordinance designed to frighten our remaining farmers into selling to developers.

They eliminated our Earth Day celebration and bought arsenic-laden land for our children to play soccer on, while refusing state funding avoiding regulations that mandated the removal of this arsenic.

It isn’t easy to slip all this past the public. To silence dissent, they eliminated our award-winning recreation commission, closed off half of their "public" meetings to public input and shortened the remaining meetings dramatically, so that virtually all of their "public" business is now being done behind closed doors.

This performance isn’t surprising, given that their primary focus has been on higher office.

A year after being elected to serve Manalapan, and with no prior experience, they abandoned us so the mayor could run for (county) freeholder, while Mr. Scherer ran for state office.

According to public records, they received campaign contributions from developers, which may explain why they would have wanted to scare our farmers into selling out at bargain prices.

Fortunately for the county and state, they were soundly defeated. Given their record when they were actually in Manalapan, we were better off when they were occupied elsewhere.

Three years ago, only a quarter of Manalapan’s residents turned out to vote, and we’ve been paying for the results ever since. Hopefully, this year more residents will turn out at the polls and get us back to rational government.

Andrew Lucas

Manalapan