Mayor and deputy mayor are tackling Manalapan's problems
"Burdened by years of political mismanagement, our township is confronting a budget and fiscal management mess."

As a longtime resident of Manalapan and an active volunteer, it has been instructive to view the political machinations of previous "administrations" that often netted out to "government by gotcha." Semihysterical attacks on particular individuals or groups because they didn't hew to party [read "personal"] agenda were typical.

The consequence was polarization, special interest pandering and "pretend accountability." It is refreshing to finally have a mayor and deputy mayor who work as a team to make our form of "committee government" actually work. Mayor Andrew Lucas and Deputy Mayor Michelle Roth have exemplified the application of competence and professionalism to the township's best interests.

Burdened by years of political mismanagement, our township is confronting a budget and fiscal management mess. To meet that problem, given the short budgetary timeline, they have had the political courage to "break some eggs" and basically offend most everyone.

The sudden resignation of the symphony's director, Maestro Chiu-Tze Lin, was caused by a shortfall in budgetary support. Her loss has been a tremendous blow to the cultural program supported by the Manalapan Arts Council. It is now unlikely that residents of our community, in particular our seniors, will have the privilege of a July Fourth or Labor Day concert.

The tax increase was another example of hard decision-making affecting our community. Both decisions, however, were driven by the "pretend accountability" of past administrations, which have caused the current fiscal pain.

A solution proposed by our mayor and deputy mayor has been the reorganization of our government. This is a good idea, but limiting it to specific departments is self-defeating. If you want to save money and reduce the "fiscal footprint" of our government, it must reorganize information flow, throughout the entire government, to enhance worker productivity and decision making.

The key would be an audit-focused team identifying and breaking out the composition of decision flows from all departments. The premise should be "business simplification," not movement or elimination of "boxes." Positional boxes merely identify persons, they don't reflect decision flow protocols, breakout of operational details or tools needed to support the "go forward" process. Eliminating boxes without changing the entire information flow process would be like changing "deck chairs on the Titanic."

I am hopeful that a team that has finally made our government work will also recognize the obvious need for simplifying management of information throughout that entire government.

Bruce K. Brickman

Manalapan