Freeholder mayhem?
December 18, 2012 2 Comments
Well maybe. I hear that the board’s recent caucus produced a split vote in regard to next year’s freeholder director.
Tom Mastrangelo got the nod in a 4-3 vote. He was supported by Hank Lyon, and incoming freehoders John Krickus and David Scapicchio.
Those in the negative were Anne Grossi, John Cesaro and Doug Cabana.
The political intrigue was that Grossi was expected to get the director;’s job, but that the two incoming freeholders swung to Mastrangelo.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the board reorganizes in early January.
Will the formal vote naming Mastrangelo be split, or will eveyone “make nice” and produce a unanimous vote?
What DOES a Freeholder do besides sit around waiting for an Assembly seat to open up? They take 15% of my Property Taxes and return . . . . ???
If we aren’t going to regionalize, we should close down the county offices, move any policing functions to the state, and everything else to the municipalities.
Well, the freeholders do oversee what is roughly a $300 million budget. They do things they are constitutionally required to do, like run the jail, run the prosecutor’s office and financially support the offices of sheriff and clerk.They also maintain hundreds of miles of roads and many bridges. Additionally, the county does run a park system that is the largest in the state in addition to CCM, the Vo-Tech school and the nursing home. The county does not legally need to have stuff like that, but those services help make Morris a nice place to live. I have long felt that the county actually should do more in regard to basic government services. If the county, for instance, maintained EVERY road and bridge, as opposed to merely those designated as “county roads,” there would theoretically be no need for municipal road departments. Much money would be saved.