Dear Editor:
A few weeks ago I attended a Town Hall meeting to listen to the first reading of the 2019 Budget Proposal, it was an outrage! The new Mayor has made a decision that rather than lay off anyone, even adding more people to his personal staff then the two previous mayors had, he would crush the township residents with an almost 5% tax increase. To my amazement there was only ONE person who stood up to challenge the mayor and his henchman, the Business Administrator, this person did make many points, but when he sat down not one person stood to address this miscarriage being perpetrated on our town. The entire town council – including the new democrat members sat like the five stone monkeys, Hear no Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil, and stare at the spectators and making not one comment Evil…
When I left that meeting I was so discouraged it is obvious that our mayor puts Union Loyalties before the good and welfare of the community, and it is also obvious that our town attorney is collecting a huge salary and he too does apparently nothing as is obvious by his lack of courage on the 1515 Pilot project.
So why I am writing, well there is a saying I have read about people who live in a democratic Republic where the voters choose who will govern them, it is written in our constitution “Of the People, By the People and For the People shall not perish from this earth” Unfortunately when the founding fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence I guess people who lived in the original 13 colonies had more Fire in their Bellies then our current residents have..Where is the participation by the civilian population of Parsippany? Where are the crowds who SHOULD be turning out to protest the insanity of this mayor and his attempts to tax the town to death, and destroy our community with this fair housing crapola that neither he or his town attorney seem to have the guts to challenge…
Where are the residents who should be attending the meetings of the local political clubs? The democratic club, the republican club and any other group where they express their feelings to the current and future office holders…I attended a political club meeting last week, and if there were fewer people there it would have been a negative number…When citizens do not come to these meetings the office holders or candidates get the ideas that what they are thinking is what the citizenry wants, but in fact the idea that came out of this meeting was 100% off base, but there were no comments from the floor and no recommendations were made and none were considered.
As has been said by Jefferson and Tocqueville, people get the government they deserve. What worries me though is the following quotation penned by Shakespeare in Julius Caesar: “Cassius suggests that the people get the government they deserve…”. This can be a good thing, if (and it’s a big “if”) the people do their homework and vote based on facts, not on rumor or innuendo. Unfortunately our local news media is so bent in one direction it is impossible to get accurate and true information, unless you get out and actually talk to people who hold public office, or those who will seek those public offices…We ARE the citizens, We ARE the ones who control who governs US…
My purpose for writing is to vent at the disgrace we have now as our mayor and business administrator, and their egregious actions and comments regarding our current tax obligations and destruction of our community..If you do not get involved, I suggest you start to consider selling your home and moving to a place where the governing people care more for you then others whose best interest comes before yours…
Vito Sacco
Parsippany, New Jersey
