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As far as our state government, the BPU, the BPU office of cable television and Verizon, the free services which we should have been installed already in the Pine Brook Area are not even planned. The new director of the DCA was one of the sponsors of the Verizon bill and is a Corzine appointment.
Ron the second one talks bout Doria's bill and its conditions - well most don't know (including most Verizon Employees's) that Verizon is not guaranteeing any complete build out anywhere within any timeframe!
The 11th hour it was removed from the bill.
The BPU is a joke and its commissioners serve at the whim of the Governor unless he wants them to serve on his toll road support group!
Frankly it makes me sick to even write this email about it.
I sat with the Verizon President and their Chief Engineer at a wedding in 2006 when they joked about not serving rural areas. Of course Doria is from Bayonne and I believe the other legislator was from Camden. Are you surprised?
I asked Frank Bastone to follow up with the BPU because Montville was/is the test community for true dialogue, cooperation, and results between the BPU, Verizon, and any state municipality. When I challenged the BPU and Verizon to make things happen like they tell as at the League Convention well they reluctantly agreed so now Montville copy's both parties on all correspondence and we are still no further along than we were in November.
As you can read below it was all BS.
To be clear I do believe the support staff at the BPU understood the implications of this bill and tried to put some teeth in it. They told me at the League Convention that the commissioners refused to put any language in the bill to protect the citizens and municipalities from what I will call "cream skimming" which is simply targeting high revenue easy build out areas and skipping the more costly areas within a municipality.
This has been going on since the last League Convention back in November
Of course I just got back from Saudi where the 6 year old privatized telephone company, Saudi Telecom Corporation - (STC) now has data and telecommunications competition. The stuff occurring in the USA is great material to share with them on how a major corporation such as STC can manipulate the Saudi regulatory agency.
Regards, Art
Posted by
Art Daughtry
on
March 29, 2008 5:00 PM
DOG PARKS AND SKATE PARKS
Well I’m going to use this blog topic, since Ron set it up for township committee members, to address some citizen and volunteer concerns.
Over the years the infamous million-dollar dog park was used by my campaign staff to exploit the miss deeds of former elected officials and their use of open space trust funds. I’ll get to the multi million dollar skate park in a moment however it appears the public has a tough time separating what the tax payers have paid for property and the volunteerism and efforts of concerned citizens. There is a dedicated, caring, dog park committee that raises funds to operate and improve the dog park. These folks care about their pets and the animals in general. When they run fundraisers they are greeted with the million-dollar dog park stigma. Fellow citizens that is truly poor form and totally unwarranted. These volunteers would have been happy with a dog park on a piece of land anywhere in Montville Township. They didn’t pick this piece of land and like the metro tract, behind Barry’s pharmacy; these properties were bought with open space funds to block development.
On to the future skate park. Again one of the advocates of a skate park had similar concerns regarding fund raising because the original skate park was touted to cost over a million dollars without the land. Of course taxpayers read this and would then criticize the volunteers that work with the kids and try to raise funds.
Now if you think the million-dollar dog park was a political jewel try this one. The skate park is the number one priority of the recreation commission and the sub committee is recommending the use of the metro tract behind Barry’s pharmacy as the location. I believe the township paid between 4 and 5 million for that property. So how about a 5 million dollar skate park as political fodder.
My point to all of this is please don’t blame or criticize the dog park or skate park volunteers as they fund raise. If you want to criticize have a great time offering the criticism of former elected officials that purchased these tracks for the amounts the taxpayers paid for them. It is not simply a matter of whether you wanted development along Change Bridge road or not it was also the wheeling and dealing around town that went on with taxpayers open space funds that prompted the million-dollar dog park and the possible future 5 million dollar skate park.
So please, volunteerism is the foundation of this township. Respect the folks that are trying to provide a service to the township.
