I am on of the five petitioners to stop this water infrastructure sale and submit it to a public referendum. My purpose is to force the administration to pursue a viable alternative to selling off an income producing city asset that has been placed in the public trust by our forefathers, as a short-term solution to long-term budget problems. Unfortunately the administration has resorted to exaggerating predictions of a huge tax increase to rationalize it's pursuit of this sale. In these hard economic times when people are suffering and losing their jobs, the time for head-games has past. The administration is well aware that the NJ Tax Cap Laws don’t permit a property tax increase greater than 4% a year. Therefore it cannot, by law, increase taxes by the exaggerated amount of 67% as it claims. So the scare tactics the administration is using amounts to a cruel hoax perpetrated on already stressed and nervous people - that is wrong. It also places the administration's own credibility at risk with such over-heated rhetoric. Given the recent water rate hikes, the City stands to generate a surplus in funds over last year by several million dollars. This presents the City with options to use these surplus funds to leverage the amount of money it needs to cover its short-term budget shortfalls preventing further department cuts, worker lay-offs or massive tax hikes. The administration has been so single-minded in it's pursuit of this sale that it hasn’t fully explored these other options. Our petition is designed to force it to do so instead of raising taxes on the people of Trenton and subjecting our neighbors in the surrounding townships to the inevitable water rate hikes that would come at hands of a private company with a monopoly on the water system. More importantly, this impasse also gives us the opportunity to finally begin to address the structural issues with the city budget that will occur again next year regardless of the water infrastructure sale or not. However I steadfastly believe that when the public is informed with the full range of options that it really has, it will make the right choices. I believe in the people's common sense. So when the administration says, "it can't do this any other way", my response is - yes we can.
I am Petitioner #5,
Algernon "Algie" Ward
