The members of the TC seemed in a pretty affable mood. They presented a commendation to Tobin Heath, a member of the Olympic Gold Medal-winning US Women’s National Soccer Team (who circulated the medal and offered to let them try it on), and then joked that she had better check to make sure it was still in the box after they handed it back to her. They also approved a very progressive measure to reduce and eventually eliminate all chemical pesticide, herbicide, and fertilizer use in the Township’s parks and recreation areas, presented by Pat Monaco, Director of Public Works.

This approach, called Integrated Pest Management, emphasizes using organic methods wherever possible and using chemical treatment only as a last resort. The program is expected to cost a little more for the first couple of years, but then lower expenses on an ongoing basis, and is ultimately the only healthy, sustainable approach. Indeed, the amount of lawn in New Jersey is a major problem: it costs a lot to maintain, puts large amounts of toxic materials into the environment, consumes an inordinate amount of fresh water, and increases runoff rather than helping to restore aquifers. The change in the town’s approach is largely the work of Joseph Speeney, a financial analyst and senior product manager with AT&T’s wireless unit in Morristown; he lives in the Hills, and is committed to fighting pesticide use in the community for health and environmental reasons.

Finally, at the opportunity for public comment, one after the other of our group stood up to raise the issue of the Highlands, and of the advantages of opting in at this time. Bill Allen presented the letter that he had prepared and we had endorsed, making the arguments presented at our meeting on December 12. In the end, however, it was really clear that the majority on the Committee were not listening. They heard us out, and then Mayor John Carpenter held forth rather pontifically on what he believed were the Committee’s views.

In brief, they remain unconvinced at to the merits of signing on to the Highlands Plan. They continue to believe that more development will be pushed into the “planning” areas at the edges of the Highlands, by displacing it from the “preservation” areas, and that Bernards will be forced to accept some of this development. According to Carpenter, they are caught between the mandates of two state agencies, the Highlands Council and COAH, and they don’t trust either of them to do what’s right for Bernards. However, they are committed to studying the options – and to suing COAH to prevent them from imposing more affordable housing requirements on the town.

There did not seem to be any interest in revisiting the decision they had made not to submit a letter of intent, but to provide a plan that contains what they believe to be a clever way of appearing to meet their COAH obligations without actually building any additional affordable housing, and letting the chips fall where they may.

Committee member John Malay, who had voted in the minority (along with Scott Spitzer) to submit the letter of intent, took a more positive view, and argued that the township would really do a serious and objective study with the $15,000 grant awarded to the town by the Highlands Council. We hope so. We’d also like to believe that the TC really wants to hear the views of residents, that it cares about both its environmental and its social obligations, and will seek to balance these in the best interests not just of the town but of the entire region, of which we are an inextricable part. We’ll see if this happens.

In the end, I’m also not sure we took the best position. We basically bought into the conservative argument that environmental protection means limiting future development, and that this is an excuse to evade our fair share of affordable housing. We remain divided on the affordable housing issue, when we ought to be looking at how we can help solve the affordability problem for people who want to live and work here. We also failed to convince them as to the merits of conforming to the Highlands Plan. What we accomplished was to show that we are paying attention, and can get our point of view heard and most likely reported in the media. But if it’s not a clearly progressive stance, is there really a point?

- Jonathan Cloud, December 24, 2008

Here’s some background on the issue, and an invitation to join us for this discussion:

On November 11 the Bernards Township Committee voted to not start a year long review of the merits of “opting in” to the Highlands Regional Master Plan [RMP]. If the committee changes its mind and votes to start the review, the township may at the end of 2009 opt in or not. There will be no obligation either way. But the committee must act before December 31 of this year to start the process.

Bernards has a history of go-it-alone thinking and this decision fits the pattern. Some of us expect that more good will come from participating in the Highlands RMP than not, and that a thorough review should be made. The committee’s decision on November 11 was made on the basis of some questionable assertions of by the township engineer, and without adequate consideration of long term outcomes. [See article in the Bernardsville News on November 20 ]

Julia Somers, Exec Dir of the NJ Highlands Coalition, a non-governmental organization that supports the RMP, will make a presentation at the regular meeting of the Bernards Democratic Municipal Committee on December 17. Please come and learn more about this important subject. Then let the Township Committee know what you want them to do.

Bill Allen, November 30, 2008

We would also like your help in publicizing this event. We believe this issue is of interest to all residents regardless of political persuasion, and we are opening the meeting to everyone. Please help us spread the word, and get a good cross-section of our citizens to attend.

Should the administration move first on health care, or on the environment, or on housing, or on the economy? Clearly the answer is that it has to do all of these. The question most often asked in the media, though, is how to pay for it.

In some ways this is a strange question, because it is the government that issues the means to pay for things in the first place. But we maintain the polite fiction that it is run like a household, and really ought to balance its budget (except when it shouldn’t). Underneath this is the fear that government will continue to issue money until it causes inflation, and we’ll all be pushing around wheelbarrows of worthless dollars.

Of course this is nonsense.

If the money that the government prints it uses to invest in infrastructure, in science, in health care, and in addressing the challenges of climate change, it strengthens rather than weakens society and the economy. Spending more money means creating new jobs, putting America back to work (and most importantly back to productive work that does not harm but rather restores the global ecosystem), unleashing creativity, and engaging passion. In this context, balancing the federal budget becomes again an interesting challenge, a long-term goal, based on growing the economy. This economic growth must however be based on the principles of sustainability; we need to make a shift from an extractive economy to a renewable, self-sustaining one. The issue is not whether or not to spend money; the issue is where to spend it, to get the most sustainable growth per dollar invested. And we need to think in terms of the long-term return on investment as well, to see this investment as being on behalf of all future generations as well as our own.

This also implies, to some degree, a new approach to economics. It is more than life-cycle costing, valuing environmental services, and incorporating such externalities as greenhouse gas emissions, though it includes all of these. It must be rethought based on the presupposition that the the goal of the economy is to accelerate fairly-distributed abundance, and not simply to increase the already highly concentrated wealth that exists today. And even the wealthy will gladly pay for a return to economic growth and prosperity.

The role of government, then, is help organize people productively and profitably to produce that which is in the society’s long-term best interest. By assisting and supporting the development of sustainable communities, businesses, and families, government fulfills a role that can be embraced by liberals and conservatives alike, that puts the economy at the service of its citizens and inspires them to create more wealth, by creating more value, more innovation, and more self-sufficiency.

(First posted at http://jonathancloud.com/?p=56, November 13, 2008.)

The number of Democrats in Bernards Township doubled this year, as voters turned out in droves to vote in the February presidential primary. Turnout for the June 3 primary was of course much lower, but just as significant: we wrote in two candidates for Bernards Township Committee, Bill Allen and Bill Kimzey, and elected nearly 40 district representatives – who in turn helped put in place a new county organization to help us win in this year’s critical elections. Peg Schaffer and Zenon Christodoulou are the new chair and vice-chair respectively, and they are bringing together party representatives across all of Somerset County’s 21 towns.

• For the latest updates on the local campaign, go to KimzeyAllen2008.org.
• To view a calendar of local Democratic events, go here.
• To see the latest news, and post your comments, go here
• To join the Bernards Township Young Voters site, go here.

Stay tuned for more updates and links to more sites and tools. If you’d like to get involved, please email us at jcloud@bernardsdemocrats.org to be added to our mailing list.