Waste of Public Funds At Its Worst!
Perfectly good sidewalks ripped up & replaced

For many years, residents have demanded that a small dirt path used as a sidewalk Downtown be paved. When reported in the local newspaper that citizens wanted that unsafe condition - along with our crumbling roads - repaired, the Mayor of Barnegat at the time (Al Cirulli) attacked the citizen making the request. Now the people have won and have forced an unresponsive Twp. Committee to finally make necessary improvements. But wait! Pork barrel spending at its worst hits Downtown Barnegat. In front of certain properties sidewalks were unnecessarily replaced when all that was needed was putting in sidewalks where there were none. Will the taxpayers of Barnegat be taken advantage of once again?

Only two small areas in this sidewalk project actually needed to be done. The dirt path on West Bay & Memorial, and the dirt path directly East of the Post Office. In addition, the sidewalk in front of the Barbershop and adjacent Antique Complex were in poor condition and could definitely use an upgrade. That's it! But no, in addition, perfectly good existing sidewalks were needlessly replaced wasting valuable money for needed improvements.

First off, it's important to note THIS IS NOT A STREETSCAPE PROJECT. Politicians will try to sell it to the public this way, and the press will most likely repeat the Twp. press release on this without looking at the facts (read upcoming newspaper coverage and political propaganda to see if we're right). A streetscape for the Downtown would compliment the historic area and consist of brick sidewalks, pavers, or even stamped concrete. This project appears to have none of this. It is simply plain concrete sidewalks you would find in any part of town anywhere in the country. It is nothing like the historically-complimentary streetscape you can find in towns like Tuckerton. So there was no reason to rip up good, EXISTING sidewalks and replace them with sidewalks that look EXACTLY THE SAME!

Secondly you must look at who received these new uneccessary sidewalks while other parts of our town have no sidewalks at all.

The post office received new sidewalks - wasting money which could have been used for needed improvements elsewhere. This is the same post office that wants to move its retail portion to another part of town (a part of town that has NO SIDEWALKS for downtown pedestrians to get to). What type of insanity is this? The post office wants to turn their existing facility downtown into a warehouse only with NO ACCESS FOR PEDESTRIANS! But our Twp. officials used valuable dollars to replace good sidewalks with the exact same sidewalks, where NO ONE WILL BE WALKING!! Waste and stupidity.

The other two properties that received these unnecessary sidewalks belong to a controversial ex-Committeeman, and Hartman's new running-mate in this November's election. The potential conflict of interest here is disturbing. We will happily give space on this website to anyone who wants to explain why money should be used to pay for an uneccessary sidewalk in front of these properties. In total fairness to all parties concerned, we will hold comment for now and give them the opportunity to explain this to taypayers before we weigh in. This would certainly make for a good question in our upcoming Candidates' Forum.

Bottom line...this sidewalk project looks like it has some serious questions that demands to be answered to maintain public trust. Why did this project not include an historic-looking streetscape? Why were perfectly good sidewalks ripped up and replaced with sidewalks that look exactly the same? How can our Twp. justify doing this when other parts of town have absolutely no sidewalks at all? Finally, were there any serious conflicts of interest in how funds were spent? Even if this project was funded from grants that had absolutely no impact on any taxpayer in town, it is the taypayer of Barnegat who is the victim of this total mis-management. The taxpayers should have received sidewalks WHERE THERE WERE NONE in other sections of town, instead of where there looks like uneccessary work was done.

DowntownBarnegat.com will contact our Committee and ask them to explain to the taxpayer why funds were spent in this mannaer.