Readington residents received a distasteful Christmas gift recently thanks to the actions of township officials dating back nearly 15 years ago.
To the editor:
The holiday season is upon us and it is supposed to bring joy, unless you happen to be a Readington taxpayer.
Readington residents received a distasteful Christmas gift recently thanks to the actions of township officials dating back nearly 15 years ago. The proverbial lump of coal in our stocking comes in the form of a judicial recommendation that would require the taxpayers to reimburse the owners of Solberg Airport for almost $3 million in legal bills they incurred while fending off the township's attempt to seize their land and business.
Now the courts have spoken and are holding the township accountable, which means of course, that the taxpayers are once again left holding the bag.
Please note, this settlement says nothing of the millions in legal bills already clocked by township officials as they engaged multiple law firms over many years. In fact, the township's expenses probably far exceed what the Solbergs have spent and is also why Readington is legendary for the amount it wastes on litigation.
If you wonder how they come up with all that money for lawyers, you need only to watch our budget "transfers" near the end of the year. The Township Committee quietly takes money out of one account, like road repair for example as it did in 2014, and then shoves it into legal fees. Few residents even notice these transfers during the busy holiday season, but they have been going on for years.
Since there is no money appropriated for the huge bill we now face, one has to wonder where Readington will come up with the cash to cover all the damages caused by the behavior of the 2006 township committee and its supporters who helped hatch the ill-fated land grab in the first place.
By the way, some of those same individuals still occupy strategic positions in Readington's municipal government and that is what is astonishing. If I were a township official who had any connection to wasting millions of taxpayer dollars, I would be too embarrassed to come to work, but with political pals still minding the store, it's business as usual.
Although the courts have said that Readington's actions in the Solberg condemnation case amounted to a "manifest abuse" of the eminent domain law, it is ultimately the taxpayers who have been abused. Taxpayers should stay tuned for more creative financing and more debt, as township scrambles to pay the damages in this case. Perhaps we should have been more careful about who put in charge of our town.
Don Baldwin
Readington Township