By MiddletownMike

He has been quoted as saying that “Everybody sort of commiserates, (and thinks) this could be a great thing...It’s something that’s got to come, because we can’t just keep burdening taxpayers.”

Wow, Scharfenberger has become a liberal Progressive overnight? I would be impressed if this was his idea, but as I mentioned it wasn’t an original idea on his part, similar proposals have been made by others in the past, most recently by the progressive think tank, New Jersey Policy Perspective, which addressed this very issue in its Monday Minute newsletter back on March 8, 2010, while the Governor was in the middle of his battle with teachers and their union over a wage and benefit freeze prior to school board elections.

If Scharfenberger had proposed this idea earlier in the year, before he joined the governor in his attacks against the teachers of Middletown’s school system and their union, blaming them for driving the local tax rate up through the stratosphere, I very well may have given him kudos for think outside the box (even though he gave no details or guidance on how the State should allocate or disperse funds to local municipalities once it was gathered by the State).

Unfortunately that is not the case.

This latest headline grabbing scheme by the mayor however, seems to be more driven by his intention to deflect criticism away from his personal record of raising local taxes. Since Gerry Scharfenberger joined the Middletown Township Committee, the local municipal tax rate will have risen by 41.9% over the 5 year period in which he has served on the Township Committee (3 of those years as Mayor, 2 as Deputy Mayor) if the currently proposed Township budget, which includes a 13.87% tax increase, is adopted by the first Township Committee meeting of September, which seems unlikely at this point due to the cancellation of the town’s hearing in front of the Local Finance Board on August 11th, which was to decide if Middletown could exceed the 4% state mandated cap on spending.

The mayor must figure that if he can raise the evil specter of the Middletown Board of Education and the perceived wasteful spending of tax dollars that are being paid to those that educated the Township’s children by pointing out once again, that ~60% of local tax bills go to support the education system, people will forget his tax and spend record, if only somehow, those in Trenton could take care of educating Middletown's kids so that residents can forget about the municipal portion of their tax bills.

Based on past performance and record of the legislature, it sounds unrealistic to think that those in charge of Trenton can be trusted with the revenue raised by a sales tax increase. After all, look at what happen to the money that was raise the last time the sales tax was raised a couple of years ago, the tax was raised from 6% to 7% and half of that increase was to fund property tax relief through homestead rebates, which have now been eliminated by Governor Christie.