KARROW: SO THESE ARE THE PEOPLE LECTURING SMALL RURAL TOWNS ON EFFICIENCY?

$1.8 MILLION UNION CITY SCHOOL SITE BOONDOGGLE SHOWS CORZINE ADMINISTRATION SHOULD BE LAST TO LECTURE ON EFFICIENCY 

Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow, a member of the Assembly Budget Committee, today’s decision by the state to pay $1.8 million for a school construction site on which the state can no longer afford to build a school, shows that state officials are the last people who should be lecturing small towns on efficiency.

“Corzine administration officials have zero credibility to say to small towns that they are cutting their municipal aid because those towns need to become more efficient,” said Karrow, R-Hunterdon and Warren. “The very example of inefficiency is the manner in which this state government has been operating for the better part of this decade.”

The Star-Ledger today reports that New Jersey has agreed to pay more than $1.8 million to a Union City family whose newly-built condominium building was purchased and knocked down before it was ever occupied to make way for an elementary school construction project the state can no longer afford.

Five years ago the School Construction Corporation (SCC) set out to build a new school on a site that had been a vacant parking lot for more than 20 years, however by the time the state offered to purchase the land, a three-story brick building had been built on the site. In 2006, the state paid $48,000 to demolish the three-story building, which had never been occupied. The site remains vacant, and the Columbus Elementary School project has been suspended for lack of funds.

State officials argued they should pay only $326,000, saying the building was constructed just to boost the value of the settlement with the SCC. The court had rejected that argument.

“Taxpayers in rural and suburban communities have every right to be outraged when state officials say they can’t afford to provide aid to small towns, but they hand out $1.8 million for land they can’t even use,” Karrow said. “Before the Corzine administration seeks to force small communities to become more efficient, it should learn how to manage its own affairs.”

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