good news

Wonderful news. Perhaps we can have open and transparent government in this town.
Just hoping that Ed Borden decides that he should hang up his hat as well.
Time to move on to new people with new ideas and solutions for our town.

Thanks Tish for your amazing leadership and selfless support of this town! You have been visible everywhere as well as honest and thoughtful in your decisions. You are an inspiration for us all!

Lori & Tom Kadar

We've agreed on some things, disagreed on others over the years, but almost three decades of dedication to a town is an awesome thing. Thanks, Tish, for your years of service to Haddonfield.

What new ideas? Does complaining count as a new or old idea? I think we need to have more fesh vegetables in our diets

Mrs. Colombi has served as duly elected Commissioner and Mayor of Haddonfield for nearly three decades. I personally appreciate her service. It is our right in this country to agree and disagree with public officials and decisions and to exercise our right of speech. Mayor Colombi and earned and deserves the respect of the offices she has held and our acknowledgement for her years of service. God Bless, Mayor, and like they say - break a leg!

no more $70,000 sidewalks to nowhere. darn.

A tip of the hat to the Mayor for nearly thirty years of public service to her town. She's a class act and a woman who truly loves her town.

The mayor has watch over poor roads, higher debt. time to get rid of borough engineering firm who has seen haddonfield have the worst roads in SJ

Poor roads and higher debt? Fixing the roads requires more debt. Duh. Solutions. Not complaints.

A solution would be to cut the waste to have the money for needed repairs. Not knowing the budget and where all the tax monies go I can not state exactly what to cut. All government has waste, whether it be paying two people to do a job that requires one (which exists in this town) spending on pet projects and not necessary projects. This town needs to be more business friendly, this town needs elected officials who patronizes the local businesses and recognize that all the citizens have value beyond just being a tax base.

We can't afford to fix the roads because we're apparently paying some schlubs - not sure exactly who - R&V? - to outline the potholes in spraypaint - TWICE. Used to be one could send around a crew and they could identify - AND FIX! - a pothole all by themselves. I know - it sounds crazy! This is apparently too much to ask anymore. We need professional pothole spotters.

This nation peaked when we put a man on the moon. Its been all downhill since.

As the election comes up, there will be a lot of talk about change and fresh ideas, etc. What I would say to Susan and others is that we need to be very careful about getting sucked in by the idea that "change" is going to be this great thing for the borough. Here is the thing: Haddonfield is an incredible place that is the very best place to live in south Jersey. We have been doing something very right over all of these years to be in that lofty position. Criticize Tish and others all that you want, but they had something to do with what has made this place so special. Anyone who comes in with an attitude that we need saving or change is someone who is likely not going to understand our strengths and traditions and we should be fearful of such an aporoach.
We should all hope that the new leadership utilizes Tish's experience and input in the years to come and does so as regularly as she is willing. That is certainly what I would do and the town would be better for it.

Unlike Bill Tourtellote, I have not lived in another town in South Jersey. I have however lived in other towns in five other states over my lifetime. I admit I don't understand the need of many to puff themselves up by comparing themselves to other towns in South Jersey either. It's so provincial. The major comparison they should make is that we have the highest property taxes in South Jersey and I don't think we are getting what we should get for what we pay. We have excellent teachers but the school buildings are falling down. Our roads and infrastructure are fraying. We have beautiful shade trees but cannot replace those which are diseased. We have a Commissioner whose vision of this town is that only people from 30 to 50 with kids should live here and they should move out when the kids graduate from high school. We respect the elderly so much that the town doesn't supply toilet paper for the Mabel Kay House. The town has limited diversity, in ethnicity, economic status, religion, race and way of thinking. We need new leadership and I hope the new leadership hires a forensic accountant to open the books and follow the money. I also agree with those who feel term limits in elected officials are a good thing. Otherwise you end up with complacency and stultification.

Now that is a conversation worth having. What can be done about cutting pensions and health care costs? How many workers in the private sector still have pensions? Fewer and fewer. And how about health care costs. There are a range of health care plans from less expsnive to the Cadillac plans. Someone should take a good look at these costs. And what about the contracting for repair and maintenance and construction. Are we going with the lowest bid or has the process been corrupted? And what about the business environment? We have heard complaints from the merchants for years and there are empty stores. What do we need to do to bring tax paying business into our towns? Are we doing enough? We have a lot of upper niche stores selling nonessentials. In the current recession, people aren't buying these cutesy gift items. Maybe we need to have stores selling things people actually use on a daily basis. And finally, the biggy - must we continue to be a dry town? We have a problem with drunken students trashing people's homes despite being a dry town. Maybe in 2013, it is time to legalize alcohol in Haddonfield and allow our restaurants to obtain liquor licenses and maybe even have a wine bar in town and a liquor store, all of them contributing to the tax base. We need some creative solutions for our financial problems.

Joe T,
I took your challenge and looked at the budget. A lot of it is absolutely not transparent. For example, I could not figure out how much we pay the town's lawyer or how much we pay the Borough Engineer, Todd Day, through Remington and Vernick.
However three things did jump out at me, as follows:
1. Health insurance - we pay 2,299,817.00 and the employee contribution is 41,817.00. That is 1.82% only.
Certainly nationally people are being asked to pay more of their own health insurance with larger co-pays. I don't know what is standard in other towns or in other industries. It seems like the employee contribution to health insurance could be increased to at least 5%.
2. On page 11, under licenses, there is a blank spot for alcoholic beverages. We should fill this spot in with liquor licenses for restaurants and the wine bar I suggested.
3. Page 57 lists 2,016,500.00 for construction of the New Library. I thought they were not doing this.
Again, I am sure a forensic accountant would be do better job than I just did.

Sue, now we are talking.

Sheet3d. We need clarity on use of deferred school taxes and surplus balance used
Sheet 3e. How many employees are being covered and what is avg cost. At 100, it's over 20k per
Sheet 12. Legal fees 256k. Way too high.
Sheet 19 1M for pensions
Sheet 27 debt service 1.4M

The library expense is on the capital wish list page. Doesn't mean the project is committed to

BOE budget has a 5.4M line item for health benefits

Speaking of County Taxes, you should be as concerned about the regionalization of the police force as you are about the issue of bancroft. The County, for no good reason that benefits the county as a whole, is participating in the elimination of the Camden police force, and taking on the responsibility of an entirely new police force on the county level. If most of our taxes in Haddonfield are county, as people say, then shouldn't people in Haddonfield be up in arms that we will shortly be paying for county police to patrol the city? If you think the tax hike from acquiring bancroft is a significant, wait until you get the bill for policing camden. That bill should be spread around the State, not just the county, if the city can't pay it. And why invent a police force when the state police are already in there? Bancroft plus county police = major increase in property taxes.

Iagree with you completely that this is a concern. Perhaps I missed it but I do not recall any of our Commissioners making a peep about this or trying to anticipate what it would cost Haddonfield to police Camden. The only reason I could see for their possibly doing this was to decrease costs by getting rid of veteran police and their contracts and being able to pay less for the new police force. I actually think that Camden ought to legalize marijuana and tax it to pay for their police force rather than having residents of Haddonfield and other towns pay. I am waiting for our elected officials to comment on this. Their silence is, as usual, deafening.

In exchange for relieving Camden City of the cost of police, the Freeloaders are obtainng, in return, a patronage system and a police force. These legislators will now have uniformed officers to do their bidding. This a very powerful tool. They will be able to appoint a chief and hire supporters. As far as cost goes, they just offered to bring in the union (where they had previously said it would be non-union, i.e, cost savings). There will be no cost savings, it will just be spread out more, to all the taxpayers in the County. Where before the state was subsidizing Camden, the County is now picking up the tab. Good deal for Camden, good deal for the State, bad deal for property owners in every town but Camden City.

I agree. The only thing we can try to do is elect Commissioners who are not beholden to the Camden County machine. Tish is out now and hopefully Ed Borden will follow her to the door. What we need are committed citizens not in the bag for the Freeholders to run for their spots.

I challenge you to find a post of mine where I blamed Washington. You don't seem to read well,. That may have been someone else. I unfortunately have a lot of other things to do and don't bring any accounting expertese but maybe I should consider joining the Citizen Budget Advisory team. Maybe they and you can explain to me the importance of maintaining this as a dry town when we could get additional revenue and the kids are getting drunk in their own homes, probably with liquor supplied by their parents, not in restaurants anyway. This is 2013 and the Temperance movement died a long time ago.

We got offf track here. Appears someone is angry at Haddinfield youth...or just angry.

Thanks Tish for your many years of service. Wish you well.

Actually I am not angry at Haddonfield youth but I feel there is a lot of bad parenting in this town. In 1988 when we were living in Brookline Mass, our then 15 year old son went with a friend to a party for another boy's 16th birthday. This boy's father was a pathologist at Harvard, his mother a social worker with an inherited trust fund. The party was at 8 pm. My son was at the door at about 9 pm. How was the party, I asked? My 15 year old son said, "It's a bad scene. His parents aren't there and it's not just the high school kids; there are townies and everyone is drinking. The next morning we read in the paper about the police busting this party and how the kids had trashed the apartment. My child was raised with moral standards and knew what was right and wrong. I haven't seen the Haddonfield alcohol problem discussed as a failure of parenting by affluent individuals. We are not talking about inner city kids here but kids who have been coddled all their life.. Tish's response was to get the police involved with her 24-7 policy. In this, for example, I felt she was a big disappointment but understood she had to protect the affluent country club types who supported her campaign.

"Our solicitor, well he just won another low bid as he does all the time and our legal expenses are LOWER than the year before."

I must have missed something because patch said in November that our solicitor raised his bid by $5,000 from the year before and his bid was $15,000 higher than any competing bid but it was accepted nevertheless:

As far has her "owing spit" one has to wonder why, in the absence of "owing spit" she has repeatedly paid homage to the machine. Examples:

Voting to appoint Iavicoli, a democrat.
Voting to appoint Remington & Vernick, heavy democrat contributors

She was a democrat in republican clothing. She was not fiscally conservative. Socially, the previous comment addressed 24-7 which was typical nanny state stuff.

We need another fiscal conservative in office regardless of party to outvote Ed.

Congratulations to Tish for her many years of contributions to this wonderful town. Cheers, Joe

First the disclaimer: I have known both Tish Columbi and Ed Borden for many years. Ed and I are personal friends which gives me insight to his private thoughts on public matters. When viewing the actions of public figures with regard to making decisions they believe are in the best interest of taxpayers, I always take the cynical "what's in it for them ?" approach. In both cases the answer is - nothing. The amount of time Ed contributes on behalf of our town is staggering to me. There is only about 16% of the Borough budget that is discretionary so there is not a lot of wiggle room. The amount paid for employee benefits is majoritively mandated by state law. Dr. Hoch seems to think the commissioners control the downtown real estate market and juvenile behavior - they don't. They have set up a program to assist businesses relocate to Haddonfield with subsidies. They tried via the 24/7 program to bring consequences for teenage drinking but were thwarted by parents. Our commissioners were squarely against the formation of the county police force. Mario Iavicoli was the lowest responsive ("responsive" being the key to transparent contract awards) bidder - you need to read the entire story to glean that in contradiction to the headline. Last, but certainly not least, all of us get ot exercise our opinion every four years and for the last 28 years the majority have voted for Tish Columbi. I suggest we can't all be that stupid for that long. Tish - thanks for the years of service.

Jim Conway, NJ liquor laws allow for 1 consumption license per every 3k citizens. That would give us almost 4 not the 1 you referenced above. Package goods are limited to 1 per 7500.

You are missing the point. Our downtown area is in trouble. Probably by a combination of the recession and the growth of the Cherry Hill supermalls, many of our merchants are struggling. We need a creative approach to this. Most of our stores are aimed at people from outside of the town, rather than stores offering necessities. I personally think this was not a good idea but that is for another time. So we are trying to get people to come into Haddonfield and shop. Obviously there is a limit to how many wedding gowns you are likely to buy. So imagine some of our nice restaurants with a liquor license. Wouldn't you want to get a Hurricane at Melange or sake at the Sushi Bar or British ale or Guiness stout along with your mashers and bangers? And how about a wine bar? That's four licenses right there. If the restaurants were able to increase business, then that's more taxes. I'd also like to see one liquor store or maybe we could interest Dave Moore, who is after all a citizen of Haddonfield, to move his wonderful store here. All of these are creative solutions which might bring in a little more money and bring people into the downtown area. I don't worry about the student athlete drunks getting drunk on sake and sushi - they seem like the beer type. Plus they can be carded.

How much is a license worth $500k or more? Is that insignificant in these cash strapped times if they provide revenues, jobs and activity? They sure seem to have saved the Cherry Hill Mall

Susan,
Did you leave Brookline, Mass voluntarily or did they ask you to leave? Sheesh, just saying....

I find your comment offensive. You obviously are not used to reconsidering any of your tightly held opinions. I'm actually from Baltimore and we moved to be closer to my aging mother and where we could both get jobs.

Comment to James Conway. What is funny about your comment about athletes is that I played high school and college tennis (before Title IX). My husband ran track. My older son played soccer and in high school was on the sailing team (not crew, sailing). My younger son played baseball and soccer all through elementary school and junior high but frankly was turned off by the attitudes here at the high school when we moved here. Both of them got into good colleges because of their grades, scores and extracurricular interests; they didn't need the athletics for that. I have found myself totally disgusted by the alcohol fueled behavior in this town. I recognize that perhaps they could not have mandated that the drunk kids and their parents go for alcohol counselling but I am very very surprised that did not come up in any of the discussions the town had, that we were looking at kids at high risk for a chronic illness, alcoholism.

Having successful restaurants is town brings shoppers and support all the shops

Higher taxes has caught up to the town Real Estate price have fallen .Teachers and public employees need to pay more into health benefits and pensions.This is not a hard ship but a fair shared costs .

Tish,
Thank you for all of your years of service to our community. I'm proud that you represented Haddonfield and best of luck and good health in the coming years.