Haddonfield Divided - Changing Haddonfield One Month at a Time

Clearly, we are neither One Haddonfield nor are we Haddonfield United when it comes to how we will vote on Tuesday.  A divide exists between neighbors and runs through income and age levels in the Boro.

Having supported the purchase of Bancroft by the Boro since 2005 I don't believe we were well served by the dithering over the planning phase that resurrected the issue in a contentious battle over the siting of a CCRC (Continuing Care Retirement Community).  The good that came from that was a community consensus that high-density development was not appropriate on that site.  The bad outcome was that five years of atrophy from neglect could have been used to build a shared vision for Bancroft instead of lurching toward one proffered by the Board of Education once the Boro government stepped aside.

Here we are then, days from a significant decision that will set the direction for Haddonfield for the next few decades.  If you vote No, let me ask you, what will be different on Wednesday the 23rd?  Will spending on school repairs increase?  Will taxes be lowered?  Will the cost of government services decrease?  Will Affordable Housing be forestalled or built somewhere else?

More to the point, will your voice continue to push and cajole our Commissioners, Board of Education, County Commissioners, and Trenton to spend less of our tax dollars, or at least invest them more wisely?  Or will you retreat into the belief that once elected we can expect less than superlative results from anyone in office who doesn't have Haddonfield's interests in mind, let alone those elected locally?

I've been to my share of Boro Commission meetings where the chance to speak out against using expensive municipal labor for waste hauling, saving money by consolidating the courts, disbanding the wasteful use of a police motorcycle, and other topics drew an underwhelming crowd of residents and less than enthusiastic reception from the Commissioners.  After offering up dozens of suggestions for employing our tax dollars more effectively, it only took a severe recession and Governor Christie's legislation for our Commissioners and School Board to make the tough decisions that reduced our annual increase from 8% to 2%.

The reality is that the opportunity to shape the future of Haddonfield occurs once every month at Boro Hall and at the Board of Education.  As much as we desire the preservation of all the good things we love about Haddonfield the inevitability of change is a wind that is blowing against us.  Change can be global in nature, as in the competition from a potential billion-strong, college-educated, middle-class in Asia, to local, including the redevelopment pressures our downtown will experience in the next few years.

We need a vision to guide us, and visionary leaders to insure that change benefits us and future generations.  This is not our recent heritage – our leaders have been challenged by the "vision thing" and in embracing a vision have fumbled over communicating it in the past.  We spend $1,000,000 each year to repair our roads and we will forever.  No-one complains about the spending, only the roads yet to be repaired.  No-one puts forward that concrete roads would cost more than asphalt but save us substantially more in the long run.

We spend $250,000 each year to promote retail businesses downtown – trying to pick retail winners in an economy that favors internet shopping, convenient parking, and wide product selection.  No-one measures our success or failure objectively, leaving the only metric to seemingly be how quaint our downtown shopping district seems to be, or how few nail salons have popped up.

Walking through our middle school the other day I noticed the art room and shop class were still in the same place as they were in 1973 (could it really be 40 years ago?).  Aside from the computers in shop class, not much had changed.  In a way, that is good.  On the other hand, continuing to teach European languages while neglecting Russian and Mandarin, languages of some of the fastest growing economies, are emblematic of how tradition-bound our schools appear to be.

Watching an old Star Trek episode the other evening (thanks to the miracle of the Internet and Netflix I was watching "Let that be your last battlefield") I revisited the episode where a renegade alien colored black on the right and white on the left was being pursued through space and time by another alien representing authority colored black on the left and white on the right.  They commandeered the Enterprise to take them back to their home planet, having left 50,000 years ago, for final settlement of their dispute.  Upon their return they found only the vestiges of a civilization long-destroyed by conflict and the inability to find common purpose.

On Tuesday we will be divided and cast our ballots only to find who is in the majority.  That is all.  On Wednesday, let us commit to being One and United to meet the challenges and opportunities that we all will surely encounter regardless of the outcome.