Town Hall

U.S. Rep. James C. Greenwood (R., Bucks) in May will host a series of town meetings with his constituents in the Eighth District, seeking their thoughts on ways to trim the federal deficit. The Eighth District encompasses all of Bucks County and part of Montgomery County. The series will begin with a public forum on May 3 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Bucks County Community College, Newtown Township. Greenwood will be joined by U.S. Rep. Alex McMillan (R., N.C.), a ranking member of the congressional Committee on the Budget.

As she walks down the wooden steps, Elma Crispin Davidson, 88, makes a grab for a shoelace suspended from a lightbulb. "This was my idea," she says of the lace, with a quick pull that illuminates the municipal building's basement in one of Gloucester County's smallest but fastest-growing towns. Davidson, the township's janitor for 44 years, sidesteps metal baker's racks cluttered with rubber-banded blueprints, and locates the Electrolux vacuum cleaner she has been using since the 1950s.

The Old Town Hall has stood at the intersection of Hainesport-Mount Laurel and Moorestown-Mount Laurel Roads for 130 years, one of the only mainstays of this developing community. But that very development is now threatening the stability of this historic building. Council members say that reconstruction on Hainesport-Mount Laurel and Moorestown-Mount Laurel Roads and the installation of a traffic light at that intersection about five years ago have caused massive water damage to the ground level of the building.

The Upper Hotel in Vincentown was the hostelry of choice a century ago in the Pinelands community, but when that was filled, there was always the Lower Hotel. And if visitors or anyone else in the village had too much to drink or indulged in other behavior that did not meet the approval of Vincentown's two constables, their accommodations for the night were free. These folks were sent to the lockup behind the Old Town Hall. The accommodations might have been free, but they were anything but plush.

If the township municipal building were a person, it could be facing a judge. Pick any state law governing handicapped access, fire protection, building construction or police department layout, and the 25-year-old structure would be in violation of some aspect of it. The architectural firm Duca & Huder, which is being paid $9,500 to survey the township's needs for municipal office space, made the point as clear as the clap of a judge's gavel...

Town meetings here convene at the municipal building the first and third Mondays of the month. But for many residents, the real business is conducted on Saturdays: trash day. "We're the town meeting every Saturday," says township trash assistant Lee Fritzsche, a charmer who has been helping residents unload their garbage at the town hall for six years. Charm is something Fritzsche needs when it comes to helping new residents learn the ropes of the town's unusual trash collection.

After he was elected mayor of this Pinelands community in January, Jack McGinnis decided that some major housekeeping was in order. So McGinnis and municipal workers climbed to the place where all the unwanted items that township officials can't bear to throw away wind up - the attic of Town Hall, a two-story building built in 1874 by the Order of Saint Mechanics, a men's fraternal organization, and turned over to the township in 1966. "I was just curious, although I wasn't expecting to find any treasure," said McGinnis.

I understand wanting to yell at House members and senators, especially the Class of '09. They seem hell-bent on drafting trillion-dollar, societal-changing, War and Peace-length legislation and passing it into law before anyone can read it. Look at the stimulus bill, cap and trade, health-care reform. And the anger isn't just about them voting with fingers crossed, hoping everything works out. They don't even pretend to care. Here's John Conyers (D., Mich.) at a National Press Club luncheon last month: "What good is reading the bill if it's a thousand pages and you don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?"

Township employee needed. No set work schedule. No regularly scheduled evaluations. Annual raises. Vacations granted with only one day's notice. Apply now, before the rules change. That ad hasn't run, but Mayor Jack Luby would have had a hard time finding fault with it if it did. As the local population and budget have boomed in the last decade, Monroe officials have struggled to keep Town Hall organized while making sure the garbage gets picked up and the grass gets mowed. That's why Luby says he is taking on the task of figuring out just who does what in Town Hall, and finding out how well they're doing it. The task is not nearly as easy as it sounds.

Township workers have waited at least a dozen years for relief from their cramped quarters at the East Main Street municipal complex. They will have to sit tight for at least another week. The opening of Evesham's new, $7.5 million town hall, initially set for Tuesday, is now scheduled for April 7. That means that the Evesham branch of the Burlington County Library System, which has been closed since March 14, will be shuttered a third week, while it moves from its Route 70 storefront into the new building on Tuckerton Road.