Fairness, justice and impartiality have literally disappeared from Hamilton government operations over the past four years as noted by just a few examples.
Never before in the history of our community were individual homes or targeted neighborhoods selectively revalued to clandestinely add tax money to the township coffers. If revaluation was to take place, it was done uniformly throughout the community, not pitting one neighborhood against another. Improper financial management has caused the present government to seek additional tax money in some incredibly distasteful ways that are completely unfair to our residents.

Just because state statutes permit "accelerated tax sales" as we saw happen this past spring, where many of our elder residents were threatened with tax sales of their homes because tax payments were days late, doesn't mean that the municipal government should take that extremely distasteful action. It was never done in the past. Tax collections in Hamilton have always hovered around 98 percent in any given year with the remainder collected during the next fiscal year. That horrible "tax sale" notice not only created tremendous consternation, it also caused a shortage in the 2003-2004 budget that now must be made up through the next tax rate.

Instead of conducting a community-wide traffic study as promised in 1999, the current administration has dealt with only those individual neighborhoods that have raised hue and cry for necessary traffic controls with no thought to the impact such actions might have on abutting neighborhoods. Willy-nilly, haphazard, knee-jerk reactions are not good community planning nor are they long-term solutions to a continuing problem.
Hamilton cannot honestly claim that it wants businesses to relocate here when the government surreptitiously changes how sewer rental fees are charged to industrial and commercial entities as was done this year. While not changing the rate at which our businesses are charged for sewer service, the present government changed the unit of measure from cubic feet to gallons. But, there are 7.5 gallons in a cubic foot, so our business community was hit with a whopping 67 percent sewer increase on average. That is no way to establish a "business friendly" atmosphere.

In the Lacy Administration there will be no more "selective" revaluations of residential property, no more "accelerated tax sales", no more band-aid approaches to things like traffic controls and no more clever bleeding of the business community. We will restore fairness, justice and impartiality to every function of Hamilton Township government. The people of Hamilton deserve no less. In fact, they deserve much more from their elected officials.

You can rest assured that your votes will be both appreciated and valued by the Hamilton Team. Together we can restore and expand on our quality of life.