To make our beloved Hamilton cleaner more concentration must be applied to such mundane tasks as timely garbage collection and leaf removal.

In the first case, garbage collection, the contract with the collection firm has penalties in the form of fines that can be imposed on the collection firm for failure to collect in a timely manner. There is absolutely no acceptable excuse for garbage to remain on Hamilton streets for a week or more. Applying hefty fines for that failure will soon correct the collection company's faults. Otherwise, the collection contract has been voided by the company's failure to deliver on contracted services and the township can seek another collector.

No one can forget the leaves still cluttering Hamilton's streets this past January with snow falling on the leaf piles. Simply put, that is a management problem. Scheduling work and then ensuring that the work is accomplished is a manager's job. If a manager fails in such a basic responsibility, he or she must be replaced by one who knows how to get the job done. Unfortunately, there are too many people holding high-ranking, high-paying positions in Hamilton government currently who were appointed to repay political debts rather than for their professional expertise.

Every appointee in the Lacy Administration will meet several criteria. They will be from Hamilton before being appointed and will have participated in community life in some way prior to joining the government. We are not talking about having been born and raised here; relatively few are natives. What we are saying is that we will not seek appointees who are currently living in Ewing or Pleasantville or Princeton. We will look to Hamilton residents who are committed to our community through their civic, community service, religious, youth, fraternal, veterans, school or other activities in Hamilton. They will also possess certain levels of professional experience that is directly related to the positions they seek.

"Clean" also means committing our town to a greater emphasis on recycling and expanded utilization of our award-winning Ecological Center to make it more user-friendly and accessible to Hamiltonians when it is easiest for them to use it. It also means a renewed effort to preserve open space for future generations and increasing the municipal government's programs to attract clean, jobs-producing industrial/commercial/office/research firms to relocate to Hamilton, both for the tax ratables they offer and the improved local economy they can bring to our community.