The "Free" Storm Water newsletter
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Today we received the Stormwater Newsletter that has been discussed at the last several Township Committee Meetings. This is a six page snail-mailed newsletter that is in full color on heavy stock that went out to every household. You can see the online version here.
We are conflicted by it. On the one hand, storm water management has obviously become an important topic in the Township. On the other hand, a six page snail-mailed newsletter seems to be ill-advised for a number of reasons. In the end, the newsletter is well formatted and beautiful in its design. But seems to serve no other purpose than to look pretty and spend our money.
But first, let's get this out of the way.
The back of the newsletter has an Important Note: "IMPORTANT NOTE: This newsletter was written and designed by Township volunteers at no cost to West Amwell. All costs to print and mail were funded completely by West Amwell's Open Space Fund. This newsletter is a joint project by the Open Space Committee and the Environmental Commission"
This "volunteers" trope is one that started at the School Board, and has now infected the Township. If you recall, Board of Ed members started referring to themselves as "volunteers" several years ago, ignoring the enormous power they have over us in the form of taxes.
In this case, according to comments during Township Committee meetings, the newsletter was written largely by the new Chair of the Environmental Commission Joel Coyne along with Township Committee Woman Joan Vanderveen.
Joel of course is not paid in the EC Chair role, and Joan receives only a small stipend of a few thousand dollars per year as a Township Committee person, but referring to them as volunteers is simply disingenuous. They are part of Township government leadership.
The larger problem of course is the statement that the 6-page, heavy stock, and full color newsletter was done "at no cost to West Amwell". In fact, taxpayers explicitly paid for it. It came from the Open Space fund, which is funded from our tax dollars. There is a separate issue in that we have a big store of money trapped in the Open Space fund that the Township is struggling to use, but trapped money is not "no cost".
So to be clear, this is not a newsletter from some random volunteer organization that cost tax payers nothing. It is a communication from West Amwell Township government, on West Amwell letter head, funded by West Amwell Open Space.
With that aside, the six pages just seems like a lot of material that the vast majority of residents will toss immediately in the trash. Which is in and of itself ironic coming from the Environmental Commission. It is not clear what the real point of this exercise was.
And some of it is just nuts. We are told not to wash our cars in our driveway, but use a commercial car wash. WTF? We are told to "dechlorinate pool water before discharging it", without any indication of how. We are told to "Always scoop the poop!" from pet waste, ignoring the fact that we are an agricultural community and pets is not exactly the same issue is in Lambertville City. We are told we can anonymously report "improper discharges" to the Township, without any indication of how.
And some of it is even, dare we say, ominous? Page 4 says "Meeting stormwater requirements is something we must do. Doing it well is something we control - property by property, decision by decision".
We can hope that this is a colloquial "we" meaning it is our collective duty as residents, but frankly it sounds like the Environmental Commission is asserting they have some kind of authority here (which they do not).
I could go on, but I'll stop here. The question. here is simple: why is the township spending time and effort sending full color multiple page blurbs to residents through postal mail that will at best be ignored and thrown away, and which at worst gives questionable advice to residents. And if they're going to go through the effort, why not make it genuinely useful? Actually SHOW how water flows through the township maybe. Make online maps available showing flood zones and areas of concern. Point out the problem areas in the Township in terms of our geography. Just sending out a generic newsletter is akin to burning money to watch the pretty flames.
And just imagine the waste if the Townships keeps this up, in terms of wasted paper, wasted postage, and most importantly wasted effort.
We mocked Lambertville when we started getting pointless newsletters from them. It makes sense to mock West Amwell for doing the same now.