I had the opportunity to watch the recent debate by the candidates for East Brunswick mayor, and after hearing all of the answers given by the candidates, there is no question in my mind that the Republican candidate, Christie Calvano, is not ready to be the mayor of East Brunswick Township.

To begin with, I did not hear one realistic suggestion from Ms. Calvano as to how she would improve East Brunswick. Ms. Calvano states that she was against the Golden Triangle but fails to say how she would have come up with an alternate source of revenue to replace the monies that we have been receiving from the project's owner for the past few years. It would seem that Ms. Calvano conveniently forgets to say whether she would have slashed services instead, or whether she would have asked the taxpayers to come up with the millions of dollars it would have taken to replace those payments.

Making matters even worse, Ms. Calvano now proposes to force all developers to pay impact fees to the town. That sounds great except for one small little roadblock: it's unconstitutional! In fact, there was a recent court case that ruled specifically on this topic, and the only place that impact fees can be assessed are for developments within the redevelopment zones. Ms. Calvano, who has stated many times how she used to work at one of the premier law firms in the state (she is not a lawyer, she was actually a paralegal), should have checked this out with some of her attorney friends before throwing out suggestions that, while pleasing to the public's ear, would in the end cost us tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, defending a law that is unconstitutional.

I think most of us are tired of politicians who just say anything they can just to get elected. It is for that reason that I think that on Election Day, the voters of East Brunswick should say no to Christie Calvano and her running mates for council. We can't afford to do otherwise.

Gene Ryan East Brunswick