This letter is in response to the article titled “East Brunswick Municipal Taxes Going Down in 2012, Mayor Says” that appeared in the Jan. 26 issue of the Sentinel. David Stahl actually says nothing about how much East Brunswick overall property taxes will go down, which is what really matters to highly overtaxed residents and business owners. It’s typical of his nature never to mention the actual amount of reduction.

I suspect that, as usual, Stahl is thinking of taking some slight trims of some very small municipal expense as a way of getting publicity in preparation for his (possible) rerun for mayor in November.

Property taxes have already gone up in 2012, so who is he kidding? Will he deliver an actual net reduction of our overall tax bill? I will be shocked if he does. Why? Simply because his past failure is indicative of our present substantially higher tax bills and of what lies ahead: imposing more financial pain with still-higher property taxes. And they have gone up every year since he became mayor.

The simple cause of annual property taxes is Stahl’s continued refusal to deal with the larger picture of annually rising property taxes. Instead, he chooses to deal with the itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny items to trim that have had zero effect in cutting overall property taxes for homeowners and businesses in East Brunswick. We want an overall substantial net-property-tax reduction, something in the range of at least a third from the current level. He does not understand this, and he is out of touch with the people.

As I have mentioned several times in this space and at numerous Township Council meetings (where we had as many as 200 taxpayers at times pleading for a tax cut), East Brunswick property taxes doubled in a decade from 2000 to 2010. And they have risen substantially since Stahl became mayor in 2008. East Brunswick government spends a whopping $300 million a year. There’s much that can be cut.

Stahl has failed as mayor. He has failed to deliver on meaningful propertytax relief. He has not demonstrated the courage, the insight and the leadership ability required of a mayor to substantially cut municipal taxes, to cut school taxes by sitting down with the town’s Board of Education, and to cut county taxes for East Brunswick by dealing with those people who decide how much to spend and send us the bill.

School taxes take up about two-thirds of East Brunswick property taxes, municipal taxes take up another about 18 percent, and the balance is county taxes. Dealing with substantial and meaningful reduction of all the three components of our property-tax bill, not simply focusing on shaving tiny components of the municipal budget, is the responsible way of working as mayor.

Itwill be four years as mayor this November, and the best Stahl can do for the township is to acknowledge his failure and simply leave. Unceasing financial pain is what he has delivered to taxpayers. If he can find someone who has instead delivered meaningful tax cuts in another New Jersey town (and there are some mayors in our state who have done this), that would be the best thing he can do for East Brunswick.

He can present that person as a candidate in this year’s mayoral election. But unless that person has cut property taxes elsewhere, voters should not even bother to consider him or her for the position. Sometimes the best one can do for an entity is to realize you are the impediment to what the people want, and you need to get out of the way and let someone with a past record of success do the job at hand.

Stahl has already inflicted too much financial pain on taxpayers year after year, and he has shown he is incapable of doing otherwise. Look at your property tax bills and compare them with the past, especially from 2008.

Stahl’s habit of making no commitment to concrete overall property-tax reduction is indicative of the way of a politician. The rationale is if you do not deliver, you have broken no promises. But this town now needs a doer. Who out there has been successful in cutting property taxes and can ease our growing financial burden?

Kem Balani
East Brunswick