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Will it be SHOW time this year?
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With an expected blow-out win by the current Governor, it is expected that turn-out this year will be lighter than in past gubernatorial elections but there is nonetheless both some drama and boredom that has developed on the local political front.
This year's Council election has both incumbents, Mary Van Lieu and Dave Slack, seeking new terms against a couple of lackluster, ho-hum, challengers. Both Slack and Van Lieu can share credit along with the Mayor and other Council members with doing the hard and seemingly, thankless, work of trimming the municipal budget and keeping taxes flat for the last two years - in spite of some black holes opening up on the revenue side. Having met this challenge, it is doubtful that voters will turn away and head towards uncharted waters-especially since even more challenging times lie ahead. Their opponents, Curt Weihz and Marc Metzger, have thus far run uninspiring campaigns and each comes with their own particular set of well, lets say, personal issues and personality flaws. Meanwhile, it never hurts to have the endorsement of Pohatcong's popular young Mayor, Jim Kern, who has signed off on the Slack / Van Lieu tandem. Come Election Day, voters are likely to concur.
Well if the Council race has seemed like a big yawn so far, then the same cannot be said for the Pohatcong School Board election which is being fully contested for the first time that anyone can remember. Victimized by their own ineptness and increasingly out of touch with the tax-paying public, four of the current school board members will be hard pressed to hang onto their seats this year as they face a determined and well organized challenge from the SHOW coalition (Cindy
Semonche, Jamie
Hudak, Bill
Oertel, and Scott
Weeks). Perhaps weighing most heavily on the minds of voters will be the inability of the current board to stop the never-ending budget increases along with the ongoing poor academic results. Adding to the woes of the current board is the controversial solar panel field project which most of the town residents seem now to oppose. Having been targeted to be finished this past summer, yet new hurdles have cropped up delaying it's start. An ominous sign perhaps for the current incumbents and the word on the street says that some big time and overdue changes are a coming at the ballot box on November 5th. Sounds about right.
As in past years, Pohatcong Blog will be attempting to scoop, yet again, some of our local commercial media by posting Pohatcong election results as soon as we have them in hand (and beating those other guys to the punch). Don't forget to check back here on election night for your local results.
