Page 16 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • February 3, 2010 Last week, I heard about a number of ways to save the nation I love best from the economic crunch. I don’t mean the applause-fest on TV; I mean the Wyckoff Township Committee work session. Township Committeeman Dave Connolly described the budgeting process for 2010 as a nightmare. Connolly and the other township committee members also limned the process by which state policies of the past, if continued, would do more harm than good because they impose mandatory spending at a far greater rate than they provide money. First lesson: Try a little honesty. It’s refreshing. Nobody applauded, but everybody in the room knew Connolly was an honest man telling unpleasant, but necessary, truths. They should try that down in Washington sometime. Second lesson: Cooperate. The Wyckoff Township Committee’s first Democrat since the Great Depression, Brian Scanlan, was a constructive part of the dialogue, and offered a suggestion that Connolly and everyone else agreed was worth investigating. Wyckoff, like every other town in Northwest Bergen and New Jersey, is faced with staggering mandatory insurance costs. Scanlan suggested that if Wyckoff could find an insurance company that would go for it, the township could save money by buying policies with big deductibles, and then paying the deductibles if the employees have to file claims. His suggestion was well received. To make this work, of course, you need employers who can be trusted to pay the deductibles, and employees who see insurance as coverage against necessity and not a free ride. If Wyckoff has both – as I believe they do – the suggestion should work. Through the organization of Wyckoff Township Administrator Robert Shannon and Township Clerk Joyce Santimauro, Wyckoff already has an award-winning employee safety training program. Through the work of former traffic officer Benjamin Fox – the current police chief – the township regularly wins traffic safety awards from the AAA. The responsible commitment to safety should keep insurance payments as low as possible, but Scanlan’s deductible plan, made practical by careful administration, has real merit and should be explored. Mayor Rudy Boonstra is asking the Wyckoff Public Library to give back $307,000 to which the library is legally entitled, and the library board is still negotiating with him. The members of the Wyckoff Township Committee waived their honorariums for 2009 and 2010, and put a collective $40,000 back into the budget. These folks are serious about saving money. Wyckoff has another policy that should be emulated: sinking funds. Even before Shannon took over as administrator, Wyckoff realized that putting aside money a little at a time to replace big-ticket items like fire engines would save the township a bundle on bonded interest. The life of a sinking fund for a fire engine is 20 years. Each year, the township budgets five percent of the price of a new fire engine. When it’s time to buy one, the money is there. One other policy: courage of conscience. Some years Saving America the right way ago, the American Civil Liberties Union told Wyckoff the township couldn’t display a Nativity scene on public property. After hearing a short talk on what has become known as “the establishment clause,” Wyckoff took on the ACLU. Judge Ed Torack, who was then the municipal attorney, and Rob Landell, the current municipal attorney, worked on the briefs. The court system ruled that Wyckoff has a legal right to display the Nativity scene if other religions were not excluded. Every year since then, Wyckoff has displayed both a Nativity scene and a Menorah. That’s good twice. Bullying doesn’t stop with lunch money. It stopped in Wyckoff because the local government stood up to the bully. What did we hear on TV last Wednesday? Rhetoric. Some of it good, some of it preposterous, none of it likely to get us through the worse economic slump since the 1930s. The applause from most of the audience was heavy, but one group, at one point, sat still and didn’t cheer. When President Obama said he wanted Congress to repeal the ban on gays in the military, the generals and the admirals froze in their seats. They certainly weren’t cheering. They were right not to. The position of the liberal Democrats appears to be that gays are in the same position apropos military service as racial minorities were before 1863, and the knee jerk reaction is to eliminate that problem. I disagree. Cooping up openly gay males with young, straight, insecure kids in their late teens or early 20s is a prescription for internecine homicide. Imagine how many non-combat deaths result when somebody in the service who is covertly gay propositions the wrong kid and won’t take no for an answer. I’ve been a soldier, most of my high school friends served during Vietnam, and I had six relatives in the service during World War II. I can tell you, Mr. and Mrs. America, that sort of thing happens a lot. My senior cousin served with a flotilla of destroyers during World War II. On one ship, the chief mess steward, though married with kids, was a bully who liked a young guy once in awhile. He was after one of the apprentice mess stewards and wouldn’t leave the kid alone. Finally, the kid pulled a .45 he had stolen from an officer and shot the chief mess steward in the head. The captain was faced with the problem of how to cover up the fact that this happened on his ship, but still allow the widow to collect his insurance. A kamikaze hit the ship, killing seven, and gave the captain an alibi. The dead brute was listed as a combat casualty, and his wife got the insurance. The president also discussed the bank bailout. True enough, Bush was culpable, and initiated the bailout while he was still in office in 2008. Clinton was also at fault; his easy-credit policies helped touch off the housing bubble. Talking out of both sides of your mouth: First, we’re going to compete for an export market with Germany, China, and India, then we’re going to make sure every kid has a college education. Oh! College in Germany, China, and India is for the elite. Most people in all three counties start working in their teens. The Chinese and Indians do so at such low wages and under such awful working conditions that no economic competition with Americans is possible unless we all decide to give up air conditioning, cars, liquor, vacations, and red meat – and maybe not even then. The Chinese are already putting the Japanese and the South Koreans out of the export market because the Chinese can undercut Japanese and South Korean costs by underpaying their production workers and saving on safety precautions. While the Germans’ standard of living is similar to ours, they accept a degree of government control most Americans are not ready for. Germans are not allowed to work part-time jobs, must take five weeks of vacation, even when they would rather work, and must donate money to the church of their choice even if they are not religious. Anyone involved in Holocaust Denial or display of Nazi regalia is punished with a prison sentence. Holocaust Denial, of course, is junk history, and flashing Nazi regalia is in cosmically bad taste, but most Americans still value free speech enough to allow idiots to shoot their mouths off. We are not ready to morph into Germany, Sweden, or the rest of northern Europe, where the system is somewhat similar, and we are definitely not ready to morph into China or India. Export competition, except in terms of food or high-tech goods, is a delusion or a hoax. We heard what we needed to. Washington is clueless. What the country needs is a fair minimum wage for production workers along European lines so it is worth getting a job instead of milking the system. We also need a safety net so our fellow Americans do not starve or freeze if they cannot work. We need safe high schools and merit-based scholarships so really qualified students can get an education. We do not need to send every kid who is breathing to college at taxpayer expense. We do not need to impose our social system on Islamic societies -- although we do need to make sure terrorists do not get into America, or reside here. We do not need any more rhetoric. Wyckoff got it right. Future leaders At Ramsey’s Dater School, John Giancaspro’s fifth grade science classes in collaboration with Lucy Goldberg are meeting the state request to develop 21st century learners. These fifth grade science students were presented with a complex situation with the main objective to foster creativity, analytical thinking, and effective communication. Select members of the project presented a summary level debate for the members of the board of education and parents. Pictured above with Lucy Goldberg (far left) and John Giancaspro (far right) are a select group of fifth grade science students who presented an example of 21st Century Learning to the school board and parents. The project culminated in a debate on the issue of with a theoretical pesticide company moving into town and demonstrated creativity, analytical thinking, and effective communication skills. At right: fifth graders Victoria Clinton, Madison Taradash and Madison Royle presenting the cons for the theoretical debate on whether a pesticide company should be permitted to move into town.