November 17, 2010 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 23 why the current crop of police officers, given their training before taking the oath and afterward, needs a guntoting police chief to ride herd over them. Having the tour commander, predictably an officer with 10 to 20 years of experience, report directly to the senior administrator of the town they protect once the present chiefs retire could save a big salary package. Taxpayers have hardships to endure, and they can lose their jobs a lot more easily than a police officer who – in recent times – is probably paid better than they are and has a benefits package the private sector can only envy. The men and women in blue have to understand that the basis of wage comparison is no longer a doctor, a lawyer, or a stock-broker. It could be a man or woman with two college degrees who has already been downsized once and may be anticipating the final chop. How many assistants does it take to run an office? However many, we may have reached saturation. I have a lot of friends in municipal administration. Most of them are competent and civil. The fact of the matter is that half the people who have suffered layoffs or firings would love to have their jobs, and could probably handle them. Anyplace that hasn’t inflicted a hiring freeze on office staff should do so immediately. Let us not fire anybody who is employed and doing a decent job. People who are magnets for complaints might rate a second look, unless the complainants are chronic malcontents. The good workers could, in a pinch, be asked to pick up some of their own benefits or even settle for a mild wage or salary reduction if they are on the high side of the scale. I think they should not be fired except for something like stealing. I think they should be reminded that people with real-world, private-sector jobs have not had raises in years and are getting stiff necks from looking over their shoulders. Although staffing needs to be kept under control, libraries should not be targeted for cutbacks, but for expansion of hours. Library workers are probably the best bargain taxpayers have, and library access to search for jobs or complete school assignments is vital. I would pose one thrift measure: Libraries are about literary and academic pursuits. I was amused to see that in Wyckoff, where a library expansion is anticipated, the Bergen County Cooperative Library System told the local library board that Wyckoff could remain in BCCLS as long as the library maintained access to best-sellers, children’s books, and computers. Last time I looked, the best-seller list was comprised mostly of celebrity slanders, get-rich-quick schemes, and diets to bring back your youth and help you find a job. I would suggest that most libraries could save a bundle by not buying CDs of junk music and tacky books that get sold at 50 cents apiece or given away once the novelty wears off, and by evaluating and retaining books of genuine value such as biographies of artists, statesmen, and scientists. The schools are the target for most of the potential savings. We need to establish a wage ceiling for teachers and administrators that stops way under $100,000 no matter how many degrees they have or how many years they’ve been in place. We need to get rid of tenure, so people who may have coasted into permanent jobs can’t go on knocking down $100,000-plus. When I worked in daily newspapers, the young men and women who clearly couldn’t do the job usually lasted about three months. They either had the grace to admit they couldn’t cut it and quietly disappeared to do social work or write the Great American Novel, or they were taken into the side office and told their services were no longer required and they should consider some other line of work. People who chronically misquoted public figures – or in a worst-case scenario, made things up out of whole cloth – were much too dangerous to have on board. There’s an old adage in the profession of journalism: “No Associated Press reporter has ever been sued for libel, but many former Associated Press reporters have.” This is about saving one of the last bastions of civility and self-respect left in the United States. The collapse of the job market and the dwindling interest rates need to be reflected in cost-cutting in the public sector – and fast. There is another answer, but it’s the 600-pound gorilla. Most older people think a “tax sale” means some dapper mustachioed villain buys your house and you have two years to get out once you stop paying the taxes. They believe this because some public officials want them to. In fact, if your house isn’t mortgaged, you can stay there for the rest of your life and when you finally depart for wherever, the person who bought the house at the tax sale has a lien on the house and can require to be paid back, at a steep rate of interest, before you or your heirs get what’s left of the sale price. Short of grotesque failure of sanitation menacing to the neighborhood, harboring known criminals, or being one yourself, you cannot lose the house for taxes. I verified this when I paid my own taxes last week – and it’s been checked with many authorities. It’s the law. I think that if the schools in particular don’t get the message, a few hundred senior citizens with paid-off mortgages and those younger investors who don’t pay escrow to banks could send them a message they couldn’t afford to ignore. Let’s hope we don’t have to. The other day, I walked around the downtown shopping district in my hometown and spoke with a few people who are still in business and even of a couple of borough employees. My plan: Save the towns we all love. My answer: Nifty Fifty. Nifty Fifty started as a goal in recycling. If residents can take 50 percent of their discards out of the waste stream, the towns can save a bundle on haulage and tipping fees to have the stuff shipped and dropped off in Pennsylvania. Improved sorting, reduced packaging and composting, even mulching the grass clippings and leaves instead of disposing of them, can contribute, and it’s a lot of fun to use your imagination to make it happen. Nifty Fifty, taken to the next level, isn’t as much fun, but it doesn’t require as much imagination either. If we cut the number of public employees on the high side of the budget, or got them to consolidate – some towns already have – so one person covers two jobs, and if we stopped buying state-of-the-art equipment that is not really necessary, we could probably do something like Nifty Fifty on the municipal budget and on the school budget. Imagine cutting property taxes by 50 percent. Those people who aren’t in dire peril could recycle some of the money they save to local businesses such as restaurants, coffee shops, tailor shops, book stores, and gift and toy stores – the kind of places that pay taxes instead of demanding them from people who don’t need the services. Revitalizing local business would not only save the downtown shopping districts, but would give us an excuse to see how simply we can live in terms of frills and ostentation. A few years ago, a local official stopped short when she was asked to sign off on plans to buy office chairs for an emergency center at something like $7,000 per chair. The official pointed out that the chairs in her executivefriendly office didn’t cost $7,000 each, and the emergency center had to make do with $200 chairs. Recently, the same town appropriated $9,000 for spanking-new handguns for a police force that, to the best of my knowledge, hardly ever uses guns. Let’s go to the budget with a realistic attitude. Guns aren’t status symbols. Police officers who are at risk have every right to expect the best available body armor because that’s a matter of life-saving. If they have to shoot somebody, a .45 will do the job just as a cult-status weapon made in Belgium or Austria. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes the local police run into dangerous people. One old friend of mine recently collared a guy who was deliberately ramming other people’s cars. The driver tried to grab my friend’s handgun. My friend decked him with a metal-tube flashlight. The bad driver lived to stand trial. That’s good police work. The local police don’t need an Uzi or an AK-47 to write out traffic tickets or to rush people to the hospital and give them oxygen. Most of the police officers in this area are capable and well-disciplined. Few are called upon to shoot people. There are some real savings possibilities here. Consolidation is also important. There is no reason The Nifty Fifty plan that could save us Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: We wish to thank all the residents of Midland Park who came out and supported us in our run for reelection. We promise to continue good conservative government on your behalf, spending the town’s money wisely while providing good services. Candidates thank electorate Midland Park is respected and admired by surrounding communities for being financially sound and we pledge to do our best to maintain this standard. Thank you for your support. Bud O’Hagan Nancy Peet Midland Park Old Testament scholar to speak Dr. David M. Carr, Old Testament scholar and author, will speak on “Light in the Darkness: Rethinking Advent in Light of Isaiah’s Prophecy” at the Adult Nurture Series. Dr. Orr’s program will be held Wednesday, Dec. 8 at 7:45 p.m. at the Ramsey First Presbyterian Church. The year-long program was developed with four Presbyterian Churches (USA) congregations in the Presbytery of the Palisades. A professor of Old Testament at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, Dr. Carr’s research interests include formation and shape of Bible, sexuality and gender in the Bible, and the emergence of scripture in the Jewish and Christian traditions. All are welcome to attend the series. For information, call (201) 327-3879. The church is located at 15 Shuart Lane in Ramsey. Dr. David M. Carr