Oh, Not an 8 a.m. Meeting!

We can’t raise the bridge, so why not just lower the water? There have been oodles of bills introduced by our dutiful legislators, and many are offered with good intentions, but are more laws and regulations what we really need?
Each day as I see drivers chattering away on cell phones as they drive, I wonder: Why was legislation passed to make it an offense to do that? Before they took the final vote, and the big guy penned his autograph to the paper, why didn’t someone have the effrontery to ask, “Who will enforce this law?”
Children have little care about head injuries when they ride bikes, trikes and scooters. Thus, a very well-intended group of people advocated and won passage for a helmet law. Some fuddy-duddy regulation mandates that youngsters under age 14 are to wear helmets when they ride bicycles. Loving parents see to it that a helmet is purchased when they buy a bike for their offspring, but when it’s hot, and the kids want to play outside, the helmet more often than not gets left in the shed. Who will enforce the law?
I know, it’s like barber shop or barroom talk until somebody gathers up enough nerve to scream, “Enough!”
Every one of you has heard there is nothing new under the sun. Everything has been tried at least once.
Surface a June 12 release from Sen. Jeff Van Drew (D-1st). Astute readers will recall he was dubbed in last week’s column as our resident dragon slayer. Well, like the old tune went, “When you’re hot, you’re hot.” Right now, that describes the man who drilled teeth before he drilled Trenton.
There is, according to the release, bipartisan legislation sponsored on that date in the Senate by our native son and Sen. Chris Connors (R-9th) that would – oh, hear us – give South Jersey “a stronger voice in decisions made by the New Jersey Turnpike Authority which operates the Garden State Parkway.”
In short S-243, in case you want to advocate for it, would require the solons of the highway to meet at least twice a year in Atlantic, Cape May or Ocean counties. To be fair to others, as in Camden, Gloucester and Salem counties, a meeting would be required to be held there once a year, and another in Bergen County. Woodbridge, where traffic heaven and hell meet, is where the authority hosts its monthly get-togethers.
Longer than I want to recall, when Middle Township’s own Charles “Chuck” Leusner was a parkway commissioner, (see how long ago that was?) he did what the good senators are trying to do. He urged, and the authority held a yearly meeting in Middle Township Municipal Meeting Room. It was always in summer and always started at 11 a.m. The meetings up north, where the air is seen before it’s breathed, begin at 9:30 a.m.
Arriving to that meeting on time means a poor schlep from South Jersey must get up and out long before his or her North Jersey peers. While nobody ever decreed life to be fair, I always wondered why those meetings held in Court House had to start no earlier than 11 a.m. while the ones up north start much earlier. Could it be that it’s a farther journey north to south than from south to north? Let’s be fair and equal, and in my book it’s not.
However, the good senators may have that thought in their minds too. Another inequality I’ve heard muttered is that there is no Turnpike Authority member from Ocean, Atlantic or Cape May counties, the longest stretch of the road that has no representative.
While we are thinking of things parkway, who remembers the annual holiday celebration at the Shoemaker holly tree when the Parkway bigwigs would invite the public to the event at which high school choristers sang and hot cocoa and cookies were nibbled in the dark of December? Perhaps a local meeting, or better, a local representative would cajole their pals from up north to come on down and celebrate with the Cape May County folks, or would that be too long a trip?
Obviously, no northern authority commissioner has ever had Mother Nature shouting as that Shoemaker holly rest stop came into view, only to see the restrooms closed sign. Imagine, a tourist destination like Cape May County, you’ve sipped coffee, or the kids have sipped juice all the way through the many toll booths, the bladders are ready to explode and…oops, sorry, can’t go here, down the road. Is that any way to welcome a family?
Oh, one last thought, the senators’ bill would also require the Turnpike Authority board to have representation in all regions of the state, “including at least one of the seven appointed members be from the counties of Ocean, Atlantic or Cape May.”
For starters, they could ask the good representatives of the highway to meet at 8 a.m. in the Freeholders Meeting Room, 4 Moore Road, as a good faith effort. As I said at the start, if we can’t raise the bridge, the only thing left to do is lower the water, and that’s what we may have to do to get some equality around these parts.