This Year We Bit Bullets and They Didn’t Taste Good

This was the year we bit bullets, and they didn’t taste good. It was a year that hard times visited many Cape May County families. Some lost jobs and homes, others lost loved ones and bid adieu to friends.
It was the year we watched a new President assume the burden of leadership, and later wondered how we, or rather our grandchildren, would pay for all the programs he advocated.
If anything, 2009 will go down in history books as The Year of the Shrinking Revenue. Such monumental gaps happen when belt tightening begins with you and me. We decide to make a car last another year or two longer. We don’t buy that house, because we don’t know if we will have a job to pay for it.
The negative numbers grow into a headache for the state treasurer when coffers don’t get filled with extra sales tax revenues.
Conditions worsen when local property taxes don’t get paid. In Wildwood alone, over $2.7 million in tax shortfalls means a big hole to fill this year and next, because those uncollected taxes have to be made up in the following year’s municipal budget.
I don’t envy any office holder, including the newest ones: Edward “Chip” Harshaw and Al Brannen in Wildwood, Daniel Lockwood in Middle Township, and Judy Davies-Dunhour and Joan Kramar in Stone Harbor.
They will soon find the municipal budgets are under stress just like individual accounts. They, too, will have to help make difficult decisions, which may include increasing taxes, or curtailing services just to make ends meet.
With luck in the next few months in 2010, for them and the rest of us, this economic swamp in which we find ourselves may turn into solid ground once again.
A new Republican administration in Trenton will have to find its way out of briar patches, tar pits and sinking sand that an estimated $8 billion in shortfalls will bring to the state budget.
This year, the U.S. Census Bureau will again count us. It will be interesting to see the population trend in Cape May County and the rest of the Garden State. It will bear out what many of us little folks know to be true: Many of our friends, neighbors and relatives are voting with their feet, and the direction is mostly south.
Yes, there in the land of grits and cornbread, someone has found the key to survival in tough times. They have tax rates that bring tears to my eyes each time I compare my Middle Township tax bill to one in, say, South Carolina or Delaware.
Therein lies the problem for the folks who will soon swear on the Bible to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of New Jersey before they sit in a new seat before their peers on municipal governing bodies.
This year, with all the hardship that was visited upon local people, the bright spot seemed to come from one report from postal employee John Vollrath. It dealt with the early December food collection by the letter carriers and others of donations.
Nearly 42,000 pounds of non-perishable food was collected that went to benefit those among us who are less fortunate and were in need of food assistance.
That number is growing, it seems, with each passing day. More families find themselves pressed to either pay for food or other bills. We will never know the half of the sad stories, perhaps just down the street from our home.
We know the need for food is rising while the inflow just cannot seem to keep up with the pace. The Holy Redeemer Food Pantry for those in the hospice program is woefully short of needed food. Someone will help, perhaps guided by the Holy Spirit.
One phone call from a retiree in Lower Township could have been made by any number of county residents.
The gentleman was a former Philadelphia city worker whose healthcare had dwindled. He had a heart attack in the city, and the care he received saved his life. But, because of medical insurance woes, and his inability to pay the killer price for it, he finds himself owing maybe $50,000 or more.
He went for help from government social service agencies, but found himself over the qualifying limit for assistance.
Angry, he pointed to numerous others who don’t work, yet get all their medical bills paid by welfare. Many share his frustration. He added that, aside from that, he was caught in the foreclosure situation, and was trying to rescue his home.
Golden year? Not for that man and many others just like him.
Heading into a brand new year, I see people who are discouraged and disappointed, scared and to the point of wondering what’s coming next. To be sure, it’s not that warm, fuzzy feeling I want to start the new year with. If ever there was a need for a true leader to rally the county, state’s and nation’s spirits, this is the time.
Perhaps in the coming year, we, collectively, will realize that power is in our hands. We have the ability to change governments by changing leaders. Things must change in the coming year. We can only hope they will change for the better. When the present is dark, the future can only be brighter.