Why Not One Trick or Treat or Central Dispatch?

A nasty word makes us New Jerseyans figuratively spit in our coffee. To Cape May County residents, that angry spitting is accompanied by expletives at the very thought that someone not of our own community would have the effrontery to tell us what we will do, and what is best for us. To us, that concept seems to have been driven out when the last vestige of royalty was chased from the Colonies.
The word, and you can curse in a moment, is “regionalization.”
On paper, in budgets and in proper venues where such onerous things are discussed, like in hair salons, barbershops and mom-and-pop stores, that filthy utterance actually makes sense. To a cash-strapped municipality, the aspect of sharing a snowplow or front-end loader is OK. However, taken any farther, as in combining police and fire departments, well, brother, you had better be ready to back up those words you say with something very special.
Should anyone in authority so much as think the word “regionalization” or, God forbid “central dispatch,” knives may start flying. Older folks grab for Maalox or their heart medicine. Think of it, so darned outsider, maybe someone from Ocean City or Woodbine answering the phone when we dial 9-1-1 crying for an ambulance or fire truck. Heaven forbid it should happen!
Could this county’s emergency dispatching be consolidated under one roof? My gut says “yes,” my mind says, “Al, you’re a fool to even float such a failed idea.”
I see your face growing red, so I’ll throw it into neutral for a moment. Think of something childlike and simple that happens at the end of this month. That’s right, Trick or Treat.
Judging from what I see in stores and on candy shelves, the celebration of Halloween, regardless of your views about it, is super big business. Some homes are decorated in somber cemetery settings with ugly skeletons emerging from the septic field or hanging from the trees. Others homes are decorated in laughing pumpkins and merry cornstalk arrangements.
So, how does all this mesh with regionalization?
Wouldn’t it make a whole lot of sense for each of Cape May County’s 16 municipalities to have one set time for the rabble-rousing hobgoblins to wander door to door voicing the trio of words, “Trick or treat?”
While there may be a date upon which all agree, and that is a tough one to nail down, the hours of collection are all over the face of the clock. Why?
What would happen if, better sit down so you won’t hit your head when you fall, the Board of Chosen Freeholders would actually proclaim Oct. 31 between the hours of 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. “Trick of Treat Night” throughout Cape May County?
Having waded into a minefield, how would our five top elected leaders get out of that war zone without the actual shedding of drop of blood?
I can only imagine the Spout Offs:
• What gives those guys the idea they control Halloween? Here in North Cape May, we want to give our kids candy when we want to give kids candy. — North Cape May.
• Whom do they think they are to say it’s OK for kids to come to Cape May Point where we don’t have Trick or Treat Night? Just wait until next election. — Cape May Point.
• I knew it, I knew it, this present administration is out to take our minds off the trickery I know goes on in the back room. — Swainton.
• These guys will do anything for a vote. I’m putting my house up for sale and moving to Montana. — West Wildwood.
A good friend of mine, happily retired from law enforcement, who has keen political insight and great Irish wit, got talking to me in Blitz’s Market, Court House as I was waiting for my cold cut order to be sliced.
With a wry grin on his wrinkled face, we discussed what I’ve already set forth in this column.
“If they can’t agree on something as simple as Trick or Treat Night, how are they ever going to get together on central dispatch?” he wondered. The man had a point.
As we all know, eating the right food and exercising regularly is healthy and is what we ought to do, most of us do not hold ourselves to that august standard. We do not practice what we preach.
Now that your face has returned to its ordinary shade, do you think this county’s municipalities are ready to seriously sit down and discuss regionalization and central dispatch…and a unified Trick or Treat Night?
Having been around this tiny peninsula a year or two, if I were a betting man (OK, I put $1 a week on the Jersey Pick 5, and thus far have won $9), I wouldn’t give central dispatch more than a 40 percent chance. If we could suppress the notion of fiefdoms, there might be a glimmer of hope, but that’s not going to happen, at least in my lifetime.
Regionalization, if all it involves is a hunk of machinery and not supervisory powers of one person over another, I’ll give it a 60 percent chance of happening.
FInally, what are the chances of one Trick or Treat Night in Cape May County from 4-8 p.m.? Not a snowball’s chance in the place where those Halloween devils live.