The Scent of Pork in Montclair

According to Baristanet, my hometown of Montclair New Jersey, has scheduled to build a new elementary school for an estimated $35 million. The school will hold less than 700 students and is also expected to champion new environmental innovations, such as solar panels, which will apparently be pricey to install, but will hopefully save money in the future.

However, Montclair residents, such as myself, are skeptical. Montclair leadership has a long history of pandering on the issue of wasteful spending for useless initiatives. Up until last year, the township spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay men to pick up empty garbage cans and place them back in the driveways of residents. The purpose behind this, according to former mayoral candidate Margaret Mukherjee, was to prevent "the atmosphere of abandonment" on streets where people weren't home to tend to their own garbage cans. Nevertheless, the same lower income families that that project was supposed to protect (poorer residents tend to be away from home more often and hence are not able to pick up the cans) are ultimately driven out of town because of the rising property taxes, which are exarcerbated by pork barrel projects such as useless garbage can pickups.

Go to NJConservative, for more insight on pork barrel spending on the state level.

At EnlightenNJ, the writer, in an article titled "Demonstrating the Reason for High Taxes", describes a high school that will cost $136 million in Union City.