Jacking Ventnor’s municipal taxes up 27 percent in one year is sheer lunacy. It reflects a callous indifference toward seniors on fixed incomes and businesses trying to stay afloat on 10-weekends-a-year summer tourist season. One need only ride along Ventnor Avenue to see store after store shuttered and abandoned.
A fiscally prudent commission would have issued a wage and hiring freeze from day one. With FBI and County Prosecutor subpoenas being served on both Ventnor and Margate, you’d expect the commissioners to get together and formulate substantial cost savings through shared services in all departments, especially fire and school departments. Ventnor, instead, hired seven new firefighters rather than consolidate with Margate. Also, Ventnor’s school, thanks to the collapse of the casino industry and Sandy storm, could easily accommodate Margate’s entire student body with ample room to spare.
The tax and spend mindset must cease because it’s simply not sustainable in the long run. Radical and drastic interventions will become inevitable. If Ventnor’s commissioners ran on being business savvy, then now is the time to institute shared services across the board with no sacred cows spared the chopping block.
John Sewell, Margate