Back to back hole-in-one’s!

Anne Awad is no longer Select board Czar and the rashly rejected Cherry Hill Golf Course bid will get a second look.

Her highness was bumped from her exalted leadership position by everybody’s favorite therapist Gerry Weiss. So how does that make him feel? “I hope I deserve this chairship,” declared Gerry. Yeah, me too (I can use the target practice).

Since Mr. Weiss championed the $2.5 million Override and ran roughshod over Ms. Awad and hubby Mr. Hubley’s suggestion of a $1.5 million fallback amount, he certainly earned "this chairship." As that other Chair (Mao) might say, “Be careful what you wish for…”

So now our rookie town manager admits he didn’t carefully read his own contract and therefore didn’t realize the $5,000 bid for our starving White Elephant also included tax payments of an additional $25,000. Yikes!

Makes you wonder what other contracts he fails to carefully peruse. Like, for instance, the SAFER Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response) Federal grant that brought us five desperately needed firefighters 2.5 years ago.

According to that document “Grantees that do not fulfill their obligations under these grants will be considered in default and required to return the Federal funds disbursed under the grant award.” In this case the town entered into a legally binding five-year contract.

Since the town has already consumed $350,000 of the $500,000 SAFER grant on the five firefighters and would have to repay that amount, it seems a tad foolish to now threaten cutting these hard-won positions to save $80,000 (the town’s matching amount, of which half will be paid by ambulance revenues) in the next Fiscal Year.

But if you want to terrorize folks into supporting the $2.5 million Override, target both sides of the factions: scare the retired folks with no kids in the schools by threatening to cut five firefighters and two police officers, frighten parents with teacher cuts, and throw in the outdoor War Memorial pool cut to alarm the low-income residents who rely on it all summer for their kids recreation.

Nice package.