TUF

Two Question About Ritchie

I have two questions regarding the Franklin Township recall of Ellen Ritchie. First, Ms. Ritchie has admitted to a private meeting with the developer Jack Morris just prior to the planning board meeting that would include a vote on the Morris devolvement.

This by the way is a development that will add so many children to the school system that Franklin will need to build a new school thus increasing taxes. A development that will put 664 housing units, a Home Depot and several other store on Rt. 27 making an already impossible traffic situation worse. A development that is so ill conceived that of the 50 members of the public that spoke at official meetings, the only people that spoke in favor of it were Jack Morris’s lawyer and the Chairman of the Ellen Ritchie Recall Defense Committee.

Ms. Ritchie’s has stated that there was nothing wrong with meeting with Morris whose money, not coincidentally, has helped get her elected. According to her she did it to try to get Mr. Morris to reduce the number of units he was building.

So here is my first question. Why did anyone have to negotiate with Mr. Morris? It was he who was requesting a zoning change from the Township. It was he who should have been offering concessions to the Township to try to get his project passed. Why is it that the Township had to go to a developer on bended knee to beg him to make changes?

Was it fear of a law suit? Not if the planning board made appropriate reductions such as protecting streams and endangered species.

Could it be that the politicians such as Ms. Ritchie, that need his money to get elected, were afraid to displease him? Afraid that he would no longer contribute to their campaigns?

My second question is about Ms. Ritchie threatening Dr. Orsini’s political career in an attempt to coerce him into voting for the Morris project. Ms. Ritchie claims she wasn’t threatening him but merely expressing her opinion. If, for a moment, we take her at face value it doesn’t make sense. Why would Dr. Orsini agreeing with the majority on the planning board be a threat to his political career? Why was Ms. Ritchie so angry with him? Unless of course she feared that political contributions would dry up if the project didn’t go through?

It appears that it was the need to please special interests that motivated both the meeting with Mr. Morris and the threatening of Dr. Orsini. Ms. Ritchie claims that it was the need for affordable housing that drove her to these deeds. Yet there were other projects and other remedies available to the Township. Why was this project so very important to her?

This to me is the essence of the effort to recall Ellen Ritchie. Franklin, New Jersey and in fact the entire country deserves leaders who are interested in working for the people and not, the best politicians money can buy.

This is why it is important that the Recall of Ms. Ritchie succeeds and why we should be suspect of any politician that supports her. Accepting the excuse that “these things happen all the time” is excepting that we are stuck with business as usually and are doomed to wallowing forever in political corruption.

Phillip Kramer