What in God's name will North NJ look like in 20 years?
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Some people just don't get it. Consolidation has nothing to do with diluting the good schools with bad schools.it has everything to do with eliminating redundant management positions.
You do not need 600+ school superintendents when you only have 21 counties.
You don't need a separate police force in a one mile square town.
You don't need a building dept. in every tiny little boro.
The reason NJ is not going to change is because of ignorant people not understanding what the real problem is.
TOO MANY MANAGERS.
Completely disagree - you clearly are not a teacher (or friends with / related to one) if you think that.
Most teachers do not make anywhere near that amount and are vastly underpaid for the amount of time and effort they put into the job. Cutting or capping salaries will only continue to discourage the most qualified candidates from applying to teaching jobs, thereby directly negatively affecting quality of public education.
Consolidating districts and distributing services at the county/regional level is the only solution out of this mess. That is the only way to reduce redundant administrative positions and stop hiring more public employees than are needed.
I am both friends with and related to teachers.
NJ teachers are among the highest paid in the nation. I know that not everyone retires making 110k but this woman was a teacher for a very very long time in the same district. Point is, no gym teacher should ever be making that much. That is ridiculous. I support salary caps (not super low caps, just to ensure at some point you don't have a gym teacher making over 100 grand a year...) and think the idea of tenure should be reconsidered or somehow altered. I had teachers in high school who started noticeably slacking once tenured. In one particular class I barely learned anything because we watched Golden Girls most days - seriously. I struggled on our few tests because we never learned a thing. Before she was tenured, this teacher was diligent and one of the best. After, and she got lazy, she developed a not so great reputation and was actually removed from teaching higher level classes like she used to teach. This is not an uncommon situation, for teachers to get a little too comfortable once they have job security. Perhaps we should keep them a bit more on their toes...
It will continue to be one big parking lot and taxes will keep going up. In other words, not much will change.
I see a bunch of condos going up in Mount Arlington on I-80. Right there there will be hundreds of more cars on the road and more people riding the train.
Completely disagree - you clearly are not a teacher (or friends with / related to one) if you think that.
Most teachers do not make anywhere near that amount and are vastly underpaid for the amount of time and effort they put into the job. Cutting or capping salaries will only continue to discourage the most qualified candidates from applying to teaching jobs, thereby directly negatively affecting quality of public education.
Consolidating districts and distributing services at the county/regional level is the only solution out of this mess. That is the only way to reduce redundant administrative positions and stop hiring more public employees than are needed.
Even in a small district, there are many teachers and one superintendent. Reducing redundant managers generates savings without increasing class sizes, but even in NJ with our patchwork of towns you don't save that much money by doing this. Say you merge together 2 towns of 10K people, ~6K total households, fire a few admins making ~$500K total, whoop-de-do you've saved everyone ~$100/year on their taxes.
Corrupt construction contracts cost $$$. The NJ pension system costs $$$. Paying people public servants way above the national average costs $$$. A few extra top-level admins per town is "just" $ - might be a bigger deal elsewhere where the entire system is leaner, but in NJ it's a rounding error.
Last edited by ALackOfCreativity; 05-15-2016 at 04:44 PM..
Reason: grammar
It will continue to be one big parking lot and taxes will keep going up. In other words, not much will change.
I see a bunch of condos going up in Mount Arlington on I-80. Right there there will be hundreds of more cars on the road and more people riding the train.
Most people seem to be focused on areas closer to NYC. What I think will be even more interesting is what will become of areas in NW-NJ and NE-PA which are currently part of the NYC metro and slowly becoming exurbs of the area. One can only hope over-development and sprawl doesn't affect the area (which is still largely quite rural and beautiful), but it's hard to be certain given the track record.
Most people seem to be focused on areas closer to NYC. What I think will be even more interesting is what will become of areas in NW-NJ and NE-PA which are currently part of the NYC metro and slowly becoming exurbs of the area. One can only hope over-development and sprawl doesn't affect the area (which is still largely quite rural and beautiful), but it's hard to be certain given the track record.
Growth outside 287 is effectively dead and not coming back without major shifts in infrastructure investments in my view.
Hunterdon, Sussex, and Warren counties have all experienced a population decline post-2010 while inner counties have continued growing.
And NE PA is seeing the same. Monroe, Pike and Carbon have all seen population declines while Northampton and Lehigh have seen much slower growth than they've seen pre-2010.
And anyone who's tried driving I-78 or I-80 at rush hour in the past few years knows exactly why. You're looking at an hour to just hit 287 from the PA border on I-78 at rush hour these days, and with the few alternate routes the frequent accidents will have you in major delays frequently.
That makes even commuting to most jobs in NJ difficult, much less getting to a NYC/JC job.
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The only way I could see growth being reignited is major transit investment, not just in getting trains to reach further out, but in cutting travel time to NYC and providing better service levels on said lines.
The outer edges of most NJ Transit lines are at/nearing 2 hours in ride time alone to get to Hoboken or NY Penn, and often have very limited service of only a handful of rush hour trains. That's just not practical for most people to use.
Most people seem to be focused on areas closer to NYC. What I think will be even more interesting is what will become of areas in NW-NJ and NE-PA which are currently part of the NYC metro and slowly becoming exurbs of the area. One can only hope over-development and sprawl doesn't affect the area (which is still largely quite rural and beautiful), but it's hard to be certain given the track record.
I think the post above this one sums up it pretty well. There's really no benefit to living so far out here. The commutes are long and soul-sucking and the taxes are still pretty high.
I live in Warren County and commute into Morris County for work. It is nothing but a trail of tears going down I-80 during rush hour.
Better transit options may offer some hope for the area, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
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