Letter: Vote "No" on December 15

Letter to the editor as submitted by resident Nels Luthman:

The Toms River Fire District 1 is holding a on December 15th that they do not want the taxpayers to know about.  There will be no sample ballots, little public notice and only one polling place open (the Toms River Fire Company #2 on West Water St.).

The special election is to appropriate $1,022,000 in the 2012 budget for the purchase of two lots on the corner of Hadley and Hooper Ave.  This property will be used to build a new mega town owned fire house which will replace the two volunteer owned fire houses downtown.

Listed below are reasons why they are afraid to let the taxpayers of Toms River know about this special election:

1) The $1,022,000 in surplus needed to buy this property could be used to lower the fire tax in these economic hard times.

2) This is only the first of two special elections planned.  The second one is for the building.  The say they don't know what it will cost.  How do you start a project without knowing the total cost?  Either you know and do not want the public to know or you don't which is even worse.  Most modern fire houses cost at least $8 million to build.

3) Lastly the Fire Commissioners will own the building instead of the volunteer firefighters making it much easier to get rid of the volunteers and turn it into a paid fire company.

Nels W. Luthman Jr.