Sorry I haven't been round much, but my blogging time is typically work time and the blogofascists at work decided blogging was bayd... mmmmkay?
Anyway, we got a real gem here folks. Scroll down past the tear jerking Habitat for Humanity part and find the part where they start talking about how some heads be explodin' over at Hunterdon County cuz' they gotta pick up dead deer from now on.
For some local officials, Trenton’s decision to make local governing bodies pay for removing deer carcasses off roads starting this October is just another example of passing the fiscal buck.
But in a recent letter, DOT Deputy Commissioner Stephen Dilts advised mayors that because of a $715,000 budget cut, the department would, as of Oct. 1, no longer pay for pickups on county- or town-owned roads. The state, however, will continue to pay for those collected on its own roads, like Routes 202 and 206.
...
The decision to impose the cost of clean-up on local governing bodies so incensed the Hunterdon County Board of Freeholders that they filed suit against the DOT last week, arguing that deer are, by tradition, the state’s responsibility.
While Somerset Hills officials might not lean toward litigation, some nevertheless expressed exasperation that the DOT forced the decision upon them.
“It’s obviously a pain we would prefer not to have,” said Somerset County Freeholder Peter Palmer, a resident and former mayor of Bernardsville, on Friday, July 28.
OK. So it's a real pain in the ass picking up a dead carcass from the side of the road and throwing it in the garbage truck, or giving it to the rabid dogs, or whatever the hell they do with dead deer. I understand that... I don't pick up dead deer off the road (despite the waste of all the yummy venison - which by the way, is divine ala tartar drizzled with truffle oil).
However, we must keep the objective in mind here folks... It is to save us all (including Hunterdon County residents) from paying even higher taxes, or cutting other services. So they decide to file a costly lawsuit to try and get the burden off their back.
As if that wasn't enough government waste...
According to County Engineer Michael Amorosa, the freeholders could, at that time, award a deer removal contract to one of three vendors who bid for the job last month. Amorosoa said the county issued the bid notice anticipating the DOT cuts.
UPDATE: Fixed link NJ newspapers haven't gotten the whole permalink thing down yet, so sometimes articles on their webpages get interlaced with other articles. Thanks Dennis for pointing it out.
“We knew we had to have a contractor in place, in the event the state decided to do what they did,” he said.
He said the bids, which were opened on July 19, ranged from a low of $64.95 per deer, to $75, and $92.
Those bids exceeded the “$35 or $40 a head” the county paid when it last paid for pickup during the Florio administration in the 1980s, he said.
They anticipated having to do it themselves... so they did the natural thing and started a bidding process on the contract.
Just like anything else in this goddamned state. When you don't feel like doing something yourself...
OUTSOURCE THE MOTHER F*(&@ER!!!!
This way, whatever savings were supposed to be passed onto the taxpayer get erased by some no-bid (or fake bidding) contracting process designed to funnel taxpayer money into some corporation's bank account. Besides HOW THE HELL DO YOU JUSTIFY THESE PRICES? Not to mention, now you have to hire someone to make sure those invoices are correct. You need to make sure they are picking up the ammount of carcasses they are invoicing you for. That means yet another state worker... OH THE STATE WORKERS!!! With all their pensions and unions and crazy tax dollar draining benefits!!!
PSST... Hunterdon Freeloaders Freeholders... Sport hunters don't get paid $65 to get a deer they just shot into a truck... Why should your taxpayers?
Why not ask the hunters how they do it for free?
Better still:
“It’s going to be a lot of money,” she added, noting that Bedminster police report an average of 10 to 15 dead deer along township roadsides each month.
“If it costs us an average of $65 per deer, and we have 10 to 15 each month, that comes out to $650 to $1,000 a month, or up to $12,000 a year,” calculated Stanbury.
The best hope of local officials is that they’ll be able to keep costs as low as possible through bidding cooperatives.
Many local towns, including Bernardsville, Bedminster and Peapack-Gladstone, are members of Somerset and/or Morris County shared services cooperatives.
Officials said they are waiting to see which vendors are awarded contracts before deciding how to proceed.
“We’ll be doing some cooperative measure, I’m sure,” said Stanbury. “One thing I know is we’re not going back to the days when our public works employees picked up the carcasses.”
Well...why the fuck not?
While you are at the whole cooperative bidding stuff for deer carcasses, why not throw in some cooperative tax collection and School Boarding? You know to "keep costs as low as possible" for some of those other pesky burdens of local government?
