OPINIONS & COMMENTARY

eDitoriAl

Should Towns Ban New Gas Stations?

It seems there’s a gas station every mile or so on major roads, unless, of course, you’re running near empty. Then, you can’t find any.

Do we really need so many? Maybe at rush hour. And sure, the tourist traffic.

I can’t help but think we’re making a mistake in letting them be built all over the place. With the rise of electric cars, will gas stations be a fossil?

When a gas station closes down, it sits there forever. That’s because there’s really nothing else that property can be anymore. Those tanks can leak, poisoning the ground and eventually drifting into the aquifer. There’s also petroleum runoff from vehicles driving on them.

Every single gas station you see on the road today will likely be there forever. Think about that. Every single one.

The land is too small for a redeveloper to buy it, knock it down, and build something different on it. And even if they did, they’d have to install monitoring wells and get inspections and soil sampling. It would be too costly. There’s nothing they can build on that small lot to earn that much money back.

Letters To The Editor

Towns should not allow any new gas stations to be built, knowing that one day, decades from now, it will be an environmental mini-disaster and an eyesore.

However, maybe this electric car thing will be a fad.

An April 11, 2023 article in The New York Times said that 5.8% of vehicles bought last year were electric. That’s nowhere near the White House’s plan to have half of new car sales be electric by 2030.

Still, a lot of car companies are following that trend and making electric options.

A lot can change. The control of the federal government and its rules. Manufacturers might invent something different than gas or electric engines 20 years from now.

But one thing that won’t change is the gas station itself. That’ll be there for the rest of your life...and it will be there long after you and I are gone.

Town officials have the ability to choose what businesses go where. They need to give more thought to where gas stations get built, because once they are, they are here to stay.

Chris Lundy News Editor

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The Manchester Times welcomes all points of view for publication and provides this page as an open forum for residents to express themselves regarding politics, government, current events and local concerns.

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Criminals Get Legally Bought Guns

One of the biggest arguments for the widespread protection of gun rights is “If you make owning a gun criminal, only criminals will have guns.” But no one asks where these guns are coming from in the first place. Where are criminals getting them? Every single firearm was legally purchased at some point.

There are a ton of statistics out there about where criminals are getting their guns. You’ll hear people say “Most criminals get their guns illegally, so tougher gun enforcement laws won’t change that.” suffer while the State funds nonessential projects like a $45 million pilot program for electric school buses when it fails to address the essential components of a student’s education? There is a simple solution to this problem. Governor Murphy, will you help the children of Marlboro now?”

This ignores the fact that every gun was purchased legally...the first time. Gun manufacturers aren’t just selling guns out of the back of their factory to gang members. They make legal sales to stores. Stores make legal sales to people. Most of those people are law-abiding citizens and no one has to worry about them.

But then, something happens. That law abiding citizen sells the gun at a gun show or on the internet to someone who then uses it in a crime.

But if you look at the stats further, those 43% of criminals who bought the guns on the black market? Those black market guns were all legally bought at stores before they made it to the black market.

According to federal statistics (nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/ public-mass-shootings-database-amasses-details-halfcentury-us-mass-shootings), 77% of mass shootings in the past half century were done with legally-purchased guns. Again, this stat fails because 100% of these guns were bought legally the first time. The only way to stop illegal purchases of guns is to stop the legal purchases of guns as well. It always starts with a legal sale.

This is unrealistic because America will never give up its love affair with guns, but the point I’m making is to stop selling machine guns. If you stopped selling machine guns at stores, then eventually they won’t make it down to the criminal on the street.

People say “I need a gun to protect myself from criminals who have guns.” It doesn’t start with criminals. It starts with legal purchases every time.

“I was shocked to learn from our residents that the Freehold Regional High School district will be eliminating bus routes for students who live within a 2.5 mile radius of the schools due to the loss of approximately $6 million of state aid. I know our State leaders, Senator O’Scanlon, Assemblywoman Flynn and Assemblyman Scharfenberger have been tireless advocates for restoring state aid to schools that suffered severe losses here in Monmouth County.

It is my understanding that these requests have fallen on the deaf ears of the Acting Commissioner of Education, who has openly refused to address these funding cuts, almost as if it is above her pay grade and not within her authority. But, in reality, the Department should prioritize this issue, especially since there is an answer to this funding shortfall - the Governor can restore all state aid cuts by including those funds in the 2024 FY State Budget.

To date, the Governor and the Acting Commissioner of Education have refused to do so despite calls by our state elected officials to address this funding gap immediately.

Juned Qazi

Marlboro Council President

TR Schools: Don’t Use Long Term Money For Current Expenses

Editor’s note: This letter is in response to the school’s plan to sell land next to Silver Bay Elementary to the township for open space.

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According to Fox News ( foxnews.com/us/where-docriminals-get-guns), legally purchased guns get into other people’s hands illegally by one of three ways. The first is a private transaction at a gun show or some other person-to-person situation. The second is when someone buys a gun legally as part of a criminal scheme to sell it to someone who later uses it for crime. The third is theft.

A 2016 survey released in 2019 by the Department of Justice (DOJ) found that some 43% of criminals had bought their firearms on the black market, 6 percent acquired them via theft, and 0.8 percent purchased a weapon from a gun show. Fox News quotes this survey but doesn’t include the fact that the survey supported Red Flag laws and other regulations like gun safes.

Any gun you own right now will eventually wind up in someone else’s hands. What will they do with it?

Chris Trawley Brick

Governor Needs To Reinstate School Funding

On behalf of the Marlboro Township Council, Council President Juned Qazi issued the following statement demanding that Governor Murphy and the Acting Commissioner of Education Allen-McMillan immediately restore state aid funding to the Freehold Regional High School District to avoid having students being forced to walk to school along busy and treacherous roadways which are not suitable for pedestrian use.

On behalf of Marlboro families and children, we implore the Governor to restore our state aid so that the students of Marlboro may travel safely to school in the upcoming school year. The mysterious state aid formula was prepared prior to the pandemic, when no one could have imagined the challenges schools are now facing due to learning loss, mental health costs, and never mind the astronomical increases in transportation costs – bussing costs alone have increased for schools over past year by 30%.

Why has the Department of Education left this to the towns to address? We cannot address those increases in costs within the budgetary cap limits imposed upon school districts and municipalities.

What is most frustrating is that the State has billions in reserves that can address this funding shortfall – why are the kids of Marlboro left to

The TR Regional School District should not use long term money for current expenses, specifically to sell land which is part of school property to TR Township and use the proceeds for current expenses. A small part over each of 5 to 10 years may be allowable, or all could be spent in one year for a significant purchase intended for use over many years, maybe, such as audio-visual learning (alone or along with other regional schools) to teach students and review with teachers giving very important support, but as I said, not for current expenses. My undergraduate and/ or graduate degrees were in Political Science, Psychology, Management, and Finance including budgeting along with considerable experience in many of those areas especially budgeting and digital information.

Two or three decades ago New Jersey used long-term bond money to pay budgeted current expenses to get voter approval by meeting the budget; some people have never forgotten that violation. Maybe the governor and legislature knew no better.

Walter “Mac” McInerney Toms River