Inganamort Unveils His Big Plan for Small Towns
\Mike Inganamort knows small towns.
Well, his small town.
Raised in Sparta, a 37-square-mile community centered around a manmade lake, its boardwalk and downtown, Inganamort and his wife Lauren knew they wanted to build their big dreams for their family on small-town values. They rooted in Chester Township, with its picturesque main street lined with trees and quaint storefronts that house 80 diverse Mom-and-Pop shops, catering to its 7,000-plus residents and thousands of visitors year-round. The now family-of-five are ever-present on Chester’s brick sidewalks where they will grab a biscotti or slice of pizza.
Sparta and Chester. Two small towns, with their Main streets and favorite local eateries, close-knit neighborhoods, and unique Colonial-era history. There are 426 of these small towns with 20,000 or fewer residents throughout the Garden State. The similarities, however, end there. Sparta isn’t Chester isn’t Dumont isn’t Point Pleasant Beach isn’t Haddonfield isn’t Cape May. Each is a small town with its own unique character and challenges.
But someone forgot to tell Trenton.
The Trenton bureaucracy—a triumvirate hailing from big towns and cities—passes legislation and more legislation that wreaks havoc on small-town budgets. As a councilman and mayor in Chester Township for six years, Inganamort could only try to make the numbers work without degrading services to his residents, or worse, raising taxes.
“It’s one thing to deal with regulations and taxes as a home- and business-owner. It’s another challenge as a mayor. Trenton doesn’t understand small towns, it doesn’t understand that there aren’t one-size-fits-all mandates to issues that they, quite frankly, are creating,” Inganamort (R-Morris) said. “In local government, we found creative ways to meet the challenges that shouldn’t have been there to begin with, but clearly we would have been better off had the State not imposed so many onerous mandates on us in the first place.”
Inganamort is an Assemblyman now, and he’s there to tell Trenton: Back off. Let small towns govern themselves.
This week he’s championing a bill package aptly named “New Jersey’s Small Town Rescue Plan.” Its premise, while sweeping, is simple: rollback onerous government mandates, bring back home rule, and watch the burdens on taxpayers ease.
“New Jersey has a history of micromanaging its 564 municipalities, without considering what makes each unique: population, density, open space, public water, sewer or transportation,” Inganamort added. “The results have been across the board a disaster. Small towns need rescuing.”
His vision to bring back robust local communities includes providing tax relief for small businesses (A4629), and partnering with fellow legislators to give promised property tax relief from energy tax receipts back to municipalities (A2991), and ensure schools get their fair share in state aid (A189). He also wants the state out of issues such as tree removal (A4260) and dictating impervious surface requirements (A3357), leaving that to local municipalities to best decide.
“As a former councilman and mayor, I want municipalities of any size to be able to make decisions based on what is best for that specific town,” Inganamort said. “The Small Town Rescue Plan is a blueprint to achieve that goal, and reflects the specific challenges we’ve faced in local government. In the Assembly, I am intent to be that voice for small towns.”
A pdf of the bill package can be found here.
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