JACKSON – The township’s open space fund is being audited and Council President Jennifer Kuhn said she was alarmed to learn where some of the open space money has gone.
“There are things on the bills list that I’m seeing now that I have to sign because we have no business administrator, so I am the second signature on all the bills so I get to see what is going on and I’ve been questioning it,” she said. “We are the purse for the town.”
She added, “we really need to look and see where our money is going. So, I am questioning, where is it all going? I did not get the audit that I requested but I got a statement of the account. I looked over it. I’m not an accountant and I questioned $2.1 million levy that was put into so I did call our new CFO (chief financial officer) who explained it was from taxes from November 2024.”
Kuhn said she was looking at all the money being spent on “all these beautiful, beautiful, beautiful parks and I think it is amazing. The kids are happy. I see them playing there. I visit them but why are we not using grant money?”
“Why because we were denied grant money this year. We lost a grant for $750,000. I was wondering why are we spending open space money for parks when we have grants? We have millions of dollars out there. It’s because we can’t approval for a lot of these grants because we are incompliant for over decades,” she said.
Vista Center and Johnson Park are not in compliance for certain grants, she said. “That is why I think for the last year and a half that there haven’t been any grants submitted and we’ve been using open space money.”
The open space fund is a tax collected from all property owners. It can be spent to acquire open space to keep it from development. It can also be used to maintain open space, such as parks.
Kuhn said grant writers would be working on finding grants. Meanwhile, the town will start preserving more land for 2025.
Budget Coming
As to the township’s budget that has had a delayed introduction and is expected to be presented this month, Kuhn said she and Council Vice President Mordechai Burnstein have met with the township’s auditors, the interim CFO and the new CFO. The meeting ran about two hours “and we went through everything.”
She held up the audit book while seated at the dais and said that there was more than $1 million in funded unused money from ordinances that were approved since 2007.
When a large project, such as roadwork, is funded through an ordinance, there is sometimes money left over if the project came in under budget.
“We cannot have that,” Kuhn said noting that the township’s EMS is struggling and that grants for their infrastructure needs were being sought. “We are going to put pressure on our administration. We don’t want to lose our EMS. They need new equipment. They need a lot of new stuff.”
Traffic Concerns
The township’s Farmers Market has been doing well on Thursday afternoons so far as turnout goes. Kuhn previously expressed some concerns about potential traffic in the summer within the vicinity of the Justice Complex where the Farmers Market is held and the possibility of it moving to Johnson Park. She told The Jackson Times more recently that the location of the market will however remain within the Justice Complex field.
“With the summer months coming up we also have to make sure that the Justice Complex parks and fields are available to use while still supporting the Farmers Market,” she added.
The township has been looking at specific roads within the community that have brought complaints and concerns before the dais by residents and traffic monitoring devices have been employed for several months now recording various statistics.
Kuhn reported the Brewers Road statistics that noted the average speed at 40 miles per hour (mph) and 8,051 cars on that road daily. Nature Boulevard, between April 10-16, showed the average speed to be 34 to 38 mph and 1,914 vehicles on that road daily.
