I was disappointed to see Mr. [John] Pfefferkorn's letter in last week's paper. Not because it attacked me, but because it contained such flagrant misrepresentations. I understand Mr. Pfefferkorn blames me for the fact he was never mayor, but that does not excuse his conduct.

I am not responsible for single-handedly cleaning up the financial disaster created on his watch, but for him to make the absurd claim I have done nothing is just sad. Pat Butch and Nancy Grbelja cleaned up our open space program. Bob Kinsey tackled our long-term debt crisis dumped on us by Pfefferkorn and [William] Nurko.

To John's dismay and anger, however, I did institute major financial reforms and eliminate pay-to-play in my first two years in office, some of the many things he promised to do, but never delivered.

When I took office, your tax dollars were sitting in account earning numbers like .05, 0.5 and 1 percent interest. At that time, the market rate was 2 percent or more. Not one single tax dollar was earning what it should. This cost you the taxpayers millions and results in a direct tax increase. While we have corrected this problem, we can never recover the lost money.

During Pfefferkorn's term, debt exploded from about $1 million to over $14 million. Our open space program went bankrupt. The chairs and members of the open space program submitted a resignation letter, which was so damning to Pfefferkorn that then-Committeeman Chet Halka felt the need to read the entire letter onto the record at a public meeting. John also had to apologize in public to the then chief financial officer for falsely stating she had been fired from her last job after she exposed the financial condition of the open space program.

To conceal the huge impact of this skyrocketing debt, John and the Democrats kept borrowing, only paid interest on debt, and used surplus to hide the impact.

That's right, John paid interest payments only, never earned us market-rate returns on our tax dollars, and used more surplus in one year than we are using this year. In fact, he used the entire surplus to pay operating costs, since they were not reducing the debt.

Yes, John is very proud that he supported spending over $4 million to pay for the Waters property, but the fact that the township paid instead of the school does not lower your overall tax rate, it just raises the municipal tax rate to lower the school tax rate the same amount. That does not save you, the taxpayer, a single penny. I don't criticize the plan, I just note it did nothing to help us taxpayers.

What John fails to mention is if he had started the process correctly, we could have received about $2 million in grants from the county and state for the land. Because he dropped the ball, we lost out. When I came to office, it was too late to get the $2 million. Fortunately, I was able to restructure the deal, over his opposition, to recover about $600,000 of the lost $2 million. You and I will have to pay the $1.4 million difference. Thanks, John.

That is the real difference between my philosophy on taxes and John's. He looks for one-time accounting tricks to move the same money around between the Board of Education and municipal balance sheets, but this creates no tax savings for you, just changes who you write the check to. I look for new revenue, new grants, financial savings and to make the developers pay their fair share, so you pay less.

We now have Committeemen Ray Dilfanian and Steve Sico to help find even more savings and put in more reform. Together the five of us on the Township Committee, along with your township employees, professionals and volunteers, will continue to work to stabilize your taxes.

For the first time in Millstone's history, we have a plan to bring in clean ratables on Route 33 to help offset the cost of our new school brought on by the rampant development of the past. Why John and others thought concrete plants, asphalt plants and strip malls were the answer, we will never know.

Please remember, it is easy to make up numbers and misstate facts, but the truth never changes. Don't take my word for it, and for God's sake don't ever listen to Pfefferkorn. Take the time to come to the meetings and seek the facts yourself.

Elias Abilheira

Millstone Township Committee