An inclusive government includes people of differing opinions insuring an open and honest government where effective and innovative solutions insure lower taxes and better answers. While our mayor and deputy mayor have run on a platform of open government they have created an extremely insular and closed government limiting important processes to those few people who agree with them 100 percent.

While the mayor claims I do not communicate with her and the deputy mayor, it is painfully obvious that in fact it is they who will not communicate with those like me, who care and want to help, but happen to disagree with them sometimes. There are numerous examples of this on the public record, but the only one I want to address here is our critical need to avoid high-density zoning and stop sewage treatment facilities from harming watersheds and our opening our town to more high density developments.

The closed nature of the current administration is flagrant and must end to avoid the devastating tax increases it is driving us towards. The most recent example of this closed process is the COAH plan the mayor and deputy mayor are advancing to allow a sewage treatment plant and high-density apartments in our town. The COAH plan for multiple units per acre serviced by a sewage treatment plant is something they ridiculed their political opponents for suggesting, and promised to never allow in Millstone. Now we have a COAH fiasco with the very sewage treatment plant and high-density apartments they promised they would never allow in Millstone as their only solution. I am sure you all remember those little blue signs put out all over town when Mr. Kinsey ran for election: "No condos. No sewers." Well the mayor claims she had public meetings, but if you review the meeting tapes at no time until Oct. 22, 2008 did she ever hint that there would be a sewage treatment plant in our town. As with the Economic Development Committee, State Police and other issues, I am excluded from the work groups, and will not be given agendas, minutes, or requested information until it is provided to the public. The transcript of the Oct. 22, 2008 meeting clearly shows the mayor admitting that they had no intention of revealing the sewage treatment facility until just before the meeting, stating that if they did people could criticize it before it was final. As I write this, despite many requests upon which the press has been copied, I still have not received 90 percent of the COAH Work Group (CWG) material I have been asking for since Oct. 20, 2008, when the mayor first decided I could know about her plan.

The fact is there are numerous ways to solve our COAH obligation without a sewage treatment plant and high density apartments. The only reason we are now in dire straights to get these solutions in place is due to the long standing systematic practice of senior elected officials in excluding me and members of the public not 100 percent loyal to their agenda from the operations

of your government.

If this were an inclusive government, and the mayor had fully informed everyone of the "brick wall" she claims the CWG encountered in August, numerous options could easily have been advanced to submit to COAH, which would exclude sewage facilities and high density apartments and condos, I assure you of that. Instead they continued to work in secret only negotiating with a pre-selected landowner and claimed there is no solution but one, a fact that has proven to be erroneous. We could easily have worked together to find a solution as the government and residents did in 2001-02 to achieve the 10-acre zoning. Back then before she was an elected official, the mayor was allowed to attend and give comments at numerous public meetings organized by the administration to afford everyone the opportunity to voice an opinion before a final plan was decided and without the last minute pressure of a deadline with no options.

There remain options and alternative solutions to our COAH obligation, and if the current administration had been inclusive we would have them in place with time to spare. It is really sad that Nancy and Bob insist on excluding one of your elected officials from information that you the taxpayers are entitled to have questioned. The public is entitled to a timely full disclosure on subjects so critical to the welfare of this community. Until you force them to provide an open government, we will continue to incur damage to our stoic Millstone, waste thousands of dollars in unnecessary cost and have to continue to file and defend costly lawsuit after lawsuit to clean up their mistakes.

The bottom line: No sewage treatment plants and high density condos and apartments in our rural town ever. I won't budge on this promise. No elected official or volunteer should sleep until it is made a reality. A vote by anyone to allow it, even if it could possibly be removed later, is a violation of every promise your elected officials made, and the trust you give to the board members who have been appointed to protect our community.

We are at this point for two reasons, Mayor Nancy Grbelja and Deputy Mayor Bob Kinsey. The mayors' shrill claim at a meeting that this plan is not hers is shameful. She is our mayor, our chief executive, and is accountable for the results of her administration. She is the head of our 2-yearold CWG and she has proposed and voted to advance the concept of sewage treatment plants and high-density apartments into our community when it is not necessary. If it is not her plan and she does not approve it why does she keep voting for it and keep trying to ram it through?
Elias Abilheira
Township Committeeman
Millstone