Hightstown Councilman Patrick Thompson On School Budget and Taxes

Remember the self-proclaimed loud Hightstown Councilman Patrick Thompson trying to drum up support for overturning the voter’s wishes on the rejected Hightstown-East Windsor school budget? Thompson’s wrote a post on Blue Jersey to explain: “Why will I not be supporting any cuts and why will I be aggressively encouraging all of my counterparts to do the same.”

We wrote a post in response to Councilman Thompson’s post, pointing out the errors in the facts and logic he used in his entreaty. Well, now it seems as though Thompson’s constituents have persuaded him to change his position - he’s done a complete 180.

The Hightstown Borough Council and East Windsor Township Council cut $490,250 in capital outlay projects from the rejected East Windsor Regional School District Budget at a joint meeting that ended in discord.

The Hightstown Borough Council voted 4 to 1 with Councilwoman Constance Harendza-Harinxma absent. Councilman Patrick Thompson voted against approving the budget, revised to total $73,094,466 million.

He said the reduction would save a homeowner just $10, which was an inadequate response to a budget defeat of 1,178 to 967. "We have heard loud and clear from the public that taxes are too high," he said.

Yep, Hightstown Councilman Patrick Thompson doesn’t believe the cuts to the Hightstown-East Windsor school budget have gone far enough. Less than three weeks ago Thompson was adamantly opposed to any cuts in the school budget and was complaining federal, state and local taxes weren’t high enough. What an amazing turn around.

This proves that there is hope for even the loudest, most “progressive” politicians to see sense and do the right thing by taxpayers. Perhaps Hightstown Councilman Patrick Thompson will write a follow-up post on Blue Jersey explaining why he so completely changed his position. It’s an explanation that would surely enlighten many Blue Jersey readers.

Update: Hightstown Councilman Patrick Thompson has written to explain the Trenton Times reporter got it wrong and that the article linked above does not accurately reflect his remarks at the combined town council meeting last Thursday. Thompson’s email also explained he voted “no” on the revised budget for the reasons he expressed in his original post that began this discussion.

Links to New Jersey newspaper articles typically do not remain live for long. So we have posted the complete Times article to go along with a clarification Thompson wrote on the Times piece in the comments section. Thomson emailed us a link to an article from the Windsor-Hights Herald which we have also posted in the comments to this post.

The original title to this post - “Hightstown Councilman Patrick Thompson Says School Budget Cuts "Inadequate’’ reflected the Trenton Times article. But now that we have learned directly from Thompson that no amazing turnaround occurred, we have agreed to change our “irksome” post title. Blog posts on the web last a lot longer than newspaper articles, so now the the record should be clear and complete on this matter for all future readers.