The poll of registered voters found that 90 percent agree that the state budget is in a serious fiscal crisis. Sixty-nine percent said state government has not managed its finances well over the past three years.

And 58 percent don’t think the state government is in a good position to deal with the current financial crisis.

However, only 22 percent have read or heard a lot about Corzine’s state budget plan, the poll says.

I would link the Daily Record article, but they pull their articles offline after a few days and you wouldn’t be able to get there (just go to their site and look for it today – should be one of the top stories). The article shows the inherent bias in New Jersey’s major media outlets in favor of Governor Corzine with lines such as, “Corzine has ‘not been doing a good job communicating the soundness of this budget or the necessity of the cuts that he’s making,’ Murray said.” Really? A reporter actually took this obviously biased quote from the Director of the Polling Institute and used it verbatim in the article? So anyone reading this article quickly may only recall later on that Corzine has a sound budget and that cuts are a necessity. Moronic work on behalf of Gannett.

Those of us who live in New Jersey can feel the change coming. Governor Money Bags ran on a platform of understanding that the common man in New Jersey is hurting and struggling to make ends meet under the weight of the state’s taxes with property taxes being the biggest burden. So what does he do? He increases the sales tax, does away with the property tax rebate, and adds a large variety of new taxes and fees. Governor Corzine has broken the back of New Jersey’s middle class. If such strong familial and community bonds didn’t exist throughout this state, we’d be losing people left and right to our neighboring states.

Corzine is ripe to be kicked out of office…now let’s see if the Republicans can put up a decent enough candidate in Chris Christie to actually change this state for the good!

Now, Councilman Gerald Briscione is looking into ways to relieve borough property owners. “We did the revaluation at the top of the market, but we were forced to,” said Briscione, noting that the state orders such measures and the county Board of Taxation enforces it.

Briscione said he did an analysis of property sales from November 2008 through the middle of January, and found the overwhelming majority of properties listed for sale were now assessed at 163 percent of market value.

During a time when people are looking for immediate tax relief and “change,” is there a better way to deliver it than at the local level? Coucilman Briscione understands what his constituents have to deal with better than anyone at the national or even state levels of government, so why not undertake immediate change right now? The article went on to talk about how the township is considering holding off on revaluing the properties until this summer to see if the real estate market stabilizes.

This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what the problem is with the real estate market in the first place! The market was in a bubble because prices were inflated – dramatically inflated. Apparently values were inflated some 63% in Oceanport, but the percentages vary around the nation. Due to this inflation, many people woke up one morning to the harsh reality that the home they live in is NOT worth what they were led to believe. In other words, even if the market stabilizes, the value of these properties is not going to shoot up 63%!

The best path forward in Oceanport is to do the revaluations and put this issue to bed. If that doesn’t happen, then I have to imagine that there will be a flood of tax appeals coming in the near future.