East Brunswick's spending on newspaper unjustified
If publishing the East Brunswick Quarterly costs the township $25,000 per year, as Township Councilman David Stahl recently pointed out, then the publication should be scrapped. Stahl and Councilwoman Catherine Diem both favor doing so, but unfortunately they represented a minority voice on the issue during recent discussions.

The governing body's decision to continue funding the publication seems almost hypocritical at this point, since it ordered that the East Brunswick Board of Education cut $1 million from the defeated school budget, and school publications were among the 28 areas the board cut to achieve those savings. School officials said they would increase communications and interaction through outlets such as the district Web site, which the township could do as well.

The Township Council has had a solid year of making school and municipal budget cuts to help taxpayers avoid further increases in a difficult economic period, but to continue funding the township newspaper, which was started in 2005 and was supposed to become self-funding, doesn't make sense. The newspaper is published on behalf of the township by Jaffe Communications, of Westfield. The content, including news articles, a mayor's column and general town information, is approved by the mayor's office before being mailed to all residents.

Towns, and East Brunswick in particular, have plenty of ways to communicate with residents without spending a lot of money on a newspaper. These include their Web site, the local cable TV channel, mailings such as calendars, and event postings and articles in area newspapers. The township did a good job of providing information before the newspaper, and it could continue to do so without spending thousands of dollars unnecessarily.

Mayor William Neary has been a proponent of the newspaper, but he is not seeking reelection. His successor should abolish it. We would hope that Stahl, who is the Democratic candidate for mayor, would do just that, if elected. Stahl referred to the publication as "a luxury," and said the funding for it could be diverted to more useful services for residents. Here's another idea: Give the money back to taxpayers.

It's not a good economic time for municipalities to fund luxuries. The council majority has looked hard at the budget and cut similar unnecessary expenses this year. Removing this line item should have been a no-brainer.