Hmmm… A couple of highly paid assistants, a few dozen runs to Starbucks and lobster lunches on the state credit card, or any number of other executive level perks vs. public toilets for taxpayers and tourists who spend money in the state plus firing a bunch of low paid workers who really need paychecks. Yup. The choice is obvious.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie wants to shut the last two rest-stop bathrooms on non-toll roads in the most densely populated U.S. state after this year to save $270,000.
“We just don’t have the money for the bathroom facilities,” Christie’s transportation commissioner, James Simpson, told members of the Senate Budget and Appropriations committee today during a hearing on his department’s $1.24 billion budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
[…]
The closings will eliminate 18 maintenance positions, according to the department’s written response to questions from the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services.
[…]
Christie, a Republican who took office Jan. 19, last month proposed a $29.3 billion budget that includes $10 billion of spending reductions to help close a $10.7 billion deficit.
Found by Mr. Kevin
I drove through Arizona a few weeks ago. Most of the rest areas were closed. “So what?” you might ask? Well, Arizona is a thinly populated state outside of Tucson, Phoenix, Kingman, and Flagstaff. Many interchanges just lead to ranches. There’s literally nowhere to make a pit stop on long stretches of Interstate.
New Mexico, where I live, has the same rest area financial problem, and the State is now proposing that several existing rest areas be closed. Again, nowhere to go for miles, except for a few filling stations.
#19 is right. Since Christie took over my property taxes went up over 100 dollars/month.
So much for not raising taxes.
Christie’s administration’s staff pay has risen more than this “thrift” saves.
I think the gov’t should maintain the roads and deliver the mail .
#36,
If you think that rest stops aren’t neccessary to a well-operated and safe road, you are as dumb as the rest of the Right.
No, 37, I think rest stops are an important, even essential part of travel. I ain’t no ignorant Commie, are you?
#38,
My mistake, I thought you were for this action. I misunderstood your thrust, as I sometimes mistake sincerity for sarcasm. Sorry.
The former governor of New Jersey knew the value of a good rest stop. In Jim McGreevey’s memoir he wrote, about rest stops.
From Wikipedia, “In The Confession, McGreevey described the duality of his life before he came out as gay: ‘As glorious and meaningful as it would have been to have a loving and sound sexual experience with another man, I knew I’d have to undo my happiness step by step as I began chasing my dream of a public career and the kind of ‘acceptable’ life that went with it. So, instead, I settled for the detached anonymity of bookstores and rest stops – a compromise, but one that was wholly unfulfilling and morally unsatisfactory.'”
isn’t new jersey a bathroom in itself?
18 maintenance positions. 18? You know last time I was on the tollway and the traffic was jammed my wife had to use the restroom, she walked towards the trees only to be told she would be arrested.
Tea baggers are so full of crap they don’t understand why others might want to excrete instead.
It is time to raise taxes to pay for the things we want.
It is bad enough that public toilets are not children friendly and now they are even closing them down.
One of the problems on public toilets is its availability are not child friendly. My daughter and I are almost always traveling from our place to her grandparents. One time we had to travel back home because my daughter had to pee. She couldn’t use the toilet seat in the public bathroom because its too big for her. Our toilet seats at home are all family seats. A family toilet seat is a two in one toilet seat that offers an adult size toilet seat and a child size toilet seat which makes it easy to use even for children.
Instead of shutting down public toilets, why don’t government come up with a cost efficient bathroom design that are suitable for both adults and children. The convenience that a public toilet are highly useful and we don’t just let something useful close down.