Wards initiative defeated BY CHRIS GAETANO Staff Writer EDISON - Edison voters rejected a pair of initiatives that would have increased the number of council members by two and split Edison into five different wards, each with its own representative on the Township Council. The other four seats on council would be at-large representation, as they are now. The morning after Election Day, the tally showed that 14,776 voters had decided against the proposal while 11,033 had voted in favor of it. Middlesex County Clerk Elaine Flynn said there was still one computer in Edison that needed to be unlocked, and so the vote totals might be marginally different when the final results are tabulated. Opponents of the ward system, one of the most vocal being Edison Mayor Jun Choi, were pleased with the vote's result. "When it comes to the rejection of the wards, that's a statement that the people of Edison want to keep Edison together," said Choi. Choi and other opponents had previously said that they opposed the ward system because of their concerns that its institution would lead to increased taxes and what the mayor said would be a "divided community." The logic of this argument was that ward council members would not think of Edison as a whole when making decisions - only their own wards. Consequently, council members would squander public money pursuing pet projects designed to endear them to their constituents, with quid-pro-quo politicking being the way to secure support for them. Opponents had also said that the transition to a wards system would cost at least $500,000 for attorneys, demographers and other expenses, something that supporters vigorously dispute. "The lies they told as far as the costs [was why the wards vote failed]. There's no other word. We were sidestepping [during the campaign] and saying 'misinformation.' It wasn't misinformation, they were lies. It was not going to cost $500,000, it was not going to increase our taxes - only [Choi's] overspending is going to do that," said councilwoman Antonia Ricigliano, who was in favor of the wards system. Ernest Reock, professor emeritus at the Center for Government Services at Rutgers University, who advises municipalities seeking to change their organizational system, had also disputed the financial hazards of a wards system, including the transition costs talked about by opponents. Toms River Mayor Paul Brush, whose town recently underwent a change to a wards system, also disagreed with this assessment, though he had said he does not support a wards system because he believes it does lead council members to focus only on their own district and not on the town as a whole. Supporters of a wards system asserted that it would increase representation on the council and help residents hold their government more accountable. Further, it was said that wards would increase the quality of government because ward council members would be more familiar with the issues facing their particular district, since they live there. It was also said that ward representation would make government more accessible to the people because candidates for council would not need to cover as large an area when campaigning and thus would not need to spend as much money, and would therefore be less inclined to cave in to special interests. The measure was proposed and had gained significant traction in 2003, but when the question was finally placed before the residents, it ended up failing by 29 votes. According to procedural rules, four years had to pass before the question could be brought up again. Supporters wasted no time in bringing the issue back for another round, with the council voting to put it back on the ballot this past summer. Since then, people on both sides had attempted to rally Edison's roughly 100,000 people to their point of view through forums, fliers, buttons and lawn signs. Over the course of the campaign, ward supporters became especially angry about a series of full-color mailers and fliers that used the disputed $500,000 figure as a sharp stick against the initiative. Many questioned where the money to send the mailers was coming from. Ricigliano also said that the mayor had declined to televise a series of informational forums that she and others had held in the council chambers. This made it difficult, she said, to inform the public. "We were stonewalled. We had two informational forums, which the mayor would not allow us to air on TV," said Ricigliano. She also said that the signs posted by the group Americans for Prosperity, which had been attempting to defeat a number of statewide ballot initiatives, had also been a factor. The signs told voters to say no to higher taxes and to vote no on all ballot initiatives. Steve Lonegan, the group's executive director for New Jersey, said that he doesn't know whether the signs on the state initiatives had an impact on the local referendum, but said that they probably did help in defeating the other questions his group was concerned with, such as the stem cell research bond. With the initiative's defeat, the wards issue will not come up again for at least another four years. It is not known if it will rise again after that time. "I don't know what's going to happen in four years. I don't know. We'll see what happens. I'm not going to say yes, I'm not going to say no," said Ricigliano.