Kid wonders why his town is filled with clowns

It’s crap like this makes us look like idiots to the rest of the world. And they’d be right. You’ll need to read the whole article to see just how goofy it’s all become.

And it all started with a schoolyard spat

It began on a wintry Friday afternoon in December 2003, when a snowstorm led to early dismissal at the Union Township Elementary School in Hunterdon County.

As parents arrived to pick up their children and a line of cars formed along Route 625, local school board member Barri Beck noticed fellow parent Wally Heaps parked in a nonhandicapped spot.

Since Heaps had a permit to park in a handicapped space, Beck asked him if he might move to one, freeing up a regular space for another parent.

His response, which later be came court record, was terse.

“Go harass somebody else. I can park where I want,” he said.

“It was probably none of my business,” Beck said recently. “I just thought it would be nice for him to let another parent park.”

“That,” she said, “is when the hell began.”

That singular incident — and the endless enmity it spawned between Beck and the school board she used to sit on — has plunged this Hunterdon County township of 6,400 people into a series of ethics charges and legal actions that have cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Heaps began making a series of formal complaints to school officials. Beck said one complaint was that, as a homeroom mother, she didn’t give Heaps’ son sprinkles during an ice cream social.

“The sprinkles were self- serve,” Beck said. “I was on whip cream duty that day.”