NOVEMBER 2018
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Bracketing comes to ballots Experts express concern over potential for voter confusion in school board elections By ROB ANThes
ranthes@communitynews.org
Ballots in New Jersey look a little different this year, and the change has experts and officials concerned about the potential for Election Day confusion. A law signed by Gov. Phil Murphy May 30 allows Board of Education candidates to file joint nominating petitions and to be bracketed on the ballot.
The change to petitions has little effect on voters. But allowing school board candidates to be grouped together—similar to candidates of the same party for political office—has altered how county clerks construct the ballot, and ultimately changed the appearance of the final product voters see on voteby-mail ballots and in booths on Election Day. This change in appearance is what worries some, especially because no one knows what the effects of the change will be. The law calls for the initial elections with bracketing to be used as a study period for lawmakers. Much of the burden falls to county clerks, who have been
left no choice but to obey the law with little guidance on how to enact it. Ballots already looked differently in every county in New Jersey, and clerks across the state have had to figure out how to best layout the ballot with the addition of bracketing. In Mercer County, clerk Paula Sollami Covello has added a bold blue line across the ballot to separate races for political office from the school board election. This alteration will appear in every Mercer municipality, but only three will also have bracketed candidates: Hamilton, Lawrence and Robbinsville. Voters in each of these See BRACKET, Page 4
Billtrust sets sights on global commerce The Lawrence headquarters opened Sept. 24 By DiccON hyATT
Nox Young plays cornhole at Lawrence Community Day, held Oct. 7, 2018 at Village Park. For more photos, turn to Page 17. (Photo by Suzette J. Lucas.)
When Flint Lane founded Billtrust 17 years ago, the electronic billing field was crowded. Most people recognized that electronic payments would be faster and more efficient than the old “checks in the mail” system that sent billions of dollars through the U.S. postal service every week. But Billtrust had an important advantage over its many competitors: in addition to offering electronic payments, it still had a foot in the paper world, offering printing services as well. By 2001 most companies had concluded that electronic billing was the future. “We were not the only ones who reached that conclusion,” says Lane, who is
still CEO of his company. “We did solve it differently. Many companies offered electronic billing only, but we believed that was a flawed approach. We believed that businesses don’t want to buy e-billing on its own, and a paper billing company on its own. We believed they wanted one billing company. We were willing to build paper mail capabilities, and use it as a marketing vehicle to drive adoption of electronic billing. A lot of people thought we were crazy in the early days because we were building print mail facilities.” If anything, Flint Lane turned out to be crazy like a fox. Last week, Billtrust celebrated the opening of its new headquarters at 1009 Lenox Drive, a 90,000-square-foot facility in Princeton Pike Corporate Center. Bradford Fenlon of Colliers International represented Billtrust in the transaction, while
Steve Tolkach of Newmark Knight Frank represented Vision Real Estate Partners, owners of the Lenox Drive complex. The Lawrenceville space is the company’s sixth headquarters since its founding. Today Billtrust counts CocaCola, Federal Express, Staples, and many more of America’s largest corporations as its clients. Lane says Billtrust now employs 500 people between its corporate headquarters, two additional corporate offices in Chicago and Denver, and its three print mail facilities (in California, Illinois, and at 11 South Gold Drive in Robbinsville.) He expects the company to have more than 1,000 workers over the next three or four years. The facility at 1009 Lenox Drive was featured in a U.S. 1 article highlighting the transformation of 1980s-era office buildSee BILLTRUST, Page 6
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