Mayor Dave Mayer Gloucester Township Mayor Mayer Recall Mayor Dave Mayer Gloucester Township Nationwide

 Massive tax hike energizes opponents of politics as usual in Gloucester Township More than 150 people jammed a "Tax Revolt" meeting Wednesday evening in Gloucester Township. I'd never been invited to a revolution until I printed out my ticket to Wednesday's “Gloucester Township Tax Revolt” meeting. Organized via an event app and publicized on social media, the gathering at a Blackwood Knights of Columbus hall drew more than 150 residents of a township where property taxes have risen 74 percent since 2008. “This whole anger grew organically,” organizer Pete Heinbaugh said. “It wasn't inflamed by party or interest groups. People got their tax bills and finally decided enough is enough.” More than 150 people jammed a "Tax Revolt" meeting Wednesday evening in Gloucester Township. I'd never been invited to a revolution until I printed out my ticket to Wednesday's “Gloucester Township Tax Revolt” meeting. Organized via an event app and publicized on social media, the gathering at a Blackwood Knights of Columbus hall drew more than 150 residents of a township where property taxes have risen 74 percent since 2008. “This whole anger grew organically,” organizer Pete Heinbaugh said. “It wasn't inflamed by party or interest groups. People got their tax bills and finally decided enough is enough.” Official reassurances about savings in the cost of municipal operations -- which always seem to yield more spending -- mean little to people worried whether they'll be forced to leave a community they love for less-expensive jurisdictions. And controversial, big-ticket municipal expenditures are tough for many residents to swallow. Especially those now-infamous recreational turf fields that bring to my mind the garish fake grass at the Gloucester Premium Outlets development. That handsome shopping complex off Route 42 received the sort of property tax break regular people in neighborhoods like Erial, Glendora and Glen Landing can only dream about. “I'm hoping my wife and I can stay in our community,” Ryan Baines, a 41-year-old medical technician, told me outside Wednesday's meeting. “I want to get more involved.” Indeed, although various Tax Revolt pages on Facebook display exciting photos of “no taxation without competent representation” signs, the general tone in Blackwood was more civic-minded than confrontational. That's saying something in Gloucester Township, a working class/middle class suburb with a history of sharp-elbowed politics. "We're not so angry that we're saying, 'don't pay your tax bill,'" Heinbaugh, a retired accountant who ran on the unsuccessful GOP ticket for township council in 2015. The “Revolt Meeting Agenda” distributed at the door insisted that the gathering was not meant to be a political rally. But local Republican leaders and would-be candidates in next year's municipal election spoke about replacing the current all-Democratic council. And Bob Patterson, a Republican challenging Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Donald Norcoss in November, pressed the flesh before and after. "Fill that council chamber up," said organizer and township Republican chairman Ray Polidoro, one of a handful of residents who regularly attend municipal government meetings. "Keep them on edge." Now, a hundred or so people at a meeting on a warm August evening do not a revolution make. Even a revolution publicized on Nextdoor and organized on Eventbrite. But what I heard inside the Knights of Columbus hall suggests this storm isn't going to subside easily. "Since 2008 my taxes have gone $2,000," said a longtime resident, 52, who asked me not to publish his name. "Everybody else cuts spending, but they (township government) don't seem to do that," he said. "I'm thinking about leaving." Kevin Riordan