“My husband and I paid off our house. We live under our means,” Goldman said. “But as far as a financial system for a town, that’s not the best way to do it.”
Linda Goldman sees town council’s handling of the budget crisis and thinks she can do better.
“While interest rates were low, close to 0 percent, they took out a short-term loan whereas your financial advisor would tell you to pay it off over a long period of time [so] you [can] take the rest of the money to reinvest it,” she said. For a town, “that would be reinvesting in the community or personally reinvesting in the bank so if you put $100 in the bank and you’re earning $10 a year and you only have to pay $5 off of your interest, then you’re winning. They didn’t do it that way.”
To simplify this, Goldman likens it to “having to eat mac and cheese for the next five years” because you spent so much money paying off your mortgage that you couldn’t afford any typical normal-person pleasures like going out with friends or buying more expensive, healthy foods while grocery shopping — at least more expensive than mac and cheese. Yeah, you paid off your mortgage faster. But was it worth it?
In the case of a township, these pleasures would be items such as increased brush removal or upkept park bathrooms.
“My husband and I paid off our house. We live under our means,” she said. “But as far as a financial system for a town, that’s not the best way to do it.”
If you couldn’t tell, Goldman has a business and finance background. She earned a business degree from Northeastern University and an MBA from Babson College. She also worked as a finance manager of planning, budgeting and tax analysis on large, leveraged leases.
But with Goldman, it’s not all dollars and cents.
“Conservation is a money saver,” she said. “There’s no reason not to clean up the lakes and take care of our home and take care of our Earth. Those are the types of things that I’ve been involved with.”
Goldman has been active with the Pinelands Preservation Alliance, and has done fundraising for various environmental projects.
A chief complaint of Goldman is that Medford isn’t registered with the Tri-County Sustainability Alliance, an organization “open to sustainability enthusiasts in the Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties looking to improve their communities and connect regionally,” according to the group’s website. Municipalities can register with the organization to participate in its green certification program.
Goldman said she has no plans to run for a higher office at any point in the future.
“We’ve been so blessed, so lucky. I owe this to the people I can give it back to,” she said. “My kids spent every summer [at YMCA Camp Ockanickon], and they’re still going to Ockanickon. They grew up like little forest creatures. Where else do you get the chance to do that?”
