Next week’s election will afford the opportunity for New Jersey voters to decide who will represent them in the U.S. Senate for the next six years. Most of the electoral focus has rightfully been on which of two wholly unsatisfying candidates should win that office.

Following a personal and nasty race even by New Jersey standards, the most recent Quinnipiac Poll has Democrat Robert Menendez up by just the slightest of margins over Republican Tom Kean Jr. Respondents were more decisive when asked if this year’s Senate campaign could be classified as “dirty”: 74 percent of those polled agreed.

At this point anything can happen and probably will, with the outcome quite possibly hinging on whose negative TV campaign ads have the stronger sting.

Since you are probably fed up with that race, I thought it would be interesting to shed some light on the contests which don’t get as much attention, but which have great impact in their own right: the three public questions on the ballot this year.

Most of us don’t look at these initiatives until we are in the voting booth, and even then they may get as much as 10 seconds of our time, if we even vote on them at all. They rarely generate campaign fund-raising, press conferences or the like, but don’t let that lull you to sleep — the questions can be very important. They are how we pass school budgets and incur billions in bonded state debt, which our grandchildren will still be paying for.

Question No. 1 is an attempt to release the political pressure cooker on property tax reform. The measure would dedicate a halfpenny of the recent 1 percent sales tax increase to property tax relief. That amounts to $600 million. Sounds helpful. But is it really, or is it just politicians ducking for cover? You may or may not recall that legislators, worried about the electoral impact of a sales tax increase, refused to go along with the deal unless Gov. Jon Corzine agreed to put this question on the ballot.

But here’s the problem: No one knows how that money will be spent. It could be used to supplement school aid, or for property tax credits or a new property-tax rebate program. We just don’t know! Instead, the way the money will ultimately be earmarked will be decided by the Legislature after the measure is passed. We’re supposed to simply trust the legislative process.

Still, it is a Hobson’s choice, as the failure to pass this referendum means that the monies will simply go into general revenue, to be lost in the morass of state spending. Which is the greater loss? That’s your call. We probably lose out either way.

Question No. 2 is a no-brainer and requires little discussion. It asks state voters to redirect part of the state corporate business tax to be used to fund environmental programs and for facilities and improvements to state parks.

No one can deny that we have let our state parks deteriorate. Whenever budgets are tight, state parks, as nonessential services, are among the first to “get it.” It’s an easy place to cut the budget.

The best part of this decision is that it will not cost us anything. The money is simply being rerouted from surplus funds no longer needed for underground storage tank cleanups. It will shift $15 million a year to a place which could badly use it.