The matter of Tyrone Hamilton vs County of Union has been settled for $20,000.

Complaint
Settlement

Previously reported:
Sinclair death still haunts taxpayers

Word on the street is that the Union County Dems are giving Freeholder Ryland Van Blake his walking papers this election cycle rather than giving him the committees stamp of approval for reelection, his term is up this year. See below the blog post on Plainfield Today. http://ptoday.blogspot.com/index.html

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PLAINFIELD TODAY
The needler in the haystack.
Friday, March 5, 2010
County Dems dumping Van Blake from Freeholder slot?

Freeholder Rayland Van Blake’s term is up this year.

Rumors have surfaced in recent days that Plainfield’s Freeholder, Rayland Van Blake, may be dumped when the Union County Democrats draw up their slate for the June primary election.

With the primary filing date of April 12 fast approaching, suggestions are the issue is being brought to a head by Linden’s insistence on having a seat on the nine-member Freeholder board.

Van Blake began his political career in a stunning upset victory over 16-year incumbent First Ward councilor Liz Urquhart in 2002, running on the New Democrats slate.

The handsome, affable Plainfield native has an abiding interest in acting and the theater, but his spottiness in regard to the heavy public appearance schedules all Freeholders must attend to is said to have caused resentment among his fellow board members, who feel they are left to pick up the slack.

Quipped one observer, ‘Van Blake is a nice guy, but Ralph Ellison could have written a novel about him’.

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Reports are that Freeholder Nancy Ward, of Linden, has moved or at this time is planning a move to Westfield and that makes the Linden Democratic Committee unhappy since they believe that they own a seat on the Freeholder Board, a ludicrous notion indeed. However that feeling is shared with all the other urban Union County Municipalities to include not only Linden, but Rahway, Union, Elizabeth (2 seats) and Plainfield, who come out in droves to blindly support the Dem Freeholder Candidates on Election Day. If the above is indeed the case than it will be interesting to see if the self anointed King of the Queen City, Assemblyman Gerry Green, puts up a fight to keep a Plainfielder in what he probably believes is a seat belonging to Plainfield.

Today the Union County Watchdog Association petitioned the governor for an investigation into the Mirabella deal.

Excerpts:
A) The Mirabella incident involved a police officer who is the brother of the democrat Union County freeholder chairman Alexander Mirabella, who was up for election in 2009, the year of the incident and who did not need a negative incident involving a close sibling just months before the election.

B) Union County government at every instance during January 2010 after the incident was resolved internally denied OPRA requests from the public for any paperwork regarding any investigations or determinations involving the Freeholder chairman’s brother’s criminal actions, responding that none are in existence. Yet two letters signed by the Union County Prosecutor’s office turned up in the Garwood files. This in itself may prove some nefarious political involvement and cover-up and is particular concern because the Union County Prosecutor’s office should be above such petty political tactics.

C) The Garwood Clerk also initially tried to deny access to records under the OPRA

D) The Garwood Borough attorney, Robert Renaud, who was involved throughout this investigation and settlement as an overseer of the process and was involved in the advice to the Borough during the incident is the Vice Chairman of the Union County Democrat Committee who guides the selection and campaign of the democrat freeholders including freeholder Chairman Alexander Mirabella who was up for election. His law firm, in which he is a partner, is a Union County vendor.

E) The mayor of Garwood, Dennis McCarthy, is a democrat and was put in a position to decide if the Borough would pursue further charges of criminal trespass against the brother of a freeholder. He is also a Union County vendor. His company, Garwood Auto Parts, receives tens of thousands of dollars annually from the Union County.

F) The Union County Prosecutors office, who chose not to prosecute the freeholder chairman’s brother is headed by a democrat political appointee, Theodore Romankow, who a few years ago was the subject of approved state legislation adjusting his tenure in government in order to bump his pension to approximately $100,000/year.

G) The State Attorney General’s office that elected not to prosecute “in the interests of justice” is a political appointment position under the recently ousted governor John Corzine. The state attorney generals office recently had 2 out of 4 NJ state attorney generals forced to step down under high profile abuse of power situations which raises questions of this department’s integrity. Since then, Prosecutor Paula Dow has taken the helm of the agency.

H) The Superior Court Judge for the final “expungement” hearing is the brother-in-law of Assemblyman Joseph Cryan, a main democrat political force overseeing state democrat elections on higher levels and who works for Union County as a high paid under-sheriff, and who is closely aligned to the Freeholders who are in all appearances his employer.

This is a matter of public safety concern, not only because of the possible deceit of political appointees, government employees and elected officials, Genarro Mirabella, since the record may be now expunged, can work as a police officer again, as the agreement signed by the Garwood Mayor under the consent of the Garwood Borough Attorney stipulates that future employers will be told he left in good standing.

Upon this record, I believe that a reasonable member of the public might suspect that Mirabella was spared prosecution due to his status as a police officer and a Freeholder’s brother and that all participants in this had reason to attempt a cover-up.

Under the circumstances, we believe that the public would benefit by having the Attorney General’s Office conduct an investigation into this matter.

Sincerely,

Tina Renna
President, UCWA
cc: Paula Dow, NJ State Attorney General
Encl.

Reported in the Star-Ledger today: Garwood cop who faced criminal charges seeks expungement

The latest forum which reviews last night’s freeholder meeting has been uploaded to Veotag.

Highlights:

Bunkers are costing $17,000 each – should be $500 to dig a hole and put sand in it.

Changes at Parks and Advisory Board: By-laws & the Secretary of the UC Dem Committee replaces New Providence Oakwood Park critic

Union County Watchdog Association Citizen’s Budget Review Committee told to place OPRA’s. Committee Chair is troubled that county doesn’t know answers off hand. President wants to know who the Director of Finance was making faces with on the dais.

With $400,751 in public information salaries, the public still isn’t told where Freeholder Jalloh works or if an employee is paid to chaffer this guy around.

On the edge of bankruptcy, pensions are unaffordable & freeholders have nothing to report.

According to a memo dated Nov. 12, 2009 from the county manager, George Devanney, certain personnel require “24/7” access and usage of a vehicle for purposes of ensuring health and safety…. The following personnel are considered to be “24/7” or full time first responders:

Listed is Thomas MacDermant, General Supervisor Construction (salary $80,073)

Four years ago the County Watchers reported that a judge had ruled that MacDermant, who was serving time in the Union County jail for a third D.U.I. conviction, was let out of jail improperly. He was allowed to leave jail and go home on a wristlet without the permission of his sentencing judge. He was supposed to serve a mandatory 180 days. His attorney stated in a brief “The time he spend in the Union County jail he was held on the medical floor the entire time, not even released to the population.”

Previsouly reported: March 15, 2006
Friends don’t let friend’s drink and stay in jail for D.W.I. convictions

Union County Employee Position Control Changes were obtained through the Open Public Records Act for 12.1.09 through 1.8.10.

I’d like to thank the tipster for educating me on all the important information that is contained in these records. The UCWA will obtain these records monthly and post them.

Highlights:

Former Systems Analyst/Bureau Chief, Info Tech was transferred to the position of Systems Analyst/Director of Financial Control with the same salary of $94,273.03. However, she now has to work 5 less hours a week which amounts to a 12% raise.

The new Systems Analyst/Bureau Chief, Richard Pelesko, was promoted and given a $7,999.66 pay raise.

Assistant County Counsels were given pay raises:
Donegan William - $1,000
Merman Steven - $1,500
Comas Rosalba - $1,500
Muftau Moshood - $2,500
Alexandra DeFresco - $2,500
Matthew DiRado - $1,500

More assistant county prosecutors were given pay raises:
Kolano William - $2,500
Maureen O’Brien - $2,500

Previously reported on this batch of position control changes: New hires from Berkeley Heights

Tina Renna is the president of the Union County Watchdog Association. She can be reached at tinarenna@unioncountywatchdog.org

Despite evidence of holiday parties around the county on Friday Dec. 18th, OPRA requests for bills for catering and lunches for the entire month of December turned up nothing. Also, department heads were spotted gathering one other afternoon at Grazziano’s located on Springfield Ave. in Berkeley Heights. And a Star-Ledger article reported the following:
At 11:59 a.m., Mogensen’s (Emergency Response Team Commander) phone rang as he was on his way to the department’s holiday luncheon at Galloping Hill Caterers in Union.

Hmmm.

2009 Executive Session minutes have been combined into one easy to search document.

2009 Check Registry has been uploaded to an easy to search data base. For instance you can search by Vendor Name to see all payments made in 2009, Vendor ID, Description, etc. This is a large file and may take a few minutes to download.

2010 Executive Budget impact on towns. This is the proposed tax hikes for each town.

www.unioncountywatchdog.org

The Star-Ledger reported today that a former Trenton lobbyist gets probation for stalking ex-girlfriend of state Assemblyman Joe Cryan.

Judge Maenza, who recently replaced Judge Ahto, ordered the prosecution to return to Golding her computers that had been seized by the Union County Prosecutor’s Office. The judge also said the criminal case, which began in and stayed in Union County for some time before being transferred to Morris County, should not have been handled in Union County because of a conflict of interest — Cryan was a public official there.

Maenza said, “I agree (with Greenman, Goldings attorney), Union County should have dropped this thing a long time ago. They didn’t and kind of lost their objectivity.”

Cryan was friends with Union County investigators who didn’t believe Golding about her relationship with Cryan, and that she had the emails to prove it — and never bothered to forensically examine her seized computers to check out her story, Greenman said. Instead, she was portrayed as making up a “fantasy,” he said.

“I have no comment on her sentencing, however she pled guilty,” Union County Prosecutor Theodore Romankow said after the hearing. “The Attorney General’s Office reviewed - at the request of Ms. Golding - the investigation, prosecution and disposition of this case and said it was appropriate. I think the judge did not have the luxury of looking at the (entire case) file, and only saw the presentencing report. His statement is misplaced.”

However, former Assistant Attorney General Debra Stone, who has been a county prosecutor and overseen prosecutor’s offices from Trenton, said in a Star-Ledger article from May 2006 that the time and manpower expended on the Golding investigation appear disproportionate to the charge of fourth-degree stalking.

“The whole case is not normal. It sounds like it was certainly not a run-of-the-mill stalking case in terms of the investigation. It’s highly unusual,” Stone said. She said the number of investigators following Golding that day was “more similar to something we would use on a homicide investigation.”

Read the article in its entirety: Complaint by Democratic boss mobilized a small army of investigators

Try as we might we cannot in vision the regulars at Butch Coles or the Rahway American Legion sitting around the bar over a cold Miller Draft excitedly discussing the upcoming classical piano concert at the Union County Arts Center or the proposed piano conservatory. We heartily respect the hard working residents of the City of Rahway but have to wonder how many support the mayor in his endeavor to turn the downtown into a destination for the arts. Rather than a convenient destination to meet the entertainment, shopping and perhaps the medical and legal needs of the locals. We also have to question if the same respectful view of the residents can be said to be held by the mayor and council or do they view the tax payers as their private piggy bank solely intended to fulfill their personal “Great Gatsbyesque” goals for this city on the Raritan Canal.

Not only did the mayor and council quietly spend over $90,000 for a piano but they also have recently increased the city’s debt by approving a $8.5 million bond ordinance to be coupled with $3 million already borrowed to create a venue in the Hamilton Street project to showcase this music box.

Knowing Kennedy it comes as no surprise that the Freeholders are somehow involved in this travesty, as the piano, on loan to the county, has been delivered and installed at the Union County Performing Arts Center as the city leaders decide exactly what they believe they need to build to house it. According to the blog www.Rahway Rising.com the piano will be moved for performances between the arts center and the yet to be constructed amphitheater proposed for the old Hamilton Laundry site. A maneuver that is questionable at best requiring professional piano movers to handle the duties of transporting the instrument down the block and back, we can only imagine whose brainchild that is, and feel pretty confident in predicting that that will probably never come to pass.

According to the Star Ledger the piano is being unveiled tonight, Sunday, February 21 before a select audience of 50 dignitaries from the city, county, arts district and performing arts center, how snooty is that? And why wasn’t an open house planned to offer those who actually foot the bills the first glimpse of this grand piano which BTW is partly plated in gold. Could it be because Mayor Kennedy and Peter “the Piano Man” Pellisier know on some remote level that this purchase was a slap in the face to the residents of the City who are already feeling the harsh realities of a national recession and that an “open to the public piano showcase” could expose them to the wrath of the citizens as they would be expected to attend. It should also be noted that at this point in time there are not any of the usual news releases posted on either the UCPAC’s or the Freeholder’s websites bragging about these activities or this purchase made with taxpayer dollars leaving Kennedy and the town council hanging out to dry all alone.

A ride through downtown Rahway is distressing especially when one realizes that the city is on the verge of losing its state aid and her leaders choose not to put this purchase on hold but rather move forward with these plans when other projects have come to a grinding halt. A developer who ceased construction ages ago, who owes the city millions and promised to resume work this past summer and did not happens to be under investigation by the NY Attorney General for questionable business practices in that state. He also has another project in trouble in nearby Plainfield which was to house the new senior center that was to open in 2009 but has not; also it appears that he has only been able to sell one condo in that project. This same guy appears to also be involved somehow with the Encap debacle in the Meadowlands . Then there is a major financial institution seeking to foreclose on unsold townhouses downtown as well.

The truth be told the city is mostly a ghost town lacking the amenities that it takes for it to become self sustaining for the upscale train commuters and artists that he, Kennedy, seeks to attract. There is not even a food mart or green grocer or pharmacy on the walk from the train station to the condos 2 or 3 blocks away, these are elements necessary to support even a limited transit village type of environment. Also currently sorely lacking are the all important restaurants and curiosity shops which are necessary to attract the visitors who would pump money into the local economy to create the long term stability necessary to attract new investors to the redevelopment area.

It has been said that Kennedy envisions Rahway as a NEW Lambertville and has even been inspired to undertake this major redevelopment of the downtown after a visit to Berlin, Germany a few years back. Did it occur to this “visionary” that like Rome, Lambertville was not built in a day but that it slowly evolved into the artistic hub it is today. It’s transformation being embraced by the locals who originally resided there, stayed and who welcomed the artisans who gradually moved there. All of them collectively financially supporting the evolution that naturally took place and was not “forced to bloom”.

Five plus years have passed since the county freeholders started to help revitalize the city using tax dollars to break into the entertainment biz by purchasing the Union County Arts Center and promoting it as the “Jewel of the redevelopment of the City of Rahway”. The Worrall papers editorialized the events in April, 2004 in what sounds as though it could have been written today about the grand piano project substituting Kennedy for the word freeholders: “the taxpayers have enough of a financial burden on their collective plates without having to add this one to it. We know it’s a done deal, we know the transaction will occur, and it will occur despite what anybody says in opposition to it because that’s how the almighty freeholders conduct business – with total disregard to the populace who elected them.”

Glorious predictions were made by Mayor Kennedy and various freeholders at that time touting new jobs, new buildings and new activities in the downtown as a direct result of the arts center acquisition and renovations and we now know how little has actually materialized. Unfortunately this piano duet being performed by the City of Rahway and the Union County Board of Chosen Freeholders is looking as though it too will come out sounding nothing but painfully flat.

Continue reading below for Press Release from the Rahway GOP which appeared on WWW.Politicker NJ.com

February 17,2010
For Immediate Release
Contact: Patrick Cassio, Chairman
Rahway Republican Committee
Phone 732-388-7671

Rahway GOP Says Recent Piano Purchase Hits a Sour Note
Mayor and Council “Out of Tune” with the Residents

Rahway - That Mayor Kennedy, the Rahway City Council and Administrator & Redevelopment Director Peter Pelissier would even consider paying $90,000 for a piano at this time just shows how out of tune these people are with the residents of this city, says GOP Municipal Chairman Patrick Cassio.

“Just this past summer the residents of Rahway had to forgo having the annual Fourth of July fireworks display”, he pointed out. The governing body said it would be inappropriate to spend $40,000 on fireworks. According to a July ‘09 Star Ledger article City leaders in Rahway canceled the show because they said that they felt a glittery Independence Day would be insensitive to the six municipal employees who were to be laid off on July 1.

Further, in the same article Pelissier claimed that he would find it troubling to say to an employee “your losing your job, but we’re still spending money on a celebration involving fireworks, it just didn’t seem appropriate.”

“We think that they should now explain to the long-time Rec Center Director, who earned $50K, and was among those who joined the ranks of the unemployed how they justify it being appropriate to replace her with a piano”, Cassio stated.

Cassio also questioned many aspects of what he referred to as “the grand piano plan”, to include the total financing in dollars and cents and questioned the idea of moving such an expensive instrument from venue to venue referring to the UCPAC and the city’s yet to be constructed amphitheater down the block. Also, It would appear that this is already a done deal as there is a ceremony scheduled for later this month to celebrate the piano’s arrival, remarked Cassio. “And just who gets to attend that”, he queried.

The residents of Rahway are struggling to pay ever increasing property taxes, water and sewer bills, dealing with scaled back city services as well as losing their employment, and these guys are spending our hard earned tax dollars on pianos while trying to claim that they are making an investment in the future. “Mayor Kennedy must be tone deaf if he cannot hear the sour notes being generated by his administration,” said Chairman Cassio. “Just one look around the downtown and it is evident how far his future planning has gotten us.”

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