Gratuitous Lying?

At Monday’s Council meeting, DPW Director James Rodino answered a few mild questions from the Council about his budget requests. One of the questions had to do with whether Mr. Rodino would consent to allow DPW employees to attend tree-trimming courses, as the Shade Tree Advisory Board has recommended for years, because the DPW workers are not yet trained, and botch tree trimming jobs on a regular basis, damaging and/or destroying healthy trees.

My understanding is that, in the past, either Mayor Allen has refused to permit the DPW employees to get training, or Jim Rodino has refused to give his consent for them to go to training. On Monday night, however, Rodino said that if the Borough officials want the DPW guys to get trained, he’d allow them to go. He pointed out that  it would take them “off the streets” for a day or so.

[As an aside, I think it would be a good use of their time and the Borough's money to make sure DPW staff know how to trim trees properly, if they're going to be trimming trees at all.]

During a subsequent public comments session, Frank N. D’Amore Sr. asked if the DPW workers who hand-delivered fliers announcing the Borough-sponsored revaluation meeting on April 3 were pulled “off the streets” to do that non-Public Works task, or if they volunteered their time off the clock to help spread the word. 

Mr. Rodino admitted that the workers were pulled “off the streets” to do the mail-delivery work.

Then, during the Mayor’s Comments portion of the meeting, Janice Allen had this to say:

“Our newsletter finally got out again. We’re working closely with the Board of Ed to try and get that information out.

And I will bring up the fact that we are doing this newsletter because we really have difficulty getting information into the Courier-News. It seems that every now and then they come through but we can’t count on them.

And I would like to explain that is why we had people take notices around about the reval. We had two meetings prior to that for the reval. We had okay attendance at one, not such good attendance at the other. And it was brought to us by the NPCCR that, you know, not enough information was out there. So I did call the Courier-News and, ah, we did fax stuff over to them and nothing got in the paper. It was too late to do a mailing so unfortunately my last resource was to send it around with Public Works and they did a great job and I think a lot of people came out. I’ll thank NPCCR for doing, you know, a night talking about the reval. We’ve posted it on our website and anyone who has any questions can call the assessor or can go to the website for more information.”

So Tuesday, I called up Brett Trout at Appraisal Systems Inc., to ask a couple of revaluation questions.

And then I asked him if the appraisers with his firm had participated in any public information sessions in North Plainfield prior to the one on April 3 sponsored by the Borough. He stated quite clearly – “No” – and added that there have been only two public information sessions in North Plainfield: the Borough one on April 3, and the NPCCR one on April 7.

A link to the February 26 letter sent by the Borough to announce the revaluation to homeowners is here.

So, unless the Borough sponsored two revaluation orientations between February 26 and April 3, without any representatives from the revaluation company, without mentioning those events in the introduction letter, and without posting any information about those meetings on the Borough website, Mayor Allen lied on the public record for no apparent reason.

Furthermore, it’s extremely unlikely that the April 3 event was planned much earlier than late March. It too was never mentioned in the February 26 letter to residents. And the Courier-News, in fact most newspapers, generally require notices to be sent in two to three weeks in advance of the events to be published. So if the Borough decided on or about March 30 to host a meeting on April 3, and slapped a fax on the fax machine to the Courier-News, it’s not at all surprising the Courier-News didn’t publish a notice of the event. It’s also not surprising that there wasn’t time to put together a mailing, and (given the entitlement culture of NP politics) it’s not even that surprising that Mayor Allen regards the DPW staff as her personal courier-service, a “resource” to be called upon to clean up the debris of poor planning.

What is surprising is that she thought no one would recognize her announcement this past Monday for what it was: a totally gratuitous lie.

For the bazillionth time: the truth, even the ugly truth, emerging from the mouths of Borough officials, would be a refreshing change.

And for the bazillionth time: if there’s something you (even you, Janice Allen) want to say or explain or request or announce or convey or deliver or describe or defend or promote or whatever – to the people of the Borough, through this blog, you have immediate access to about 500 of them, plus their family and friends (as they spread the word). Increased participation would lead to increased readership, and through that, increased participation all across the community life of the Borough.

Which is, perhaps, the most obvious reason why so many (including Janice Allen) have declined to avail themselves of the opportunity so far.

We either grow our community networks of mutual respect, openness and honesty, strengthening our community capacity to cope with the challenges of the present and future, or we stifle, ignore or patronize those community networks, fraying that community resourcefulness.