By M. Emory Layne
Folks, the town, she is a-changin’.
There are people with authority in this town who actually would like you to believe that if they weren’t doing things, those things wouldn’t get done because either no one else steps up to the plate, or no one else has the skills.
There are people with authority in this town who bemoan the need for “more volunteers,” and who put on a good show of wishing that more residents “got involved.”
This proves one thing – there are people with authority in this town who have mastered bullshit and all its dialects.
If you go back and look at records and minutes of meetings and council approvals, this really odd picture of North Plainfield is painted. From this information, it appears that there is this small group of people who really give a damn about the town, with a huge mass of residents who couldn’t care less. If not for this small group tirelessly giving of themselves, North Plainfield would dissolve into anarchy; the wheels of local government would seize up faster than a board in the bike spokes.
Well, at least that’s the picture that this small group of people enjoys painting. Because, in reality, experience shows many of us that we’re dealing with an abstract, open to interpretation. And if you’ve ever been cornered by one of those art ‘experts’ explaining to you what a painting means when you swear it’s a canvas with a bucket of paint thrown at it, you know just how much bullshit can become involved in that.
Take, for example, the “Talent Bank.” What a noble approach. ANYONE in North Plainfield can get involved through the simple process of filling out a simple application and presenting it at Borough Hall. So simple, so open, so all-encompassing.
Bullshit.
It’s a scam, a ruse, the misdirection a magician uses to change the person behind the curtain. It’s little more than a con job on the people of the borough, a slick way of making it appear that everyone can get involved. Maybe it worked at some point in time, I don’t know … but now? Hardy har har har.
The first problem of course, is that a position has to become open on one of these committees and commissions and boards for an applicant to have the opportunity to be considered in the first place. As we have seen with some of these groups, oversight is nonexistent; some of them rarely if ever meet. Of the ones that DO meet regularly, I have to ask a question that I’m already pretty sure I know the answer to: is there any way someone ever leaves one of these groups by a means other than dying, moving out of town, moving on to another one or an elected position, or simply growing disinterested?
Is there ANY rule covering this?
This is only important because we’re talking about governmental organizations. If these were things like the Birding Club of North Plainfield, or the Committee for Model Railroad Enlightenment, who would give a damn anyway? But we’re talking about groups that deal with tax dollars and laws and ordinances and such; how can we have a situation where someone is pretty much irremovable until THEY decide it’s time to go?
Assuming that the process is followed in some manner, a major problem arises if and when a position does come open. Where do the applications go when a decision is to be made? Why, the mayor. Now, I know I’m a buffoon who hasn’t a CLUE as to how government works, but heck, it would appear to me that this is a pretty simple proposition: if you have an opening on the Whatsis Committee, and you have one Talent Bank application stating the applicant would like to serve on the Whatsis Committee, it’s a no-brainer. But if you have more than one person looking to get on the Whatsis Committee …
…don’t you do something FAIR to reach a conclusion?
Yeah, I suppose you do, unless you’re the mayor of North Plainfield. If that’s the case, it appears the rule is “I has spoken.” I’ve discussed this with people who have documentation on this tomfoolery. People who submitted their application on ‘x’ date, received acknowledgement of such, and then watched while as many as three positions came open on the group they specifically sought to be on during a six-month span … and they were never contacted, let alone approved. What gives?
I have difficulty with this. The person’s name wasn’t Jeffrey Dahmer, so that couldn’t be a reason for exclusion. Was it what they wrote on the application? In other words, is this an essay contest? “In 25 words or less, explain how you won’t rock the boat.” Naturally, we idiotic people allow moronic words like “interview” to enter our minds. But as stupid as we may be, we still must ask the obvious question: if you DON’T meet with, phone, or in some other way communicate with the applicants for positions, just HOW DO YOU arrive at your conclusions?
Wait, I know – you can READ MINDS.
Here’s someone else who applied for a certain group, and was never contacted even though there was a vacancy in the group. Now, until recently, we didn’t really have any way of knowing about such a thing. Borough committees et al were usually about six months or so behind in getting their meeting minutes into the Borough Clerk for placement in those binders that we the people are magnanimously allowed to view.
Six months.
You see, it takes that long to transcribe the minutes onto lined paper with a horse pencil, then type them up on a manual typewriter, and then travel the enormous distance from wherever the meeting was held to Borough Hall. Yeah, six months is about right.
Folks, I’ve been the secretary for a few organizations in my time (at NO PAY, so shut up you “I’m a volunteer” whiners). Even in the days of carbon paper, I had minutes ready in a week; and when they introduced these new fangle-dangled gizmos like notebook computers and data travelers, I was able to have them available for posting THE NEXT FREAKING DAY.
Only of late, when someone like Katherine Watt came along and started brushing the cobwebs off the “state secrets” at Borough Hall have these minutes started to show up a LITTLE faster. Now, it’s more like five months. Do you pick the absolute LEAST qualified person to be the reporting secretary for these groups?
Let’s stop tap dancing, shall we? The Talent Bank system is nothing more than a façade to make it appear that government is open to the people here in North Plainfield. For years, appointments to important groups have been handled in ways we can only guess at, because they most certainly were NOT what anyone with a semblance of common sense would expect.
Anyone in Borough Hall who thinks this is slanderous, blaspheming, is welcome to reply with a description of how the process is handled fairly, openly and accountably … because the people who have been SCREWED in the past will then be more than willing to refute you.
The buddy system might work in swimming lessons, but it’s time for it to be KILLED OFF in North Plainfield government. As we shall see, it’s unfortunately been the guiding force here for a long time.
North Plainfield Citizens for Community Rights 