Hi All,

At this time I don't have enough signatures to get the elected board question on the November local ballot. Unless I can get help over the next two weeks, the petition will have to wait.   This petition committee needs 10-20 dedicated people to get to the schools and public places  to obtain the correct number of signatures from Registered Voters in Bayonne and, if people aren't registered, to register them on the spot.

I do appreciate the signatures of the 350 people or so that signed and hope that they will courageously continue to support change in Bayonne

Laura 

LDePinto

I have acquired a copy of the Exec Summary and the Draft.  Though requested, I was told I'm NOT  entitled to the entire unabridged, unredacted version.  Is there any interest in my posting them?  They are lengthy.

LDePinto

Box movers making $37 an hour. Some workers making up to $75 an hour. What are these rates for? Working the city elections. It seems that a "tradition" has been set up over time to give the city workers an extra "bonus" in their salary for working early & late hours on election day.

This issue came up as a last item on the agenda at the council meeting. The motion to pay the salaries was requested to be tabled until July. However City Clerk Sloan requested that it not be tabled, and insisted on a vote quite adamantly. These workers were under his direction, and he wanted to see them paid. The tension rose quickly, with Mr. Sloan's assistant providing an emotional outburst agianst the city councilmen.

The debate apepars to be over the legality of Mr. Sloan to set the rates that are paid to the city workers. Councilman Chiappone (as well as other council persons) believe that, legally, the rates should be set by City Council.

At one point a city worker came up to challenge the city council, whio is obviously doing it's best to scrutinize any out of line expense. This worker said there would be chaos if not for the work the city workers do on election day, and that we would find no one to do the work if the rates were cut. Mr Lapilusa responded: "I am pretty confident that at half the rate that you get paid, we can get someone in here"

Ultimately the resolution to pay the workers passed, with a promise that the issue would be looked into.

neilbarton

Thanks to Stan for finding this, I thought it should be reprinted here in full:

I have had a depressingly high number of conversations lately about New Jersey being a sinking ship. There are three themes. The most common is that the state is broke and that nobody seems to have the political will to fix it. The second theme, recently voiced to me by a veteran Democratic legislator, is that "nothing we've done is working anymore." In other words, we need new approaches to many of our key public policy challenges.

The third theme is that wasteful spending on big-ticket items is hurting priorities such as the environment, state parks, health care for our neediest residents and the like.

Democrats are supposed to be progressive. But lately, we look too much like defenders of the status quo. In fact, another Democrat with vast experience in Trenton re cently said to me that our system has become "of the government, by the government and for the government."

The Democratic Party here has to decide whether it is the party of the people or the party of the insiders. There is a conflict because a high proportion of those who vote in primaries benefit from the status quo. One out of eight New Jerseyans works in the public sector, and these people vote. They are mostly good and dedicated people. But we have overstaffed units of government and too many layers of it. That is the main reason we have such high property taxes.

Bloated government can be cut without harming essential services. It does almost no good to trim around the edges; closing state parks is primarily symbolic. We have to focus on the key items that drive the cost of government. The big tickets are education, public safety, the cost of retirement benefits, the cost of incarcerating nonvi olent offenders and overlapping units of government.

We are spending more money than ever on the Abbott districts despite evidence that hundreds of millions of dollars are being wasted. Huge buyout packages appear to be only the tip of the iceberg. There are rigged contracts, construction cost overruns, administrative fat and expensive state mandates.

We are not allowed even to discuss productivity in education, and it is virtually impossible to get rid of incompetent teachers. Meanwhile, some of our best and brightest college grads can't get in to Teach for America because the education bureaucracy doesn't want too many of them.

The next big ticket is public safety. According to PoliceLink, New Jersey offers the highest law enforcement compensation in the country, with an average median salary of $70,470. Moreover, there are wide gaps within the state. Why does a starting patrolman in Princeton get paid 71 percent more than a new one in Trenton? Why can many cops get paid for four hours of overtime for as little as 15 minutes of work? Can we really call government efficient...

neilbarton

I think what fascinates me the most is the break with reality by the blog owner. I appreciate the tension a good blog can cause, so here's hoping that the friction resulting from its existence burns the right people.

-Remo

remo