School Board gets an F on superintendent’s contract

Posted on June 17, 2011 by admin

The Clinton Township Board of Education is about to vote on renewing the contract of Superintendent Kevin Carroll without giving you the full opportunity you deserve to participate in his performance review.

Don’t miss the Special School Board meeting
Monday, June 20, 2011
Clinton Township Middle School Libary
7:30 pm

Click Here for an excellent analysis
Of how you’re being deprived of your rights.

The Clinton Township Board of Education is best characterized today as two school boards: The “old” Board of Education (oBOE), and the “new” Board of Education (nBOE).

The distinction was sharply drawn by the oBOE itself, on February 28, 2011, when members of the oBOE revealed their fears that new board members would be elected in the upcoming April 27 election — new members that would upset the status quo.

That’s why, in a purely political maneuver, the oBOE, led by oBOE president Jim Dincuff, attempted to renew the contract of Superintendent Kevin Carroll while they still had the votes to do it — months in advance of the deadline to do so. Except angry residents stopped them, demanding that the BOE wait for new members to come on board before making such a decision.

The oBOE had judged correctly. Voters were fed up and they indeed threw out the incumbents and elected three new board members who have brought much-needed scrutiny, transparency, and thoroughness to the business-as-usual of the oBOE.

The Hunterdon Democrat (March, 3, 2011) reported that:

Criticism of a school board plan to renew Superintendent Kevin Carroll’s contract early – and before the school tax levy vote on April 27 – led Carroll to withdraw the request. A public hearing on the superintendent’s contract on Monday [2/28/11] drew praise and criticism of Carroll – and almost universal condemnation of the plan to consider renewing his three-year contract before the end of the school year. [Emphasis added.]

That was back in February of 2011. Many members of the public heavily criticized Carroll’s mismanagement of the schools, and the large turnout of teachers in red “protest” shirts revealed serious discord with Carroll. Some residents noted that the Clinton Township teachers had been working for months without a contract.

oBOE Avoids Full Public Participation

After Carroll withdrew his request to renew his contract, the oBOE sat on the matter for months. For that, they deserve an F.

Under NJ law, a superintendent must be notified a year in advance of his contract’s expiration whether his contract will be renewed. Failure of a school board to render such notice results in automatic renewal of the contract. Now, the CTSD BOE has until July 1 to decide on Carroll’s contract.

Between February 27 and this week, the BOE took no action to get public input on Carroll’s performance review or on his contract renewal. In fact, the BOE scheduled a “Special Meeting” on June 13 about solar power — but no special meeting was scheduled for public comment on Carroll’s contract.

After stern public rebukes directed at the oBOE at the June 13 meeting, when residents spoke out loudly during the public comment period, a special meeting was announced for public comment on the matter — June 20 at 7:30pm at the Middle School Library.

Now it has been revealed by a resident that the BOE also has certain obligations to residents — not just to the superintendent.

Resident Reveals Your Rights — and BOE’s Obligations

Writing in a lengthy letter to the school board (don’t miss it — it’s a very worthy read with full references and citations), a resident has outlined the proper procedure that the oBOE should have followed to get public input on many matters pertaining to the superintendent’s performance and contract.

This process should have started months ago — if not a year ago –, but the oBOE openly ignored its responsibilities and obligations to parents, children, taxpayers, voters, teachers and all stakeholders in Clinton Township.

The oBOE gets an F for not doing its job as elected officials representing the people of Clinton Township. It has failed in its obligations to:

  • Effectively and rigorously evaluate the Superintendent (NJ Administrative Code).
  • Make the process open to the public (as is reasonable, according to the Hunterdon County Executive School Business Administrator).

“The Board does not seem to have evaluated the Superintendent with input from teachers, parents, administrators, and the broader community or it has failed to communicate how this has been done.”

After rushing through what appears to be a last-minute, secretive performance review — without the input of stakeholders including parents and teachers — the BOE plans to vote on Superintendent Carroll’s contract on June 27.

Meanwhile, the nBOE — the newest board members — seem to have forced a special meeting on Monday, June 20 for public comment on the super’s performance. And lucky thing, because lots of people who wanted to speak at the June 27 meeting will be… away on vacation.

Remember summer vacation? Why did the oBOE wait all through March, April, May and June until summer vacation to schedule public comment on the Superintendent’s contract?

Why didn’t the oBOE conduct stakeholders’ meetings to establish the review process itself, in order to meet the CTSD regulations to evaluate the Superintendent based on job description and annual goals, and on criteria enumerated by the N.J.S.B.A.? (Evaluating such broad and complex criteria requires the input of multiple stakeholders.)

Why didn’t the oBOE conduct meetings to obtain performance review comments? Why didn’t the oBOE conduct meetings to gather general input on the contract itself from stakeholders?

Clearly, because the multi-pronged public process that should have been conducted months ago, wasn’t, the BOE now has no choice. It cannot defend a YES vote on the Superintendent’s contract, because it did not institute the proper public process. But the BOE must make a decision, and the only defensible decision at this juncture is NO to the contract.

Don’t miss the meeting on Monday, June 20, 7:30pm at CTMS Library — it’s your chance to speak up whether the school district has given you all the information you deserve or not. Come hear what parents, teachers and stakeholders have to say about the Superintendent’s peformance — and about renewing his contract.

Our children’s education depends on your participation. And so do your property taxes.

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Posted in Municipal, Schools | Leave a comment

Hunterdon Democrat: Vos is a Plagiarist

Posted on June 6, 2011 by admin

According to the Hunterdon Democrat, Clinton Township mayoral candidate Harmen Vos is officially a plagiarist.

The question is, how far back does Vos’s plagiarism go? And why have the newspapers been printing Vos’s letters without looking into this before? The variations in Vos’s writing and vocabulary across his letters and campaign literature are extreme. Not one editor picked it up? The Democrat cites this blog, Harmen Vos: Shameless fraud, as the source for its report today.

The Hunterdon County News Online, which stopped covering the Clinton Township election last week in an effort to defend Vos and lock out letters critical of him, has never questioned Vos’s epistolary eloquence. It, too, published Vos’s 100% plagiarized letter — but has offered no explanation and accepted no responsibility for letting it through.

Why are the local newspapers not investigating and reporting on Vos’s ongoing shennanigans?

Is Vos qualified to continue serving on the Clinton Township council?

Vos says in the Democrat that he is “not aware of any legal requirements” pertaining to plagiarism and copyright infringement. In response to allegations that Vos has violated ethics laws and election laws, Vos recently said in the Hunterdon Review that he plans to “contact the proper authorities in regards to my obligations, of my council responsibilities and for a possible refund, if at all necessary in accordance to law.”

Just how many laws is Councilman Vos “not aware” of while he serves as an elected official, conducting Clinton Township business?

It seems Clinton Township taxpayers and voters should “contact the proper authorities” and demand that Councilman Vos’s conflicts of interest be defined, and that he be required to disclose all his campaign contributors and conflicts of interest — not just those who contributed less than $300. The proper authorities should then instruct him to recuse himself from any Township business pertaining to those contributors and conflicts.

How many matters has Councilman Vos already voted on that may be tainted by conflicts of interest that he is “not aware of,” and what else is Vos up to that seems just fine to him — because he doesn’t understand the law?

If Vos does not win the June 7 primary election, he will still be a councilman through 2013. Is he qualified to continue to continue serving?

What was Vos’s response to the discovery of his plagiarism? “I didn’t mean any harm,” Vos told the Democrat. Does Vos know what libel, slander and conflict of interest mean? Clearly, he doesn’t.

Vos’s entire campaign has been a smear of current and former Township officials without a shred of evidence to support his claims. When Vos hasn’t been smearing, he has relied on his supporters to do it — several out-of-town builders who are funding his campaign, a local minister, a power-washer, a former councilwoman, and an assortment of “friends.”

Be sure to vote tomorrow, June 7, in the Clinton Township primary. The government of your town depends on it.

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Posted in Election 2011, Municipal | Leave a comment

Harmen Vos: Shameless fraud

Posted on June 4, 2011 by admin

Harmen Vos, candidate for Mayor of Clinton Township, cheated his constituents when he failed to disclose conflicts of interest before voting on Clinton Township legislation. Vos cheated voters and violated NJ election law when he hid the business connections of his campaign contributors.

And now this self-proclaimed “Christian Patriot” is cheating the founding fathers: Harmen Vos has shamelessly stolen the ideas and words of real patriots — without crediting the authors of the brave words in his most recent letter to the editor.

Harmen Vos promises ACCOUNTABILITY UP! on his signs, and pretends he’s fighting for liberty and freedom. In reality, his campaign has been about ETHICS DOWN! and FRAUD UP!

Look at Vos’s final letter to the editor prior to the June 7 Primary Election:

It’s customary for candidates to put their best foot forward in this “last letter,” and to express who they are and what they plan to do if elected.

Every single word, every sentence, and every paragraph in  Harmen Vos’s letter is stolen, verbatim, from documents written by the second President of the United States, John Adams; by William Tyler Page, descendant of the tenth President, John Tyler; and by a Tea Party blogger in Arizona, Blaine A. Dunning.

Every single word stolen.

The first two paragraphs are from William Tyler Page‘s American Creed, written in 1917.

I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed, a democracy in a republic, a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes. I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.

Vos’s third paragraph was written by Blaine A. Dunning. Vos’s failure to disclose the living author of this quote also constitutes a copyright infringement:

“In recent years, the number of Americans who have become reconciled to the inescapable necessity of returning to the Founders’ formula has risen to millions.  The very circumstances in which the American taxpayer finds himself  are sufficient to awaken many to recognize the fiscal bottomless pit into which the nation is sinking.  The vivid shock of that realization is precisely what is needed to arouse the majority of the people to the point where they are willing to go through fiscal withdrawal and kick the habit of splurge spending.”

The most atrocious plagiarism is in his fourth paragraph. Vos signs his name as the author of the words of a founding father and President of the United States — John Adams — originally written in 1780:

“I do not curse the day when I engaged in public affairs […]. I cannot repent of any thing I ever did conscientiously and from a sense of duty. I never engaged in public affairs from my own interest, pleasure, envy, jealousy, avarice, or ambition, or even the desire of fame. If any of these had been my motive, my conduct would have been very different. In every considerable transaction of my public life, I have invariably acted according to my best judgment, and I can look up to God for the sincerity of my intentions.”

Vos claims in his biography that he worked for a long time as a professional journalist: “As a freelance journalist for a major Holland newspaper…” (Letter to the editor, Hunterdon Review, December 2, 2010). He thus knows what plagiarism is, and why it is unethical and sometimes illegal, and why it is also called “a moral offence.” Vos should have cited the authors whose work he used, giving them credit. But that would not have served the purpose of his letter to the editor, which is to express his own ideas and who he is, and to impress voters. So he fraudulently signed the letter as his own.

(Does Rick Epstein at the Hunterdon Democrat, and Chris D’Annunzio at the Hunterdon News Online — which also published Vos’s rip-off — really believe an incoming letter that sounds like an 18th century president came from a 2011 candidate who can barely string two English sentences together?)

How could a highly-visible mayoral candidate so shamelessly pretend that stolen ideas are his own? It’s easy, when Vos has been misrepresenting himself all along.

The biography that Harmen Vos’s submitted to the local newspapers states: “Vos graduated from high school and Havo College in the Netherlands.” Another Clinton Township Dutchman, former councilman Steve Krommenhoek, reveals that accountability is NOT up in Vos’s campaign. Krommenhoek says:

“In the Netherlands, ‘Havo’ stand for ‘hoger algermeen voortgezet onderwijs’ which translates to ‘higher general continued education’ and is equivalent to high school. It starts at seventh grade and ends at eleventh grade. Not quite what the average person would consider college.”

A college education is certainly not required to run for mayor or to serve in office, but honesty and transparency are. Vos promises us ACCOUNTABILITY UP!, then shamelessly credits himself with a college education.

Vos also claims to have served as a Dutch Green Beret. Was he? Who knows? Is Vos even a U.S. citizen? It’s difficult to believe anything he claims. A look at his many letters to the editor reveals dramatically different writing styles, and extreme vocabulary variations. It’s impossible to believe he wrote all of them.

Who will be our mayor if Harmen Vos gets elected?

John Adams? William Tyler Page? The people who wrote Vos’s other letters? The hidden real estate developer that Vos failed to identify in his NJ ELEC campaign disclosure filing? Look at these clippings from Harmen Vos’s campaign literature.

Who is Harmen Vos?

He steals the work of others and tries to pass it off as his own. (Can he be trusted?).

He violates the copyright and property of another author, but tell us that he stands for the “Right to own property.” Vos promises “To personally understand and maintain the American way of life, to honor it by his… own examplary conduct.”:

But Harmen Vos’s conduct is far from exemplary, and he clearly does not understand or respect the American way of life.

He takes campaign money without disclosing where it came from. Rather than follow the law, he claims the “Right to freedom from arbitrary government regulations and control.” Vos flaunts the law. Vos does not consider what effects his actions have on his ability to do the job. (Can he be effective?)

He placates outside interests while throwing the taxpayer under the bus, and undermines the credibility of the Township. (What’s in it for him?)

He talks about God, Country and the Constuitution, but proposes nothing relevant to municipal services. (What will he really do for Clinton Township?)

Do we need a dishonest politician who can’t express his own ideas or plans for Clinton Township?

We have already seen Harmen Vos’s violations of ethics law and election law. But no one has seen any list of his plans if he gets elected, or any list of the problems and projects he would tackle if he became mayor, or how he would do it. His lack of a campaign website reveals he doesn’t think much about Clinton Township voters. Now he’s stealing the brave ideas and words of real patriots and calling them “Harmen Vos.”

Who is Harmen Vos?

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Posted in Election 2011, Municipal | Leave a comment

Harmen Vos: Violating the law & holding himself unaccountable

Posted on June 1, 2011 by admin

Clinton Township Councilman Harmen Vos has campaign signs all over town that say, “TAXES DOWN – ACCOUNTABILITY UP.” After five months of accomplishing nothing on the Council, Vos is running for Mayor.

Vos has violated New Jersey law, and has been trying to hide it. He holds himself accountable under our laws.

Violation of New Jersey Ethics Law

Who? Me?Councilman Harmen Vos violated NJ ethics law when he failed to recuse himself from a Council vote in which he had a conflict of interest.

On March 28, 2011, Vos accepted a $500 campaign contribution from a local business owner who wanted an ordinance passed to benefit her business. (Five days earlier, at the March 23, 2011 Council meeting, she presented a petition to the Township Council, demanding the ordinance.)

Less than a month after taking the money, on April 27, 2011, Vos voted to adopt the ordinance, with full knowledge of what the donor wanted, and of the source of the money. That’s a violation of NJ ethics law. The donation and the vote were proximal and he knew exactly what he was doing. Vos should have recused himself because he had a clear conflict of interest, and he should have publicly disclosed his conflict.

Violation of New Jersey election law

Councilman Harmen Vos violated NJ election law and ELEC reporting requirements when he failed to disclose the employer of a campaign donor.

Vos accepted a $1,000 donation on March 18, 2011 and failed to disclose on the ELEC form, in the required box (it’s not optional), the employer of the donor. By itself, that’s an ELEC violation. As chairman and treasurer of his own campaign, Vos is responsibile for donations and for completing the ELEC disclosure forms properly.

According to the NJ Department of Banking & Insurance, the donor is an employee of an out-of-town real estate developer who is in litigation with the Township and with the Sewer Authority over sewer rights and who has sued the Township again and again. The litigation is not a minor matter. The developer claims to own virtually all remaining sewer capacity in Clinton Township, and thus virtually controls whether any new development can occur, and where. Vos created another ethics violation by not disclosing his financial connection to a party in active ligitation with the Township. Councilman Vos will be required to comment on, influence, and vote on that litigation and matters connected to it. As a Councilman, Vos is undoubtedly privy to the Township’s confidential legal position on these matters — yet he is taking money from an employee of a businessman who is in litigation with the Township. Vos failed to disclose another conflict of interest.

These are violations of law.

Who? Me?

Councilman Vos is well-known for proclaiming his love of America and Democracy, and for his defense of freedom and liberty. But Vos’s behavior demonstrates that he believes he is above the law and not accountable for violating it. Vos stated in an interview (HC News, May 23, 2011) that,

“I received a lot of Checks, 80% of these people I do NOT know.”

Vos’s “explanation” that he doesn’t know his donors constitutes a failure to be accountable under NJ ELEC law. Harmen Vos, not his donors, is under legal obligation to identify and report the employers of his donors over a certain size donation.

Vos also stated that,

“I take the money and spend it on my campaign, file my papers correctly and am 100% transparent with the state and [County Clerk Mary] Melfi and that is all.”

Vos is not telling the truth. His ELEC “papers” are not filed correctly. He is not transparent, and he disregards the law when it is inconvenient for the purposes of his mayoral campaign.

ACCOUNTABILITY UP!

Councilman Harmen Vos’s campaign signs promise TAXES DOWN, and ACCOUNTABILITY UP.

Add up the legal violations and Vos’s failure to account for himself and for his campaign donors, and Harmen Vos’s character becomes the main issue. Harmen Vos does not demonstrate the character, ethics, and integrity necessary for honest government. We have enough dishonest government in NJ, and enough elected officials like Harmen Vos who believe they are above the law.

Whatever the outcome of the June 7 election, Clinton Township Councilman Harmen Vos has violated the law and must be held accountable.

UPDATE:

Where do Harmen Vos’s eloquent letters to the editor, about liberty and property, really come from? A posting on the nj.com Hunterdon forum says this:

Mr. Accountability is at it again. This time as a plagiarizer.

In Harmen Vos’ May 26, 2011 letter to the editor in Hunterdon County Democrat, Vos says “The right to life, liberty and property are equally sacred from arbitrary interference and are so bound together that they are essentially one right. You can give a man his life, but if you deny his liberty, it is like taking away all that his life is worth living for. When you give him his liberty, but take from him property, which is the harvest of his labor, and his liberty, it is to still like leaving him a slave.”

Which is effectively identical to a quote from George Sutherland, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1921. When talking about Life, Liberty and Property, he writes “the man–has three great rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference: the right to his life, the right to his liberty, the right to his property … The three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life, but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty, but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave.”

“As a freelance journalist for a major Holland newspaper” (as Vos claimed Thursday, December 2, 2010 Hunterdon Review LTE), when Vos copies someone else’s work, he should identify the source. This is something even a high school student knows to do. I guess the high schools in Holland do not teach ethics. But if Vos expects to remain in elected office, he needs to be honest, and not copy from other people without disclosing the source. Plagiarism is a crime.

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Posted in Election 2011, Municipal, State | Leave a comment

Maria Grant: The voice of the minority demands higher school taxes

Posted on April 22, 2011 by admin

Year after year, Clinton Township voters reject the local school budget. Lacking faith in the Board of Education (BOE), voters know that voting No on the school budget means the Township’s auditor will review that budget — and disclose what is really in it, and how our tax dollars are really being spent on education. A No vote is not a vote against our schools — it’s a vote for disclosure and full transparency.

Last year, in a record turnout, the school budget was defeated by the biggest margin in recent history. Voters roundly rejected higher school taxes.

Under New Jersey law, when a school budget is defeated by voters, the Township Council reviews the rejected budget and either reinstates it or reduces the school tax levy. The BOE must make the tax cuts, but it can choose to cut its budget wherever it wishes.

Every year during the Council’s review process, the minority that wants to spend more money on schools shows up at Council meetings. These folks claim that no one really knows what the voters want. They demand that because they — the minority — have appeared at a meeting after the election, the Council has an obligation to over-ride the voters and listen to the minority instead.

When voters reject a school budget, it means one thing: Voters don’t want to pay higher taxes, and they want the school budget to be cut.

The Voice of Higher Taxes

Last year this minority had a leader and spokesperson: Maria Grant. In a May 12, 2010 presentation to the Clinton Township Council, Grant mocked the majority that voted against higher school taxes:

Grant called the huge voter turnout against the school budget “apathy,” and characterized her group as “the rebound from apathy.”

Fancy that: A record number of voters turn out and reject the budget by a record margin, and they are called apathetic and accused of a lack of particpation.

Next week, on April 27, 2011, Maria Grant wants that same majority — the majority that she has referred to as apathetic — to elect her to the Clinton Township board of education to represent them.

A Dishonest Campaign

In her campaign statements, Maria Grant promises to “protect the taxpayer’s money.” Grant claims to be “the voice of the community.”

But last year, at the April 28, 2010 Clinton Township Council meeting, and again at the May 12, 2010 meeting, Grant told the Council that she and her group, “Concerned Parents of the Clinton Township School District,” didn’t support the majority of voters who rejected the 2010 school budget. Grand and her group wanted a bigger school budget and higher taxes:

Grant didn’t say it once. She said it twice, at two different meetings. Grant does not support the will of the voters.

Grant then proceeded to advocate for the wishes of the minority. Grant told the Council to ignore the will of the voters — the real “voice of the community” — and to let the BOE keep the budget that voters turned down. Why? Because a select few that supported the budget sent many e-mails and showed up at Council meetings to get the budget reinstated:

Grant’s message was clear: Ignore the voters. Ignore the election. Listen to those who show up afterwards to demand higher school spending.

On her campaign flyer, Grant says she will “listen and represent our community’s views, concerns and needs.” But Maria Grant’s statements about listening and representating our community are not honest. She has made it clear repeatedly that she believes the only way to run our school district is to keep spending more tax dollars — no matter what the voters say.

Maria Grant believes there can be no more cuts to school budgets:

Maria Grant believes there is “no wiggle room” to accept the decision of the voters. We must keep spending more.

Give Back What the Voters Cut, Then Spend Even MORE!

But convincing the Council to reinstate the spending that voters rejected was not enough for Grant. At those same meetings, Grant advocated to give the BOE even more money than it had asked for in the actual budget.

In 2010, the NJ Department of Education announced its annual award of Extraordinary Aid to CTSD — $399,000. The BOE had already included zero aid in its budget. That is, the BOE did not expect to get any aid, but produced a budget it was confident about. The unneeded $399,000 would thus be returned to taxpayers to lower the tax levy.

Nonetheless, Grant asked the Council to let the BOE spend even more money instead of returning it all to taxpayers.

Maria Grant has made it clear that she believes that no amount of money is enough to run our schools.

Higher School Taxes: The Answer to Poor School Management

Before she demanded that the Township Council raise people’s school taxes, Grant could have turned to the BOE to demand better management. But Grant did not ask the Board of Education to improve its management methods. She did not ask the BOE to streamline and develop new ways to deliver education effectively at a lower cost.

Instead, Grant told the Council that “our district is different” because voters have rejected the school budget every year. Grant said, “It only would save the average family $3 per month…” to let the BOE keep throwing more money at its problems.

(Just a few years ago, the BOE was telling us that, “A higher school budget will cost you only the price of a pizza dinner every month…! Isn’t that great?!”)

Maria Grant’s dishonest campaign for school board reveals the extent to which a small minority of people will go to force everyone else to pay higher taxes, without addressing the real problem: Mismanagement of our schools by our school administration and our Board of Education. As a resident running a citizens group that insisted on higher taxes, Grant was not interested in the majority’s rejection of the school budget.

If she is elected to the Board of Education, Maria Grant has made it very clear she will not represent the majority. Grant does not believe in controlling the school budget.

You can re-elect the people who gave you the budget you reject every year — and you can elect Maria Grant, who last year led the charge to inrease the school budget, to raise school taxes, and to give the BOE more money than it even asked for.

Or, you can elect new BOE members who will bring transparency and better management to our schools, spend our money where it belongs — in the classroom — and who will do a better job without raising our school taxes.

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Posted in Schools, Taxes | Leave a comment

Make sure tax dollars are spent on education: Vote NO on school budget

Posted on April 22, 2011 by admin

If your objective is to spend your tax dollars on a better education for Clinton Township children, then vote NO on the Clinton Township School District (CTSD) budget on April 27.

Historically, the CTSD Board of Education (BOE) has demonstrated that it is far more concerned with getting budgets passed than ensuring your tax dollars are spent on teachers, on instruction and in the classroom. The problem is not just how much money the BOE wants — but with how the BOE spends that money.

Since 2006, the Clinton Township Council has dealt with rejected school budgets by hiring an independent auditor (Peter Martin) who specializes in school budgets. Each year, Martin reviews the rejected school budget and helps the Council and taxpayers understand where the money is actually going.

Since 2006, Martin has enabled the Council to cut millions of dollars out of the CTSD tax levy without eliminating teachers or cutting spending on instruction or in the classroom. Martin has again and again found unspent funds that were tucked away in corners of the budget that taxpayers don’t see, and he has exposed questionable budgeting.

Again and again, the Council has used the auditor’s findings to insist that the BOE spend our tax dollars on teachers, on instruction, and in the classroom.

Voting NO is not a vote against education. Voting NO is saying YES to an independent review of the CTSD budget that reveals to all taxpayers how the BOE and school administration is planning to spend our tax dollars. Voting NO is the best way to ensure tax dollars are actually spent on education.

Once again, the CTSD Board of Education fails the smell test with its new budget and its management methods.

Education, or Apple Bling?

First, the Board of Education is not prudently spending our tax dollars on education. This budget includes $120,000 for 120 Apple iPads for elementary school kids. Not even North Hunterdon High School has iPads.

Technology Director Paul Chepolis admits on the school wiki (which is not really a wiki, but who cares about technology definitions?):

“I can not [sic] stress enough that the iPad will not produce high quality instruction.”

Then he answers his own question:

“So then why the iPad…it just is the most sensibly [sic] tool at the moment.”

“At the moment” is our technology plan?

Chepolis wants the hottest Apple bling, while North Hunterdon High School leverages technology for years to get maximum return on investment. Under the “plan” every 8th grader will have a computer this time next year. Yet in 10 years our students have never had adequate textbooks to bring home. Kids at North all have books. Our kids get handouts. Meanwhile, the textbook budget is lower than last year. (Can you imagine iPads going home?)

Is Education about Teachers & Kids, or about Administrators?

Second, everything seems more important to the BOE than our teachers, who’ve worked without a contract for over 10 months. But the board just tried to renew Superintendent Kevin Carroll’s contract months before it was due, offering the lame rationalization that they “need him” to implement “the plan” over the next several years. The real reason for extending Carroll’s contract was obvious to the audience of irate parents: To avoid the possibility that new members of the BOE might vote against renewing his contract altogether.

The BOE’s new mantra seems to be, “Stick it to the teachers but keep feeding cash to administrators and Apple.”

Parents and students want good teachers, not bling. The failure to negotiate a contract with the teachers is a serious failure of leadership on the school board — and that’s why voters should dump the incumbents.

Who can blame the teachers when, after 10 months of failed negotiations, they stop coming in early and staying late to provide extra help to students? Superintendent Carroll and the BOE seem to think this is an acceptable consequence of their inability to conclude contract negotiations.

The kids can’t come first when teachers are put last.

Another Dishonest Sales Pitch

Third, the annual “pitch” is embarrassing: “Damn the truth, but get the budget passed!” This year, the BOE brags that they cut the school tax levy. They did nothing of the sort.

The truth is, a decades-old mortgage costing taxpayers half a million a year has finally retired, no thanks to the BOE. The truth is, the school operating budget is actually higher than last year. (See Line Item Budget, page 1. ) Much of the increase is iPads, which will depreciate by half when Steve Jobs introduces iPad3 next year.

The bottom line is, the BOE is asking you to vote for a budget that is higher than last year’s. Not lower.

The Shell Game

The BOE keeps revealing that the budget game is rigged. This year, the sales pitch is astonishing: School taxes will be cut, but taxpayers should vote to let the BOE spend more money than last year.

In its annual shell game with taxpayers, the BOE keeps hiding the money. Last year, the BOE projected zero state aid. It was an accounting trick. In fact, the state said we’d get aid, and the district actually received $399,000. But Superintendent Carroll pretended the $399,000 was a surprise windfall.

By projecting zero aid in its budget, the BOE hid the aid from voters, then convinced the Township Council to let the district keep half. That’s how the BOE pocketed $200,000 more than it even asked for in its budget.

The BOE has given us no reason to trust the numbers it has presented this year.

When voters reject the school budget every year, the Township’s special auditor does an honest, independent review. Then we know where the money is really going. Since 2006, these reviews have saved millions in unnecessary taxes, without ever cutting teachers or instruction.

If you care about our kids and our schools, vote NO on the school budget. That’s how you can ensure that, once again, the Township auditor can review the budget, and to ensure our taxes are spent on education. The BOE shouts that it is cutting your taxes — but it is actually spending more money. Vote NO on the budget, so we can put the budget under the magnifying glass again this year.

To build a BOE that we can trust, it’s time to elect school board members we can trust.

Vote against incumbents Lebbing and Schaible, who brought you this higher-spending budget, and vote against Maria Grant, who spent last year advocating for higher school spending and higher school taxes.

Vote for real change on the BOE: Vote for Michelle Sullivan and  Marc Freda to bring sanity to school spending, and to make our BOE accountable to voters.

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Posted in Schools, Taxes | Leave a comment

Give us freedom: A sign of bad signs to come?

Posted on March 27, 2011 by admin

The new Clinton Township Freedom Fighters, led by councilman Harmen Vos, are trying to show us the truth in an old French proverb: Be careful what you wish for: You might get it!

A Hunterdon Democrat article, Clinton Twp. wants to restrict sign sizes on business windows, require permits for small sheds, covers the rambunctious demands of Clinton Township councilman Harmen Vos and his followers for “freedom.”

Vos and his freedom fighters should do their homework before they demand their rights under the Constitution, because in this case the Constitution might very well bite them — and all of us — in the ass, as a result of their demands.

Everyone — including councilmen Harmen Vos and Jim Imbriaco, who loves messing with ordinances while ignoring state and federal influences over our town — enjoys holding forth on the 10% of an issue that’s easy to shout about. But they don’t bother to do the homework and look at the bigger picture — or should I say the bigger sign?

Digital BillboardThe bigger issue is, do you want massive, digital signs all across our landscape, like those that line the Atlantic City Expressway leading into AC? If you want them, then read no further. If you don’t want them, then do your homework before you address the sign issue in Clinton Township

Several years ago, a group of towns along 22/78 worked together to stop massive, digital signs from being erected along our highways by the three biggest advertising companies in the U.S. The issue is the Constitution’s First Amendement right to free speech. These companies invoke the First Amendment across the country to force towns to permit these signs — which look like UFOs hovering over the landscape at night, and that create safety hazards when their rapidly changing messages distract drivers doing 75 MPH on the interstate –, then they go to court and get a town’s entire zoning ordinance overturned. Know what happens when your entire zoning ordinance is thrown out by a court? (Ask councilmen Imbriaco and Vos to explain it to you. That’s why you elected them. But they didn’t bother to explain this during the council meeting.)

Billboard 2The towns that fought this battle all hired a First Amendment and billboard-sign attorney, who has defended towns in most of the states in the country. The attorney has created a sign ordinance that we all adopted — and it is bulletproof. It has withstood every legal battle in every state. The reason it has withstood legal attacks is because it does not discriminate between signs we like and signs we don’t like.

The choice we made was that, to protect ourselves from big, digital signs, we had to restrict signage across the board — not just big, digital signs. This means no big banners can be flown by the Catholic Church at festival time, no big bake sales can be put up by the schools, and other “worthy non-profits” must restrict how they advertise their events.

Vos talks about the Constitution but reveals his massive, digital ignorance. We can’t have all the “little” signs Vos says we should have — because it would violate the Constitutional rights of those three big advertising companies. And if that happens, we get big, digital signs all over Hunterdon County. Our entire zoning ordinance gets overturned. (Ask Imbriaco and Vos to explain it to you.)

The Constitution does not permit discrimination.

Vos might read the Constitution, but he is woefully uneducated and ignorant about what the Constitution means in actual practice.

The bottom line is this: If we screw around with “little signs,” permitting one here and there, then we open holes in the “big picture” sign ordinance we and other towns adopted several years ago, to stop big, digital signs. The big sign companies monitor ordinances in the towns where they want to erect their UFOs. Then they file suit for infringement of their First Amendment Rights. Suits we are likely to lose.

Billboard 3Those who shout “freedom” could get our towns screwed because they don’t really understand the Constitution and the fact that Clearchannel, Coastal and CBS have the same First Amendment rights that local restaurants and churches do.

Keep complaining about your “rights” in ignorance. Keep playing political games to get votes. Ignore the big-picture sign ordinance, and you’ll be looking at UFOs all up and down Routes 22 and 78.

It has become very popular for “the people” to demand their Constitutional rights. To demand “liberty” and “freedom from excessive legislation.” To tell government to “leave us alone.” But these same folks often have no idea what they’re asking for.

The punchline here is not funny. Screwing around with our big sign ordinance could cost us our landscape, our entire zoning ordinance, and a lot of money in lawsuits. The town council should make sure it fully understands the big picture, and not forget what that big sign ordinance was designed to do. If we blow holes in it now, it’s like we never paid to have it written to begin with. Does anyone working on this — or complaining about it — know what they’re really doing?

 

Posted in Hunterdon County, Municipal | Leave a comment

Apple’s Business Plan: CTSD

Posted on March 6, 2011 by admin

Three years ago the Clinton Township School District invested heavily in “modern technology.” We needed SMARTboards in classrooms. Still not completely deployed, SMARTboards are now old hat. The latest “gotta have it” Apple “educational technology” continues to drive our spending.

Today, according to the District Technology Plan:

“Additional whiteboards are the lowest priority (compared to projector and student computers) as the district considers mobile technologies (specifically the iPod Touch/iPad) as more valuable future investments.”

Read it and weep.

CTSD is getting 2 carts of 25 iPads each. Why? They’re mobile. Will kids get to take them home? Are they more mobile than laptops?

Just what is the benefit of “mobile technology” in a stationary school?

From the technology plan:

“This year we will also begin deployment of mobile devices. Initially two iPod or iPad (depending on pricing and state of the technology) carts of 25 units each. These devices will be used to supplement the availability of student computers, and supplant older, more expensive laptops.”

Really, now? The iPad runs $499-$829. A fully-loaded Acer laptop runs $359, including DVD drive, which iPad lacks. The main difference? iPads are cool. Gotta have ’em.

A recent article in Computerworld about Apple’s release of the iPad 2 seems to explain why CTSD needs iPads:

iPad owners rush to dump old tablets for new model

By Gregg Keizer
March 3, 2011

Consumers unloaded their old iPads in unprecedented numbers so they can trade up to Apple’s latest tablet, a gadget buy-back company said Wednesday.

The rush to dump the old and use the cash to buy the new is a good sign for Apple, said Boston-based Gazelle. “It was a perfect storm, in part because of the short time between the announcement and availability,” said Kristina Kennedy, Gazelle’s director of brand and communications, of the trade-in surge Wednesday.

“This as a very good indicator that Apple will sell a lot of iPad 2s.” Wednesday’s action on the iPad set a record for the company, with more consumers selling their now-old tablets in an hour than did iPhone owners last summer when Apple launched the iPhone 4.

Consumer lemmings to the Apple slaughter. Wasteful spending? Yes, it is, when the technology planners at CTSD select whiteboards and laptops for long-term deployment, then quickly decide it’s old technology before it’s even been fully deployed, and jump on the Apple Biz Plan bandwagon and tell us our kids need highly-mobile, more-droppable, keyboardless, removable-driveless, gee-whiz-ain’t-it-cool consumer products.

What this smells like is a “gotta have it” consumer mentality that has turned the CTSD school budget into the realization of Apple’s business plan. Turn in the old technology! Buy the new craze! You’ll love it!

Parents and kids would love really good teachers who are happy, work hard, and stay in the district. Investments in actual classroom instruction still trump investments in “cool” — especially if the board of education and administration want taxpayers to consider voting yes on the school budget.

In the meantime, the much ballyhooed announcement of the “lower tax levy” on the CTSD website covers up a downplayed fact that voters should be aware of: CTSD’s actual operating budget is higher than last year’s. For what? iPads?

“Remember the iPads!” of 2008. Elaine Studnicki, CTSD’s Technology Director, stood in front of the township council to defend the defeated school budget, and swore there were no iPads in the budget.

The Township auditor pulled out the page from the budget — which included $5,500 of iPads.

Studnicki: “No, no — We took them out!”

This year’s mantra: Remember the iPads.

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Posted in Schools | Leave a comment

Clinton Township COAH Plan: “Chicanery”

Posted on November 4, 2010 by admin

A recent Hunterdon Democrat article reports that the Clinton Township Community Coalition (CTCC) has filed a formal protest about the township’s most recent affordable housing plan with the New Jersey Council On Affordable Housing (COAH).

The Hunterdon Review covers the story in much more depth:

The Clinton Township Community Coalition (CTCC) is challenging the affordable housing plan submitted to COAH by the township. CTCC said the plan “appears to be a politically motivated effort.”

From: “Affordable housing plan opposed by Clinton Township citizen’s group”

The CTCC is the citizens’ group that fought the storied Windy Acres housing project until it was ultimately rejected by COAH, by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and by the Superior Court. Windy Acres crashed after the Clinton Township Planning Board, led by chairman James Imbriaco, approved a settlement deal with the developer, Pulte Homes — but minutes later the Clinton Township Council, rejected the deal, an action that exposed fatal flaws in the project that the CTCC had enumerated over the years.

The CTCC claims that the new members of the council, James Imbriaco, Spencer Peck and Peter Marra, intentionally misrepresented the Township’s existing COAH plan as more costly than the alternative the three cooked up. In its filing, the CTCC reveals that the “cost estimates” were fraudulent because they were based (a) on one-sided bids that excluded the alternative property, and (b) on estimates submitted by a bidder with whom the Township still has no contract. In other words, the estimates are smoke and mirrors, intended to misdirect COAH to approve an affordable housing plan that fails the main test COAH applies: Does the site present “a realistic opportunity to build affordable housing?”

The Review quotes from the CTCC filing:

The CTCC objection states, “When it put out a Request for Proposals for affordable housing developers in 2010, the township did not include the Old Allerton site. Yet the newly elected majority members of the council (Imbriaco, Marra, and Councilman Spencer Peck) disingenuously proclaimed that the Old Allerton site would be far more costly to develop than the Windy Acres site – without having new, competitive bids on Old Allerton to base these claims on. Perhaps more than anything else, this chicanery reveals the political agenda behind the trashing of the 2007 plan.”

The CTCC’s full COAH filing claims that the new COAH plan was the result of political promises made by Imbriaco and his running mates during their 2009 primary election campaign — promises to “put it all on Windy Acres,” in spite of the fact that the sites faces the same fatal problems that Pulte Homes faced with it:

Conifer [one of the two bidders for the project] has assured the township that funding will not be a problem, and that it will be able to accommodate the proposed development’s sewer and water needs, though Pulte Homes, the previous owner of Windy Acres, spent millions of dollars and was unable to do either. In theory, public sewer is not available. The state Department of Environmental Protection permitting is onerous and not guaranteed.   — Hunterdon Review

The CTCC filing provides a detailed history of the township’s COAH planning and illuminates the political agendas of the newest council members. The danger posed by the township’s COAH plan is that it tries to feed COAH the same sort of fraudulent planning that made COAH bare its sharp teeth to the township for many years prior to 2006.

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Posted in COAH, Municipal, Windy Acres | Leave a comment

Councilman Jim Imbriaco on Exxon: They’re bozos

Posted on October 28, 2010 by admin

The following letter was submitted to the Hunterdon Democrat, but was edited drastically to fit the newspaper’s “new” letter limitations. This is the full letter:

On October 13, 2010 councilman Jim Imbriaco called Clinton Township’s biggest corporate resident, taxpayer and employer, ExxonMobil, a “bozo” in a public meeting. Imbriaco’s rude, unnecessary remarks now jeopardize ongoing negotiations between local officials and the largest landowner in the Township.

According to Mayor Cimei, Exxon is considering a generous grant to the Township of a land easement to allow a second driveway out of our police department onto Valley Crest Road. This public safety improvement would permit police to respond more quickly to emergency calls in the eastern half of the Township. Funds for this project, which was conceived in 2006, were banked several years ago. Administrator Marvin Joss believes that the easement is imminent, and asked the council to release up to $15,000 of those banked funds to build the driveway, though it might cost less.

To this good news, Imbriaco said:

“You know, the thing is, I’ve dealt with Exxon, too. And there’s no certainty with those guys. They take forever to get anything done. And you may think you’re close, and then some bozo down in Texas is gonna say, I’ve got no time for this. And that’s the end of it. And that’s the facts. That’s the facts.”

Bozo? Imbriaco campaigned on “new ratables,” but it seems he forgot that you must be civil and friendly to your existing corporate ratables — unless you want them to leave!

Who's the bozo?

Jim Imbriaco might revel in playing “the ugly councilman,” but he does no good to our schools, which have counted on Exxon’s generosity. And in a time when towns are dying for good corporate ratables, Imbriaco is telling Exxon that Clinton Township is the wrong place to stay and grow. Just how would he replace that precious ratable?

But councilman Imbriaco doesn’t discriminate between corporations and our neighbors. He doesn’t seem to care who he insults — even Union Township, which pays us well to share our municipal court facilities. Township CFO Kitty Colognato cautioned the council at the same meeting, “We are getting how much money per year from the Union Court? [Answer: Over $100,000 annually.] And they’re giving us formal complaints… about the original carpeting [that’s been in the building] since it was bought in ‘92. They’re very upset… it’s at the point where it needs to be tested to see if it’s got mold in it.”

Imbriaco’s response? “You know what? I don’t care.”

He then voted against investing about $10,000 to fix the rotting carpeting, thereby putting an important relationship and a $100,000 annual source of shared-services revenue at risk. Imbriaco cares no more about Union Township leaving our court than about Exxon leaving our town.

But these are not isolated incidents. Imbriaco has made it very clear that he doesn’t care a whit about keeping or generating revenue. At a September council meeting, Imbriaco voted against a new potential $1 million revenue source. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) selected Clinton Township’s police department — 1 of just 6 chosen from among 566 towns — to participate in a special taskforce. In 2010, the handful of towns that have been helping with the DEA’s statewide drug busts split over $6 million in confiscated assets. While there are no guarantees, and we can back out any time, if we’d been in the mix already we’d have about $1 million of additional revenue in our coffers. Imbriaco not only voted against joining the taskforce; he publicly denigrated the DEA and its offer. With councilmen like Imbriaco, who needs friends and shared-services partners? Who needs a police department that brings in federal revenue?

How much revenue can we afford to lose?

Many a good corporation and business avoided Clinton Township while Imbriaco was chairman of the planning board for over 12 years. His boorish, arrogant behavior was legendary, as were his drawn-out, expensive application hearings. It’s why I removed him as chairman when I was mayor, and I believe it’s why Mayor Cimei removed him from the board altogether. For years, Imbriaco fostered an image of Clinton Township as the last place to do business. He used his planning board pulpit to insult county officials, state commissioners, land use applicants, professionals and residents alike. Now he has found a new stage for his pompous playacting. He dominates council meetings, verbally attacking Township employees, abusing the Township’s friends, and even laughing off complaints from residents. Who can negotiate with Exxon when Imbriaco is calling the company a bozo?

ExxonMobil is a good neighbor and an important part of Clinton Township; a corporation that goes out of its way to cooperate with our municipality and to support important local projects. To say nothing of the fact that it is our most important ratable. When he campaigned for council, Imbriaco said he stood for “congenial” behavior in government. His public comments about Exxon, Union Township, and the DEA are shameful. Once again, he uses his pulpit inappropriately and strains the Township’s relations with our friends and neighbors. He owes multiple public apologies to those he has so cavalierly offended.

Councilman Jim Imbriaco is turning Clinton Township into a pariah among municipalities once again. He has turned one of the finest municipal teams in New Jersey into his personal punching bag. It’s no wonder morale at the municipal offices is so low. He’s killing our reputation — and our revenues.

Posted in Municipal | Leave a comment