Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Emotions Run High At Library Board Meeting

I just walked throughout the door after attending tonight's Middletown Library Board of Trustees meeting, at this point in time 10:47pm, the meeting is still ongoing. I couldn't stand the BS any longer and I had to leave.

The final nail which was hammered into my head, that made me leave the proceedings was the exchange that was taking place between Board of Trustee members and Mayor Tony Fiore. In a moment of frustration at being questioned about the legality of whether or not theTownship could request funds from the Library and exactly how much money was available for the taking, Fiore said to library Director Susan O'Neal, "With all due respect, you don't know what we know!"

That statement blew my mind, I had to leave, I could take the BS any longer.

One fact that everyone should know about tonight's meeting, regardless of whether or not the Library board gives funds to the Township it WILL NOT effect the need to layoff of members of the Middletown Police Department or the other 16 people that have been targeted to loose their jobs. As a matter of fact, if funds do not come from the Library to help plug Middletown's budget defect MORE people will need to be laid off, not just the previously announced 26 individual.

And even though the Township is not looking to turn over the Middletown library system over to the County, the Township Committee has already looked into the possibility of it and would be willing to do it if nessassary, as per Mayor Tony Fiore.

Reporters from the APP, Independent and RedbankGreen.com were their tonight covering the event. Kevin Penton of the APP said that the will be posting a story before the end of the night.

I'll post more about this later also, but for know I need to go to bed, my head hurts!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

One might think that before requesting the handover of 800K, the requesting party would fully disclose, "what they know" to the other side. But then that has never applied to the current crew occupying the township committee seats. Perhaps, as like former Mayor Scharfenberger's patronage position, the citizens need to launch a complete internet search and hire an investigator to learn "what they know. I give you credit Mike for staying as long as you did.

Anonymous said...

OK, this afternoon Mayor Fiore sent out an e-mail stating that the Middletown Township Committee has taken "no action" to transfer over to the county system.

Yet at tonight's meeting Fiore said they've looked into the possibility of it?

How exactly do you do that if you've taken "no action?"

This guy's not even smart enough to keep track of his lies from one part of the day to the next. For him to tell anyone "you don't know what we know" is laughable, as more people know what's really going on than he thinks.

So he can make statements how he'd NEVER close a library knowing that decision would be made by someone else if the county took over, which makes him look even more ridiculous. In this day and age pal, information's everywhere and people aren't as stupid as you'd like them to be.

Anonymous said...

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that turning the library over returns the $1.2m surplus.

Anonymous said...

What happens when the town cannot afford their payroll in 2012? They hit up the preschools? Hey Middletown officials "How about a solution to the spending problem?" Did you look at The 100's of perfectly healthy people(in their 40's and 50's)collecting big fat pensions and lifetime benefits.....well that looks like the problem. Did anyone see the economic problems 4-5 years ago?....OK the answer is YES. Didn't Kevin Settembrino mention the minimal amount of people working in the town as opposed to the 31 people working in the library system? (fyi, most library workers do not get full time work, full benefits or pensions after working 20 years )NICE COMPARISON MIKE!.....did he mention all the pension paid non-employees of Middletown?.....