BOE Voting Meeting - January 24, 2017

I can't believe that I haven't posted this video yet. It was really quite entertaining.

During the meeting, the Board of Education voted to reverse it's controversial December decision to provide personal legal counsel to 5 board members in the on going battle over ethics charges filed against fellow board member, Joan Minnuies. The fireworks begin at the 51 minute mark of the video and proceed from there. It really is a must watch.

Also be sure to check out minutes between 1:12:00 to 1:28:00 of the video. Former board president Jim Cody, who was one of the board members looking for free legal representation against Joan Minnuies, decided to vote against the advise of the BOE lawyer, who advised that there may be a conflict of interest if he voted on the proposal to table the legal representation. He voted anyway and when the vote passed to reverse the BOE's December action, he accuses other board members of collusion and conspiracy!  Ain't that a case of the kettle calling the pot black?!




You can find the Meeting Agendas, Committee Report and  all other Attachments HERE.

BOE Voting Meeting - December 13, 2016: Legal Fees Controversy

I finished watching the latest recording of the Middeltown Board of Education meeting late Monday afternoon and needed some time to post it to the blog, so that I could process what I had finished watching. And it's good that I did. The Asbury Park Press posted two articles about what transpired during the meeting which saves me a lot of time trying to explain it myself:

Posted online Monday was, "7 highlights from Middletown schools' audit", which pointed out some very good news for the district:

Revenues

• $206,501,974: This figure includes all the money that flows into the district, most of which is property taxes. In 2015, total revenues were $192.8 million.

Property taxes

• $137,004,630: The township schools are the single-biggest contributor to the bottom line on your property tax bill. The district collected about $4 million more from homeowners in 2016, an increase of 3 percent from the previous year. Local taxes make up 76 percent of the public money that fund Middletown schools.

Expenses

• 206,168,208: Transportation was one area that shot up. Getting students to and from school cost $10.8 million, or $866,000 more than in 2015.

Teacher compensation

• $75,592,658: The cost of instruction increased by less than 1 percent from 2015. The $570,000 in new money went to negotiated salary increases and a handful of new positions. The certified teaching staff was counted at 922.

Enrollment

• 9,698: For some perspective, 10 years ago the district had 427 more students in class on an average day. There are 12.6 pupils for every teacher. The national average is about 16 to 1, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Cost per pupil

• $16,510: This represents the highest amount the district has ever spent, but it's still relatively low. The average district in New Jersey was paying close to $20,000 for each student in the 2014-2015 school year, according to the Taxpayers Guide to Education Spending.

Debt

• $68,920,000: That's down $3.8 million from the previous year. The district's bond rating remains at "AA", which is the second-highest rating that Standard & Poor's assigns. Generally speaking, the higher the rating, the less it costs to borrow money. About 4 percent of district spending goes to paying down debt and interest.

I would like to see some of that savings "banked" for a rainy day because I know theater are things coming down the line that will cost the district big time over the next couple of years.

The other article posted yesterday, "Middletown school board hires outside lawyers for ethics dispute", however is what gave me pause and the need to think before posting about what I had experienced after watching the BOE video. During a 20 minute discussion (triad really) beginning at 1:12:00 mark of the video, Middletown Board of Education disfunction once again raised it's ugly head.

In essence, a last minute item was added to the night's Agenda that many Board members weren't fully aware of.  That item was for the approval of the hiring of the law firm of Giordano, Halleran & Cielsa, PC as special counsel to represent 5 Board members in connection with the several ethic complaints they filed against fellow member Joan Minnuies, some of which has been dismissed, while some others have been bumped up to OAL litigation.

For this representation, the school district will be paying any legal bills associated with the litigation of the 5 individual Board members, Vinnie Brand, Bob Banta, Ernest Donnelly, Michael Donlon and BOE president Jim Cody  at the rate of $250/hour for litigation counsel and $100/hour for paralegal/legal assistant time with NO cap on the fees!

When the items was being introduced, Board member Sue Griffin made a motion to table the item until the following meeting, when the new BOE could discuss it further and decide whether it was appropriate or not to continue. After a heated argument between Griffin, Brand and Cody erupted about due diligence of board members still sitting on the Board and what was actually stated in the legal agreement that was to be voted on, the board went into executive session to discuss the item further.

Again you can watch the whole exchange staying at the 1:12:00 minute mark of the video.

In my opinion, this is outrageous and utter waste of tax payers money. If the School Ethics Board dropped some other charges against Joan Minnuies but couldn't decide on others and referred them for OAL litigation to pass the buck so to speak, then the charges aren't worth pursuing if it means that it could cost the district tens of thousands of dollars! And that's not easy for me to say, I'm not a big Joan Minnuies fan.  All this comes down to now is a very expensive, personal vendetta against Minnuies by her fellow board members - two of which, Brand and Banta, will no longer be members of the board, when legal action will proceed and representation will be needed sometime next year.

If action does move forward on this now frivolous legal action, than I think Vinnie Brand and Bob Banta should have to pay for their own legal expenses since they will no longer be members of the Board of Education.

There has also been outrage expressed by some Middletown residents HERE and HERE on Facebook over this.

But, as Board president Jim Cody stated during the video, there's nothing really to worry about.  No money from the school budget will be allocated for legal fees. The cost of legal fees will come out of the BOE's Legal Services budget.  HA-HA, ain't that great! It's all one and the same to me.

I would expect that once the new Board takes control next month this issue will be looked at once again and the correct decision will be made to kill this nonsense once and for all.

This Could Never Happen In Middletown or Could It?

Oh my, my do you think this could ever happen in Middletown? Maybe it's already taking place and we don't know about it.

 Democrats in Middletown have questioned Township legal fees for years and have been blown-off by officials much in the same way as the newly elected Mayor of Brick Township John Ducey, recently was. Fortunately for Ducey, as former municipal prosecutor for several towns in NJ, he knows how legal billing works and should be applied.

Years of unchecked authority and one party rule by a governing body leads to cronyism, complacency and eventual corruption regardless of who has been in charge.


From NEW JERSEY 101.5:

Brick Township is looking into the overcharging of legal fees by one of its attorneys, which cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars.

John Ducey claims victory in Brick’s Mayoral race (Jason Allentoff, Townsquare Media NJ)

Newly-elected Brick Mayor John Ducey says alternate Township Attorney Bianca Sangiovanni, daughter of Councilman Joseph Sangiovanni, billed the township per client instead of per session.

As a result, Ducey says she was charging the township $250 for each defendant rather than $250 for each daily session. That move cost the Brick roughly over $20,000, according to figures from the Asbury Park Press.

“A worst case example, there was one date in September 2011 which she saw, so she billed the town $2,500 instead of $250,” Ducey said.

The mayor-elect says legal, as well as all other contracts, will be inspected even more thoroughly, since in previous years expenses were green-lighted with little oversight.

“Prior to 2012 when I took office in council, the entire council and mayor were all the same political party, and everything was being rubber stamped and approved seven-zero, seven-zero, seven-zero,” Ducey explained.

While Ducey notes Sangiovanni told him that other municipalities charged in a similar fashion, the new mayor disagrees.

Continue reading and listen to audio 

APP Editorial: County counsel: He's baaack!

Today's editorial in the Asbury Park Press hits the nail on the head. Why on earth would Lillian Burry, Rob Clifton, John Curley or the other guy, ever consent to bringing back Malcom Carton for any type of legal services after he was dismissed from his duties last year?

It seems as though the "good ol' boys" are back in charge of Monmouth County and they must think residents/voters have forgotten all the nonsense of the past, after regaining control of the Freeholders Board.

Democrat Amy Mallet was the only member of the five-member Monmouth Couny freeholder board who had the good sense to vote against appointing Malcolm Carton — longtime county counsel — to handle the legal work for bail forfeitures for the county.

Mallet said she voted "no" because the resolution appointing Carton "lacked transparency." Specifically, it said the law firm for which Carton works would provide the special counsel services. No mention was made of Carton. To find that out, the freeholders would have had to read the proposal from the law firm stating Carton would be assigned the work.

But there were much better reasons than that for steering clear of Carton, who was replaced as county counsel in 2009, then appointed as a special counsel in 2010, purportedly to allow him to complete unfinished cases and ease the transition for the new county counsel. All ties with Carton should have been severed then — permanently.

In case the current freeholders forgot, Carton was the last vestige of the good ol' boy, all-Republican freeholder board that governed the county when corruption ran rampant. In early 2005, a federal corruption sting centered in Monmouth County netted the late Harry Larrison, then-director of the freeholders, and seven other county officials.

As county counsel, the legal fees Carton billed the county were nearly four times higher than what many other counties paid their chief counsel. In 2005, a Press comparison of county counsel fees showed Carton had billed about $400,000 a year since 1997. In 2005, the state's most populous county — Essex — paid its chief counsel $105,000. Mercer and Bergen counties paid their top counsels about $108,000.

Carton raised tens of thousands of campaign dollars for county Republicans, and his strong party ties posed unhealthy conflicts of interest.

Given Carton's history, it's hard to believe that even the four Republican freeholders currently on the board wouldn't want to turn the page on someone so strongly associated with one of the darkest chapters in the county's political history.