That's a question that many have asked, including the Asbury Park Press. It seems however, after Monday night's meeting of the Middletown Township Committee the answer is evident, Watch07748 is none other than Middletown Committeeman Tony Perry.
The video from Monday night's meeting is queued to where resident Jim Grenafege asked Tony Perry directly whether or not the anonymous email sent out two weeks ago by a fictitious group calling themselves, " Residents Against Over Development" attacking Democratic candidate Sean Byrnes, came from his campaign and if he had any knowledge of it before being sent to residents. Perry's non answers are very telling.
Tony Perry did his best two-step to avoid answering the question as it was asked, " Were you, in any shape or form associated with that email?", What followed was a political non-answer by Perry that by the omission of a direct answer, confirms that he and his campaign was responsible for it. The exchange between Grenafege and Perry lasted several minutes and became a little heated due to frustrations over non-answers (you can watch the exchange yourself, it's queued up to 2:13:35 of the video).
Bottomline here is that Tony Perry and the Middletown GOP where caught redhanded attempting to smear a rival candidate and through their own stupidity, it came back to bite them in the ass. Now Tony Perry and his buddies are backpedaling under the scrutiny of local media and outraged residents and trying to cover-up their tracks.
As I said before, the attempt of this little dirty-tricks email was underhanded and unethical. It also is in violation of campaign election laws for not being properly identified as coming from and paid for by Tony Perry's campaign.
You can watch the entire 3 hour video .... HERE. The Public Comments portion of the meeting starts about 22 minutes in. A vast majority of those there to ask questions of the Township Committee were they to ask about the proposed sports complex being considered for Stevenson Park.
I haven't watched this video of the May 23rd, 2018 meeting of the Middletown Board of Education just yet but I intend to do so soon. It's only an hour long so there are no excuses (haha).
You can find the various Agendas for this meeting ..... HERE
Other videos from previous meeting can be found .... HERE
This month's meeting videos of the Middletown Board of Education have just recently been made uploaded and available for viewing. I am posting them here but I haven't watched them yet. Between the two there is over 5 hours worth of video to watch.
If anyone wishes to discuss what's been going on down at the BOE leave your comments below and we'll talk about it.
I will admit, I haven't really seen this video of the February 21st meeting of the Middletown Board of Education (BOE) meeting. I've attempted to watch the video a few time over the past week and keep being taken away from it by circumstances beyond my control. I'm several minutes into it and hope to finish it over the weekend and be able to comment if necessary. This was a Voting meeting so there should be a full good details to look out for.
A list of Agendas and Attachments items for this meeting can be found ... HERE
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:
$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.
I haven't had the time to review this latest video of the Middletown Board of Education's September 27th meeting as of yet. The video is nearly 2 1/2 hours long and I just haven't had time to look at it without interruption. If there is anything to truly comment on, I'll do so later after viewing the complete video.
It took me a few days to get through this video of August 24th, Middletown Board of Education (BOE) meeting. The video is a little more than 2 hours long and kept freezing up on me during playback.
The video is pretty standard stuff but an interesting discussion peaked my interest concerning shared services. It seems from the 25 minute conversation that took place between the 1:31 - 1:55 mark of the video, that information isn't being disseminated properly between board members.
Board members, Sue Griffin and Joan Minnuies questioned why they weren't informed about the Board being approached by the Township Committee about potentially leasing classroom space at Croydon Hall (presumably in the vacated building that was the temporary home of the all girls school Trinity Hall), for market value or near market value. Minnuies questioned why the Board would be interested in such a lease? She added that she hoped that if the Board was interested in such a lease, now or in the future, that the lease arrangement would be more favorable seeing how the Board of Education currently leases one of it's buildings, the old Lincroft Library, to the town for $1 a year.
Vinnie Brand, the Board Chairman of the Shared Services committee, with added input from Board President Jim Cody and School Superintendent Dr. George, insisted that there was nothing of significance to report to the rest of the board. The topic was brought up nonchalantly and in passing by Township Committeeman Tony Fiore ( I believe), a few weeks prior and was turned down due to the fact that the Board wasn't interested in leasing any space at Croydon Hall, now or in the future. The point and discussion therefore was moot.
The discussion then turned towards the potential of a new sports field at Thorne Middle School, where again, Joan Minnuies stated that she knew nothing about.
From what I gathered, the Board has ~ $60K leftover from the work done on the fields over at Nutswamp School and wants to use that money over at Thorne. Apparently, during discussions with the Township Committee and Town Administrator Tony Mercantante, it was mentioned that the township had some fill material from some dredge project that the school district could have in order to raise the level of the fields, which would help offset the costs of the new field.
After going back and forth on the subject, which left me with more questions, it was decided that the Shared Services committee would do a better job of informing other board members of future discussions.
Here are my thoughts on the whole discussion.
As for the potential of the Township looking to lease available classroom/office space at Croydon Hall to someone is troublesome. The Croydon Hall complex is deemed as a Green Acres site and open space. The DEP was/is withholding nearly $1M of Green Acres funding from the Township due to issues surrounding the lease of one of the buildings to house Trinity Hall and other unrelated issues. The school district is wise to stay clear of that situation.
As for the field over at Thorne School, it's no secret that the BOE and Township Committee, has been hot and heavy to spend $800K - $1M on a new sports field for Thorne, even though the field abuts up to wetlands and is deemed environmentally sensitive by the DEP. Approval for permits on a such field improvements would cost thousands of dollars and take a few years to get, in which case, the $60K that the BOE has leftover from the Nutswamp project would be better spent elsewhere in my opinion.
See what you think, watch the video and form your own opinion.
