Column # 1-2008 January 7, 2008

COUNCILMAN BONACCI SAYS –

WHERE’S THE BEEF?

Let’s start the New Year by telling you all how pleased I am to be able to start conversing with you again. You are aware that it was necessary not to write the column from the June 5^th primary until the end of 2007; the papers’ correct policy was to suspend columns during an election period. I was able to communicate by candidate statements, letters to the editor and an OP-ED piece. Of course that is not the same. I want to consider my column as something broader than pure politics in the usual sense of politics. I really like to talk government service and to me there is a distinction.

Having said that I must admit that today’s column heading and content is going to sound a lot more political by necessity.

So I ask the rhetorical question using that famous ad line “Where’s the beef?” because some of our most political elected representatives and people that they influence are making a stink about the Agenda for the January 1, 2008 Town Council Reorganization Meeting and the Jan. 8, 2008 second meeting. I am not quite sure if the ruckus they raised and are still raising is about having the meeting or the resolutions and ordinances listed or the content of the resolutions or the governing body members who took the lead in presenting an agenda. The complaints I hear centered about having any business at all get conducted other than ceremonial and who prepared the material, how and when. It is basically being doen the same way as last year’s Council but I believe with better content and thought.

These complaints were from the participants in last years CABAL, which consisted of the Mayor and Council members Bruno, Perna and Pirone. Since Mr. Pirone was defeated in the Nov. 6, 2007 election, the CABAL is now a minority voice. They voted as a block about as close to 100 % of the time as you can get in 2007 and are off to the same start in 2008. You know when the Mayor and Council members team up constantly, what they are in effect doing is operating as the Township Committee used to operate. In other words they were both Executive and Legislative branches then and they merged again . Our new form of government for better or for worse was supposed to separate these two branches in some checks and balances mode. Thus each had clear duties and responsibilities not impacted by the other and there were crossover areas the State Legislators thought they put into the Faulkner Act to provide the balance. One of those was the tiebreaker vote by the Mayor. However this turned out to be the tool that the Cabal used to circumvent checks and balances until the Council figured out how to block efforts from their end while the CABAL blocked efforts from its end. This action is commonly known as gridlock. I believe you all have seen it happen on the National level.

I need to tell you all that the only new news on this January 1, 2008 was that several actions were taken to initiate activity that was promised in the Campaign of both 2006 and 2007 when Council members DiPasquale, Bonacci and Battaglia were clearly elected (in2006) as opposition to the CABAL but in separate campaigns. Then in 2007 Council Member Bonacci and new candidate Nelson opposed the CABAL and its surrogates and their policies. If memory fails from 2006, please recall the specifics of 2007 and the clear messages of Bonacci and Nelson regarding our Police control, discipline fairness for employees, fairness for residents, completing the Faulkner Act requirements for an Administrative Code and simplifying the Department Structure. Please research the other areas they said they would address and check a mid-December Press Release and also a Council Statement distributed and read into the record on Jan. 1, 2008. While you are at it check the votes and see if the word “mandate” fits the resulting large victory vote.

Then go back and look at your agenda and the list of 12 resolutions plus the more routine Consent Resolutions. They are absolutely consistent. Some of the resolutions were meant to inform the areas of concern, allow discussion in the Council and inform the public before they would later be introduced as ordinances for permanence. So all the Council had to do was recheck the election statements, review the 2007 gridlock items and read the approximate statement or press release of mid-December. They could also see the agenda specifics 5 days before January 1, 2008 and at least 48 hours before each meeting as the Town Clerk always provides. They could prepare comments, amendments and votes. The new minority opposition chose instead to complain, throw up false claims and in other ways epitomize what we called “poor losers“ when I was a teenager. So there really was no beef for reasonable people and/or experienced government servants.

The new minority Cabal had only to look at Jan. 1 in 2007 when they chose to extend the reorg meeting by breaking out an item in Mr. Kologi’s Interim Resolution/temporary Code to force a discussion on “Appropriate Authority” of the Police Department. Thus the code without that amendment passed 6 to 0 but the amendment only passed 4 to 2. At that time Mr. Pirone hadn’t yet caved in to become a member of the CABAL. So what Perna and Bruno did with the Mayor’s agreement was to argue and argue and argue about the Police. What did they do on Jan. 1, 2008? They argued and argued and argued about the same subject. They also forced in resolutions at the last minute, set a Department structure by temporary resolution with salary changes that they were warned would hurt employees and their was at least one significant mistake in that Sept. 2007 min-max Salary Ordinance. So, again, who caused the problems and the situation? Who fits the blame game better? “Where’s the beef”? The beef is “them”. It is not the resolutions in the 2008 “reorg” meeting or the people who prepared them or the subjects themselves. A careful read will show that quite a bit was accomplished that should give hope to the majority, i.e. large majority of voters in this past election. I am sorry we didn’t do more on Jan. 1 or Jan. 8; but after all Rome wasn’t built in a day. It was destroyed a few times in one day and we don’t want that to happen in Berkeley Heights.

Now there were a few typos and there were a few errors. We can live with them. They are not fatal and we can fix them. We did edit some items in the Jan. 8 resolutions. When people stop politicking, they will find out it takes a great deal of cooperative effort to write good laws, correct gross past bad practices and start to move forward. I believe that Battaglia, Bonacci, Nelson and DiPasquale are committed to moving forward. They are the Council, by the way, not a branch of the Mayor’s Executive Office and they vote their own minds. They welcome Bruno and Perna to stay in the Council and get out of the Mayor’s Executive Office which they prize so much. The Mayor’s friends should use their influence with the Mayor to negotiate and compromise and also vote their own minds. I can’t assure you how the three who I currently am in agreement with will always vote because it is up to each person to vote according to their conscience and according to what they think the electorate wants and needs. I really know this is true because in 2007 Battaglia, Bonacci and DiPasquale agreed less than half the time. However the CABAL was about 99% in agreement. The result was gridlock and lack of accomplishment in many cases and clearly an Exec and Legislative branch that did not fulfill their respective independent roles.

Dr. John Bonacci is a member of the Berkeley Heights Township Council.

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