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Property Taxes Going Through The Roof


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At last night's council meeting, Mayor Santos attacked Councilman Mangin's suggestions on cuts to the budget posted on this messsage board as irresponsilbe and reckless. He referred to Councilman Mangin's suggestions as being posted on a "web blog" but did not mention Kearny On The Web by name. Councilman Mangin defended himself and pointed out that his cuts were not irresponsible but that there had not been expenditures from some of the accounts for several years and that the funds were coming from other line items (accounts) and that the town was budgeting twice for the same service. Why doesn't the Mayor participate on this message board and explain why would the town want to budget twice for the same service and then borrow by bonding to pay for that service?

Why don't you go there and ask him face to face? :D

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Ray built the sight, but he does not do any updates or work on it DARCO does.

There seems to be confusion as to who is paid the $10,000. Is it Ray or D'Arco?

Councilman Mangin: Since your the only elected official whoever gives out any info, do you know if and who gets $10,000 a year for the website. If it's D'Arco, is this in addition to his regular salary and other perks?

This is just one of the unanswered questions from the last Town Council meeting. The truth is - no one knows how much we pay for website maintenance. I asked the question repeatedly and no one knows - not the Mayor, not the Treasurer, not the Business Administrator. Previously I asked for a copy of the webmaster's contract, but no one can find that either. The Mayor called my proposed cut to the website appropriation "reckless" but we don't even know how much we're paying for it.

I can tell you that in fiscal 2003 we paid Computechz (our webmaster) a total of $20,300. D'Arco is not paid to update the website. It took some real digging to find this information because the expenditure is cleverly split between two major accounts - Communications and UEZ. The Business Administrator stated that we pay the webmaster to also help maintain our Citrix server. I asked for a copy of his contract because the Communications account is a Town of Kearny account, not the UEZ. And I am trying to make sure we are not spending money for services without a contract - like the Town Council did during while John Florentino was CFO.

Councilman Jim Mangin

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Thank you Councilman Mangin. If it took that much for you to get this info can you imagine an outsider trying to get it despite the fact it's all public record. Sounds to me like that's intentional and it's probably going on elsewhere. How do they get away with this stuff? Should be publisized they're cooking the books. That big deficit is still around I betcha!

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Ray built the sight, but he does not do any updates or work on it DARCO does.

There seems to be confusion as to who is paid the $10,000. Is it Ray or D'Arco?

Councilman Mangin: Since your the only elected official whoever gives out any info, do you know if and who gets $10,000 a year for the website. If it's D'Arco, is this in addition to his regular salary and other perks?

This is just one of the unanswered questions from the last Town Council meeting. The truth is - no one knows how much we pay for website maintenance. I asked the question repeatedly and no one knows - not the Mayor, not the Treasurer, not the Business Administrator. Previously I asked for a copy of the webmaster's contract, but no one can find that either. The Mayor called my proposed cut to the website appropriation "reckless" but we don't even know how much we're paying for it.

I can tell you that in fiscal 2003 we paid Computechz (our webmaster) a total of $20,300. D'Arco is not paid to update the website. It took some real digging to find this information because the expenditure is cleverly split between two major accounts - Communications and UEZ. The Business Administrator stated that we pay the webmaster to also help maintain our Citrix server. I asked for a copy of his contract because the Communications account is a Town of Kearny account, not the UEZ. And I am trying to make sure we are not spending money for services without a contract - like the Town Council did during while John Florentino was CFO.

Councilman Jim Mangin

I was at the council meeting this last Tuesday. Following up on what Councilman Mangin raised I asked the Mayor and Council and Mr. D'Arco what was the break up between the Webhosting costs and the Town Hall Server Maintenance. The answer was 90% for the Server maintenance and 10% for the webhosting but nobody had any specifics about the breakup of costs. Nobody mentioned $20,000+ I am following up with a request of Mr. D'Arco for the specifics on what the contract provided for. Mr. D'Arco did not have specifics nor did the Mayor have specifics on what the contract covered. According to D'Arco the town hall has two redudant servers running a Windows Professional (XP based) operating system. In my opinion, the maintenance of such a system seems high and probably unnecessary. A person can be trained to maintain the servers without incurring such a cost. I am reserving judgment however until I get the specifics from Mr. D'Arco on what the contract between the Town and Computertechz provides.

An issue which I raised which is much bigger than the 10,000 or 20,000 webhosting/ network maintenance cost is the fact that Mayor Santos admitted after I asked some questions that the town used a 4.1 million dollar surplus to plug a hole in this year's budget. External costs (according to Mayor Santos) are the cause for the tax increase this year. Next year however the town will not have a $4.1 million dollar surplus and thus must raise an additional $4.1 million (on a $50 million dollar budget=approx 8% of budget) in new taxes to make up the difference. In addition the Mayor stated that the external costs will continue to go up so the percentage will be higher.

I think the Mayor continues to lie about the Town's past and current financial picture. I do not believe there was a real surplus of $4.1 million. I believe the Mayor was irresponsible and reckless (the words he used to describe Councilman Mangin's proposed duplicate budget item cuts) in announcing such a surplus. If you go to the State to ask for aid, you cannot announce you have a surplus of $4.1 million and expect to get aid. The Town got no aid and had to sell off Meadowlands to get any form of relief. The $4.1 million surplus may have existed on paper at the end of the fiscal year but the money was already spent or earmarked to be spent and therefore was not a surplus. Mayor Santos wanted to win one more term and got caught up in his own rhethoric. Next year the taxpayers will be paying for it. When it hits the fan, more people will be coming out to budget hearings and asking questions but it will be too late.

Thank you Councilman Mangin, you tried but your fellow councilman are too busy "Yesing the Mayor to death" to stop and listen to you. I was listening. The Mayor will now go after you. I just hope the voters in the Third Ward are smart enough to see through the smokes and mirrors the Mayor has put up to hide the truth.

John M. Pinho

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Thanks for the vote of confidence John. But the truth is, the Mayor has been "coming after me" since the day we met. That was the day I won the Democratic nomination for Town Council in the June 2000 primary. After we were introduced and the Mayor congratulated me he asked me to join him in his effort to dump Derrick Orr as Town Democratic Chairman. I refused and he has never forgiven me for it. Since then he has constantly distorted my positions. When I tried to get the Park Avenue icing condition addressed he even went so far as to accuse me of a "fourth degree crime." At our next meeting I had to read the law to him to show him where he was wrong.

This past summer - two full months after the June primary - he took my campaign slogan as a "true son of Kearny" and accused me of bigotry. He even called me "xenaphobic." I admit I had to look up what that meant. Boy was I surprised to learn it means a "fear of foreigners." Can you believe it - A FEAR OF FOREIGNERS! Would a xenaphobic person work for Shop Rite for the past 28 years?!

However this past Tuesday I really feel the Mayor sank to an all-time low in his personal attacks against me. While I criticize his policies, he attacks me personally. He took the suggested budget cuts that I voiced at our Dec 2 Finance Committee meeting and used the public hearing on the budget to call me "heartless." Why did he call me heartless? Because I pointed out that our Meals on Wheels Program is appropriated twice in the budget. There has not been a single expenditure against our Meals on Wheels account since the year 2000 because the program is completely paid for in another line item. Do we need to appropriate it two times? Of course not. But for wanting that unnecessary double appropriation taken out of the budget, he calls me heartless.

I think the Mayor really showed his true self at our last Town Council meeting.

He is a sad pathetic man.

Say a prayer for him this Christmas.

Councilman Jim Mangin

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Guest monkeyshine

I thought the construction code official handle alot of the admin work on the servers and network. I think in this day and age someone should be hired to run the day to day cmputer up keep. A consultant gets big dollars to install upgrades, patches etc. Maybe the construction code official would like to do his job instead of doing the network admin job.

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Guest fire fighter

Heartless, heartless!!!!!!!! Mayor and council...........and lets not forget Mr. D, walk through toy'r'us with my kids and think in your head you cant get things they want because you are budgeting money from 2000!

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Guest WebSite robbery
Ray built the sight, but he does not do any updates or work on it DARCO does.

There seems to be confusion as to who is paid the $10,000. Is it Ray or D'Arco?

Councilman Mangin: Since your the only elected official whoever gives out any info, do you know if and who gets $10,000 a year for the website. If it's D'Arco, is this in addition to his regular salary and other perks?

This is just one of the unanswered questions from the last Town Council meeting. The truth is - no one knows how much we pay for website maintenance. I asked the question repeatedly and no one knows - not the Mayor, not the Treasurer, not the Business Administrator. Previously I asked for a copy of the webmaster's contract, but no one can find that either. The Mayor called my proposed cut to the website appropriation "reckless" but we don't even know how much we're paying for it.

I can tell you that in fiscal 2003 we paid Computechz (our webmaster) a total of $20,300. D'Arco is not paid to update the website. It took some real digging to find this information because the expenditure is cleverly split between two major accounts - Communications and UEZ. The Business Administrator stated that we pay the webmaster to also help maintain our Citrix server. I asked for a copy of his contract because the Communications account is a Town of Kearny account, not the UEZ. And I am trying to make sure we are not spending money for services without a contract - like the Town Council did during while John Florentino was CFO.

Councilman Jim Mangin

$20,000 is a ridiculous amount to pay for a web site [/color=purple]maintainance, design , and host.

If the site had consumer e-business,then a cost might facor in to about 5-7K per year to a business who doesnt shop around for a cost effective site. I hope that is a charge for several years of services .???

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Ray built the sight, but he does not do any updates or work on it DARCO does.

There seems to be confusion as to who is paid the $10,000. Is it Ray or D'Arco?

Councilman Mangin: Since your the only elected official whoever gives out any info, do you know if and who gets $10,000 a year for the website. If it's D'Arco, is this in addition to his regular salary and other perks?

This is just one of the unanswered questions from the last Town Council meeting. The truth is - no one knows how much we pay for website maintenance. I asked the question repeatedly and no one knows - not the Mayor, not the Treasurer, not the Business Administrator. Previously I asked for a copy of the webmaster's contract, but no one can find that either. The Mayor called my proposed cut to the website appropriation "reckless" but we don't even know how much we're paying for it.

I can tell you that in fiscal 2003 we paid Computechz (our webmaster) a total of $20,300. D'Arco is not paid to update the website. It took some real digging to find this information because the expenditure is cleverly split between two major accounts - Communications and UEZ. The Business Administrator stated that we pay the webmaster to also help maintain our Citrix server. I asked for a copy of his contract because the Communications account is a Town of Kearny account, not the UEZ. And I am trying to make sure we are not spending money for services without a contract - like the Town Council did during while John Florentino was CFO.

Councilman Jim Mangin

I was at the council meeting this last Tuesday. Following up on what Councilman Mangin raised I asked the Mayor and Council and Mr. D'Arco what was the break up between the Webhosting costs and the Town Hall Server Maintenance. The answer was 90% for the Server maintenance and 10% for the webhosting but nobody had any specifics about the breakup of costs. Nobody mentioned $20,000+ I am following up with a request of Mr. D'Arco for the specifics on what the contract provided for. Mr. D'Arco did not have specifics nor did the Mayor have specifics on what the contract covered. According to D'Arco the town hall has two redudant servers running a Windows Professional (XP based) operating system. In my opinion, the maintenance of such a system seems high and probably unnecessary. A person can be trained to maintain the servers without incurring such a cost. I am reserving judgment however until I get the specifics from Mr. D'Arco on what the contract between the Town and Computertechz provides.

An issue which I raised which is much bigger than the 10,000 or 20,000 webhosting/ network maintenance cost is the fact that Mayor Santos admitted after I asked some questions that the town used a 4.1 million dollar surplus to plug a hole in this year's budget. External costs (according to Mayor Santos) are the cause for the tax increase this year. Next year however the town will not have a $4.1 million dollar surplus and thus must raise an additional $4.1 million (on a $50 million dollar budget=approx 8% of budget) in new taxes to make up the difference. In addition the Mayor stated that the external costs will continue to go up so the percentage will be higher.

I think the Mayor continues to lie about the Town's past and current financial picture. I do not believe there was a real surplus of $4.1 million. I believe the Mayor was irresponsible and reckless (the words he used to describe Councilman Mangin's proposed duplicate budget item cuts) in announcing such a surplus. If you go to the State to ask for aid, you cannot announce you have a surplus of $4.1 million and expect to get aid. The Town got no aid and had to sell off Meadowlands to get any form of relief. The $4.1 million surplus may have existed on paper at the end of the fiscal year but the money was already spent or earmarked to be spent and therefore was not a surplus. Mayor Santos wanted to win one more term and got caught up in his own rhethoric. Next year the taxpayers will be paying for it. When it hits the fan, more people will be coming out to budget hearings and asking questions but it will be too late.

Thank you Councilman Mangin, you tried but your fellow councilman are too busy "Yesing the Mayor to death" to stop and listen to you. I was listening. The Mayor will now go after you. I just hope the voters in the Third Ward are smart enough to see through the smokes and mirrors the Mayor has put up to hide the truth.

John M. Pinho

John why don't you open the books from the HarrisonFest and donate some of that hidden cash to Kearny.

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