I'm Dreaming of a White... Day After Christmas (Update)

• Yesterday, Acropolis said, "If by mid day [Tuesday] you haven't seen a plow, we want to know about it." Its after Noon have you seen a functional plow?  If not call the Mayor's office! (732-262-1050)  Let them know we will not stand for this any longer! 

• The Mayor announced that plow crews from North Jersey are being called in to help dig us out.  How much is that going to cost us Mr. Mayor?  

• The Mayor announces that 65% of the roads in Brick are clear.  Then why is Rt 70 still down to one lane?  What the Mayor may have meant is of the roads the bothered to plow they only cleared 65% of the road!

I'm Dreaming of a White... Day After Christmas.

As Mother Nature finishes her snowy beating on the northeast leaving beautiful scenery and chilled landscapes we all begin that most hated activity, shoveling.  And as the residents of Brick start to dig themselves out of their snow covered wonderland we can be sure that the roads of Brick are... STILL under a foot of snow.  Yes, yet again the current Brick Township administration has been caught unprepared for a snow storm they had plenty of warning about.  How many times do we have to go through this before the elected officials of Brick can figure out how to handle snow fall.  Last year we hear excuse after excuse about how the amounts of snow that fell where unlike anything we had seen and we could not be expected to have been prepared for such an event.  And now a year later we are hearing the same song and dance.  The Mayor was quoted today on the Brick Patch site as saying:

"The only thing we're doing now is pulling out other trucks," Acropolis said. "This isn't Buffalo. We're not used to 26 to 30 inch snowstorms with 30 mile an hour winds."

Did the Administration learn nothing from last year?  After years of laying off our trained public works employees there is no one to operate the heavy trucks forcing us to rely on a group of pickup trucks that are not designed to move such large amounts of snow, it is no wonder that every plow in the township is stuck in some snow drift.  Forcing residents to not only dig out their driveways but also much of their street to ensure they can get to work in the morning.   But don’t worry residents because our Mayor is on the trucks taking interviews posing for photos and slowing the process to a crawl, but I am sure it makes for a great political photo.

What’s next, if the Mayor gets his way and more public works employees lose their jobs to the privatization of garbage collection how long will it take the administration to clear the roads then? A week? A month?  Before you know it we will be paying for private snow removal.  Just another way for the administration to say they cut cost by jamming another bill in your mailbox.  Maybe if the Mayor didn’t spend so much of the taxpayer’s money on jobs for his political cronies, most notable the Belu raise, we would have the money to keep the proper equipment on the roads.  We need to call the Mayor and tell him no more, they have had far too many chances to get a snow removal plan in place that actually removes snow, a snow removal plan where "let it melt" is not the big idea.  Call the Mayor and tell him how disappointed you are tell them they need a plan that works or tell his assistant because the Mayor is probably in Toms River.

Fed Up With Three Ring Circus

It’s hard to believe that the Republicans in Brick and in Ocean County take taxpayers for fools. Don’t they realize that the citizens of this community can see through their lies and deceptions?

In the September 25 issue of The Brick Times, (“Democrats Throw Stones From Glass House”) Frank Pannucci Jr, the Municipal Chair of the Brick Republicans, labeled the Democrats’ argument against Mayor Acropolis’ new second job as such: “Their argument is that the Mayor is a full-time position and he should resign immediately from one or the other.”

That’s not entirely the real issue; the real issue is that Mayor Acropolis used his political pull to nab a high-paying, full-time PUBLIC job at the Toms River Municipal Utilities Authority. This is double dipping.

Acropolis joins a long list of Ocean County Republican double dippers, such as Juan Bellu (Brick Administrator and member of the Toms River MUA), James F. Lacey (Ocean County Freeholder and Brick MUA Executive Director) and now Jackson Mayor Mike Reina, who just accepted a high-paying position at the Department of Transportation.

And when writing about the Mayor, Mr. Pannuci wrote that Acropolis “has Brick Township starting to resemble the Brick we used to be known for.” That’s exactly the problem. Acropolis is part of the same old, back-handed, anything goes politics that has corrupted our community. The Republicans run Ocean County like a three-ring circus, with party chair George Gilmore as the ringleader.

Can someone tell the Republicans that the citizens of Brick and of Ocean County are fed up with this type of politics?

This letter was first published in The Brick Times of Saturday, October 16th

Is our Township Council President as clueless as he appears?

On August 24^th it was revealed that Mayor Steven Acropolis has accepted a full-time job with the Toms River Municipal Utility Authority. This is in addition to his current full-time job as Mayor of Brick Township. Obviously he cannot be in two places at once on a full-time basis and either the taxpayers of Brick Township or the water and sewer users of Toms River will suffer as a result. Most likely all will suffer while the Mayor tries to play both ends against the middle.

But a really stunning development in this situation came from the office of the Township Council President, Anthony Matthews. While six members of the Township Council showed some wisdom and a high degree of self-preservation by neglecting to comment regarding the Mayor's employment status, the President of the Council found a way to get some words out of his mouth while his foot was inside it. He came to the Mayor's defense, dismissed charges of political patronage and stated that the Council would "monitor the Mayor's job performance".

My impressions of his comments are as follows: First, it's unnecessary for the Council to monitor the Mayor's job performance since the Council has been nothing but a rubber stamp for the Mayor's actions all along. Anything the Mayor wants to do, the Council will approve. Telling the voters that the Council will monitor the Mayor's performance is a joke and an insult. Second, how can our Council President dismiss patronage charges when Mayor Acropolis was hired by the Authority with the assistance of Juan Bellu, the very same Juan Bellu who received a $50,000 raise from Brick Township at the Mayor's urging? Has there ever been a more obvious example of payment for services rendered?

The Council President's comments make it apparent that he is more concerned with protecting and defending his friends than representing the interests of the citizens of Brick Township. We should be thankful that he was clueless enough to make these comments and thereby show his true colors.

This letter was first published in The Brick Times of Saturday, September 11th