This month’s meeting of the Atlantic Highlands Borough Council left me with so much to wonder about it’s difficult to include it in one story. My main wonder is What’s Happening???
What is happening to this town?
What is happening to our elected officials?
What is happening with the borough’s paid attorney who probably never set foot in the town nor knows its people until named attorney in January?
What is happening to common courtesy?
What is happening to concern for residents?
What has happened to disgust, righteous anger, and action to guarantee something better when faced with facts that the person in charge of educating the children in this town and Highlands blatantly lied to a state official?
What is happening with TRUTH?
All these were lacking, and have been lacking at council meetings. After disclosure of the Beams Letter, not one of the elected officials batted an eye, called for action, or for that matter in the case of some of them, even told the truth themselves.
Regionalization has been a topic of concern and decision for years. Years. The residents were led to believe it was coming close to the end. and they would finally be able to vote on the issue and make their opinions known, heard, and acted upon. But once again, they were thwarted.
Residents were happy to know that a mediation, or maybe two or three sessions between Highlands and Atlantic Highlands borough officials and experts would finally be held to settle the only question that needs to be settled, how to split the money the two towns would realize as the result of Sea Bright coming into the mix.
But … because of a serious family problem for this borough’s financial expert, even that mediation had to be put off, not for a day or a week, but until close to the end of the next month. No one on Council seemed disturbed about yet another delay on this all important issue. A delay that could mean the taxpayers will be denied, once again, their right to voice their opinion at the polls. Announcement of the new delay only came up as an almost insignificant one or two liner in a council member’s regular report.
That’s the only expert they want, the public was told. There was no answer to why there was no backup, or if the whole question would go down the tubes because of a personal issue of one paid expert.
A visiting Councilman from Sea Bright, obviously highly intelligent, deeply concerned, and packed with knowledge on the school regionalization question that has been the subject, but certainly not the object of a lot of action from this council, was told more than once by this borough’s sitting councilman that he was wrong, incorrect AND telling untruths.
How humiliating and embarrassing for borough residents when their own councilman then had to sit wordlessly and without any defense when the visiting councilman not only showed facts by date and law citation in order to prove himself correct on every statement he had made.
How embarrassing for residents when there was no apology or acknowledgement of error and rudeness from their own councilman in the face of being proven wrong or insulting a neighboring elected official.
In retrospect, perhaps that is just the way of the council as a whole. Only minutes before the visitor was told he was telling untruths, the administrator, amid the silence of every council member, told another resident he did not know if they knew anything about a letter the school superintendent had written to the state Commissioner of Education. The mayor wasn’t even concerned enough to look at the letter right then. “Later” she said.
Think about that for a second. A resident wants to show a signed letter from a person who blatantly apparently lied to a state official by saying she was speaking for this Council among others. Yet not one of this borough’s elected officials thought this was serious enough to even ask more about it.
Later in the meeting perhaps it was made more clear why no one wanted to see the letter. Perhaps it was because in spite of their earlier silence and lack of concern when asked if they knew about it, not one, but three members of council sheepishly admitted in some form … that indeed they did see the letter.
Of course that admission had to come only after a resident who does more research on municipal matters than any elected official reminded them publicly he indeed had sent everyone of them the letter in the afternoon. The visiting councilman also told them their highly paid attorney for regionalization had received the letter from the state. If they had not seen him, if that were true, shouldn’t then have wondered why their attorney didn’t think it was important enough to tell them?
But matters got worse throughout the meeting. During one incident, when there was a medical emergency that briefly halted borough business, the audio on ZOOM was immediately shut down. The approximate two dozen persons listening to the meeting could see the governing body chatting among themselves, but had no idea what happened to the person with the emergency. No idea. Quick action to turn off audio, but don’t dare let those on ZOOM people know as much as those in the audience.
Yet minutes after that, a former councilman spoke to the council about his own concerns, again with how regionalization was being handled. As he finished speaking and walked back to his seat, the audience, both in person and on ZOOM, could hear a man yelling out “Bull S**t” One council member, apparently paying more attention to the back of the room then the person then addressing Council, yelled out “Scott! Scott!” in an apparent call to have the Chief of Police come into the room. The Chief of course did respond, came into the room, could see nothing untoward was happening and saw no need to take any action. He told everyone to stop, and walked back into the adjacent room to continue to listen to the meeting.
Again, the lack of respect for the people they represent was evident once again. The public had just learned their actions in the past finally prompted the attorney to meet with council and decide that yes indeed, residents and anybody else could ask questions at a meeting. But council members themselves don’t bother to respond to e-mails sent to them more than a month before. A fairly new resident of the borough, eloquent, calm, well-spoken and obviously very fond of his new hometown, explained he had to come to the meeting since he never got any acknowledgement they received his letter. One councilman finally admitted yes he got the letter, but he didn’t see any question in it, so he didn’t respond. But there was a question in it, the new resident said. And it did get answered during the meeting.
Why do residents have to fight, have to repeat their requests, have to appear in person before they get any recognition from the people the elect to run their town?
Even when it came to comparatively smaller ways to make the town look more beautiful, gain more acclaim for being so wonderful and so much more, council members don’t seem to give a darn. When the one councilwoman who did go to the trouble of creating a wildlife sanctuary at her home expressed her pride and enthusiasm and said she was getting her neighbors to do the same, there was not a council member among them who even said it was a great idea and they were going to do the same.
And that would be an action that isn’t even controversial.
