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Investigate Senator/Mayor Stack for Union City’s Wasteful Spending
By Eric Sedler | April 14, 2008
Hat Tip to BullMoose who first brought the story of Union City to our attention the other day.
In the Lobby has been pounding on this story as well. First in their daily muse, then in a guest column by “Samuel L. Haywood”.
Republican State Senator Anthony Bucco only began to dig at the surface of the problem in Union City when he requested Education commissioner Lucille Davy reappear before the committee to explain the finances of the Union City School District.
I guess it would be wrong for a State Senator to request a fellow Senator to appear in front of the Senate Education Committee, but the fact is Union City Mayor/Senator Brian Stack needs to explain a bunch of things.
1) Union City is one of only twenty-one school districts that have a board of education that is appointed by the mayor. These districts are called Type 1 school districts.
2) State Senator Brian Stack is also the Mayor of Union City. Thus Mayor Stack appoints Union City’s board of education. The taxpayers in Union City have absolutely no say. Mayor Stack has all the say in the world.
3) Union City is an Abbott school district. It is estimated by Millennium Radio that Union City receives 76% of its school funding from the state.
Now let’s get to the wasteful spending:
1) Bus drivers who received more than $300,000 in overtime payments. School bus drivers get 6 hours a month in overtime pay to charge their cell phones.
2) These cell phones are bought and paid for by taxpayers. Republican Assemblywoman Marcia Karrow pointed out that there is over $13,000 in monthly payment for 39 cell phones used by the bus drivers and that comes out to almost $345/per month per cell phone. Here’s a good question: What the hell kind of cell phone plan costs almost $345/month?! Does the Cell phone come with a television, computer with internet, ipod, etc.?! Because that’s the only way I could think of a cell phone plan costing $345/month. According to the school’s superintendent this was the first month of a conversion from T-Mobile to NEXTEL. The plan required purchase of new phones as well as GPS service for all bus drivers. Buses are now equipped with GPS tracking service. The current total monthly cost for the cell phones is about $3,100. Ok, I’ll buy that, but here’s a good question; why does a school bus need a GPS tracking service for a 1.2 square mile town?! Even if you buy the argument that the buses need GPS service for transporting the sports teams/students to other towns, wouldn’t that be considered a privledge rather than a real necessity? And shouldn’t all school districts especially the Abbott’s be held to spending money on only the necessities to improve the education of children?
3) More Wasteful spending: $26,000 for website development costs, $1,716 for a a wall-mounted flat-screen television (because only flat-screen tv’s improve education!) A $2,000 field trip to Medieval Times. (Again necessity or privledge?) Just under $73,000 for calbe television spots to advertise the district. $55,000 for a PR company JUST to prepare a monthly superintendent’s newsletter, etc.
4) There’s also cocktail parties in the audit report, administrative dinnners, hotel costs, staff parties, and Atlantic City Trips. For an abbott district! This is what our money mostly goes to.
So Why Senator/Mayor Stack?:
1) Pay-To-Play - It just screams conflict of interest that the man who is supposed to keep an eye on how the district of Union City spends its money on schools, Superintendent Stanley Sanger, made a $1,700 loan to Brian Stack’s Senate Committee and then made an additional contribution of $300. This is the guy either appointed directly by Stack or appointed by the Board of Education, which is effictively controlled by Stack.
2) More Obvious Corruption - Board of Education employees contributed $27,850 to Brian Stack for Senate in the 2007 Primary; board employees also gave $49,150 in loans to the campaign. For the general election, Stack received an additional $7,300 from board employees - even though he was uncontested.
3) Let’s not forget Union City First - A PAC closely aligned to Stack recieved a total $85,450 from Union City Board of Education Employees. In 2007, Union City First gave $748,373 in in-kind contributions to Stack for Senate in the 2007 primary and approximately $64,000 for the general election, which again - was uncontested.
4) As Mayor of the town, Stack is solely responsible for who is on the board of education because of Union City’s classification as a Type 1 school district. Thus, he is responsible for the town’s wasteful spending by their school district.
5) It would be interesting to see if the people benefitting from the taxpayer dollars - i.e. cell phone company/dealers, bus drivers, etc. are connected to Stack at all. Clearly the board of education employees who get to go on lavish trips to Atlantic City and cocktail parties on the taxpayer’s dime are benefitting from their donations to Stack.
Just two General Questions:
Why are Type 1 school district even in existence? Why should a Mayor have the power to appoint people to a school board? I see no reason for this and think that all 21 Type 1 school districts should be immediately changed to a more democraticly elected school board.
Conclusion:
I think with all the evidence mounted, there is certainly enough reason to at least look into Senator/Mayor Stack and really dig to get the details on his dealings and just why this type of wasteful spending and inefficiency takes place in Union City.
I’m not sure on who should be heading up this investigation (Anne Milgram/Chris Christie?), but I’m sure that there certainly needs to be a non-partisan force looking into this obvious misuse of state taxpayer dollars in a school district effectively controlled by a State Senator/Mayor.
New Jersey government can not turn a blind eye on Union City and allow this kind of taxpayer theft to continue to go unpunished. Union City must become an example for all school districts, especially the abbott’s; that wasteful spending will not be tolerated and there will be severe punishments for this kind of obvious theft of taxpayer money.
If our government really cracks down on Union City and gets to the heart of the problem, then other school districts and towns with a wasteful spending/taxpayer theft addiction could change their ways out of fear of being the next Union City.
For this kind of problem and the true reason why our taxes are so high and our state so much in debt, it’s not just taxes, stupid: It’s wasteful spending, stupid.
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Topics: NJ State Senate, Corruption, Municipalities |
4 Responses to “Investigate Senator/Mayor Stack for Union City’s Wasteful Spending”
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April 14th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
[…] Comments Investigate Senator/Mayor Stack for Union City’s Wasteful Spending | Red Jersey on It’s Taxes Stupid!Eric Sedler on Barack Obama doesn’t like small town folks […]
April 15th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Thanks Eric for the tip of the hat. This is really only the tip of the iceberg though. There are what, 25 other Abbott districts in the state. How about audits of all of them, since I am sure this type of crap will be repeated in all of them. This is what happens when the state sends a check to a bunch of local crooks, and allow them to spend the money all by themselves.
Wait till they get to Garfield and see the nepotism that runs rampant in this city!
My only problem with this whole situation is why have the republican party leaders in this state not been on every news show shouting at the top of their lungs how crazy this is? It is because we really do not have any true republican leaders in Trenton!
April 18th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
[…] all remember Union City, you know the school district who allowed taxpayer dollars to be wasted on charging cell phones and […]
May 11th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
[…] at Governor Jon Corzine??s plan to cut municipal aid that mostly affects their towns to almosthttp://www.redjersey.net/2008/04/14/investigate-senatormayor-stack-for-union-citys-wasteful-spending…BlogNetNews.com ? New JerseyPoliticker NJ 12 · CWA-NJ Conservatives with Attitude! archive 9 […]