Who Do You Think is Paying for the Lawsuit in Point Pleasant?

 Dear Mr. Mayor and Council Members:                                            March 8, 2014

Time and time again I have forewarned the Point Borough Council’s negligence in failing to adopt specific goals and objectives for the Borough’s Chief Administrator and Police Chief together with meaningful formal performance evaluations of each of them would eventually lead to very costly penalties in some form. Well, the day has come in the form of a lawsuit that the borough will most likely have to settle for a tidy sum.

All of you on the Council are supposed to safeguarding the interests of the public you serve. You have failed…miserably so! During elections each of you has talked about your business experience, community service and common sense approaches to challenges. Problem is that none among you have managed a large, complex organization. Worse yet, not one of you will take the time to secure the knowledge, which is plentiful, about how to do so.

I encourage you to think about this…Do you think ANY CEO of ANY business or organization would permit a high ranking employee to maintain a list of underperforming employees in full view of other employees and refer to it as the “Wall of Shame”? Do you think any CEO would permit an Urn of Ashes to be maintained with the names of people on it who left the employ of the Borough and refer to it as those “Exterminated”? Well, because of a lack of oversight, performance evaluations and accountability that very thing may have happened.

If these allegations are true, I really can’t think of the appropriate words to describe these cruel and sadistic treatment of others, let alone in the workplace where a worker spends most of his/her time. What kind of person thinks that such behavior is good management or even humane?

I am most curious about the Mayor’s first words. When asked to comment, he said, “ I can’t comment, because it involves a personnel matter”. Apparently, the tax collector does not share the Mayor’s belief of confidentiality about personnel matters. After all she may have posted the names of people in view of everyone she thought were “underperforming”.

I am fully prepared for the answers the public will receive if these allegations prove to be true. CEO Maffei will assert he knew nothing about the Wall of Shame or the Urn of those Exterminated. The Mayor will say he knew nothing about it and every Council member will say the exact same thing. I call these exclamations the “Shultz Defense”…. “I KNOW ‘NOTTING’!”  

The Council should move forward immediately with an Independent Counsel to conduct a thorough investigation. I am suggesting an independent Counsel, because Dasti as a long term counsel may have known about these alleged practices and may have directly condoned them. The fact that the Council is conducting its own investigation will play well in court and with the public.

If these allegations are true, and CEO Maffei says he knew about them, he should be dismissed or demoted. If he says he didn’t know about them, he should be dismissed or demoted. That would be a good first step as the aftermath of the investigation if the allegations are true.

In any case Pearce MUST go if the allegations are true, as she may be guilty of professional misconduct!

A good second step would be begin work ASAP on a formal evaluation process of the top ranking and highly compensated executives of the Borough. I my view, the Council have been negligent in not more carefully examining the personnel practices of the Borough. The two men in whom you have invested unilateral control of the management of the Borough essentially answer to no one. Is it surprising then they may be conducting the Borough’s business in a manner that celebrates cronyism, nepotism, discrimination, unfair employee practices including hostility and human cruelty.

 Perhaps you have forgotten the adage that, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Remember, at least one of them has stated for anyone within earshot, that, “I have seen a lot of Council members come and go and none of them have been successful in changing a thing!” Furthermore, there is a sustained effort among the good ole boys to scare Council members from speaking to one another about Borough business EXCEPT in formal session under the guise of state law. This interpretation is wrong and ferments an inability to get anything done.

You have wrongly ceded absolute power in these chief executives with absolutely no checks and balances.

There was another single sentence in the Press article that should have caught your eye as a guardian of the public trust. That sentence suggested the Tax Collector encouraged her daughter to make the plaintiff feel uncomfortable in her job. Aside from all the cronyism in Point’s hiring practices, we also have nepotism? As the CEO of several large organizations, I steadfastly refused to hire family members in the same organization. The fact is “blood is blood” and if you have a personnel problem with one, you have a problem with both. I learned that the hard way very early in my career. Once again, not one of you has any experience with handling large organizations with work rules, unions and entrenched bureaucracy!

Now you may argue that I am jumping the gun and thus far all we have are allegations. Good point! However, what I am suggesting take place first is an Independent Investigation. This would put the Council in the “front seat” instead of in the “back seat” waiting for the courts to find out if the allegations are true. I have already explained other advantages.

I also ask that you consider these points.  It is hard to believe that the plaintiff just made up these allegations, because they are so easy to prove true or false. Too many people would have to lie to make a “Wall of Shame” and “Extermination Urn” to disappear if they existed. Additionally, if there is no formal evaluation process for your chief executives, what makes you think there any for other employees? If there aren’t any, that will play very badly in court. Finally, don’t you want to learn on your own terms about the possible mistreatment of employees?

This whole thing, if true, is incomprehensible to me. How would like to be tormented, subjected to psychological abuse, and threatened every day by and sadistic and abusive person, especially if you REALLY needed the job?

Ian R. Horen

Point Pleasant Borough Resident

Point Pleasant Council Got Our Town in the News Again!

                                                                                                            April 11, 2014

Dear Council Members:

Well you got us in the “news” once again…last Sunday’s edition of the Asbury Park Press. A couple of my friends who live elsewhere called me to ask if I lived in a cesspool of political corruption. I really didn’t know how to answer that and stop them from laughing.

You are making a laughing stock of our community!

In the same article the attorney for the Borough gloated about the “victory” he achieved in court. I am wondering if he skipped the law school classes on trial strategy…it is never a good idea to gloat after a court ruling…all it does is solidify the resolve of the other party…very bad mistake on his part.

On the same subject…when the Republicans regained the majority on the Council, among the first things done was to fire the counsel hired by the Democrats when they were in the majority and hire back the long term hack Dasti back. The reason cited by Mr. Sobosik was that the firm was sending people to represent the Borough other than the ones interviewed for the job. Then, what was the son of Mr. Dasti doing in the courtroom representing the Borough on a very important matter?  I keep forgetting what hypocritical means…can you help me out?

After the financial collapse of the Borough and an attempt by Mr. Leitner to remediate the situation, the citizens of the Borough were told, “we have the finances of the Borough under control”. In fact, Mr. Sobosik stated in a newspaper article, “…see, we are not in bad shape after all”. Not a word was uttered that expensive forensic type audits were on-going and actually not everything was quite right. Not a word was mentioned that there may have been THEFT of public funds! We have to read about that in the newspaper.

Nepotism is a problem in Point Pleasant Borough employment. The women named as a defendant in the personnel lawsuit hired her daughter. Neither Maffei nor the Council said a thing about how that appears. Then the Police Chief hires his own son as a police officer and not a word. Do you want to know why our Chief Administrator and Police Chief approved these hires? Because they could and neither one of them gave it a second thought. The fact that the Council has never given these highly compensated individuals any guidance about their performance essentially gives them free reign to do anything they want…no oversight, no personnel policies, no performance reviews! These are severe failings of the Council.

Despite the fact that Messrs. Schroeder and Leitner are of the opinion that the basis of the personnel lawsuit is untrue and the legal action is frivolous, the reason that the charges are so believable is that the Borough employees are completely unsupervised and as a result they believe they can do just about anything, including stealing and/or misappropriating taxpayer money. The really outrageous part of this is that taxpayers are now footing the massive accounting bills for failure of the Council to put in place the proper financial safe-guards, conduct proper oversight and set policies to guide the staff about their behaviors. Did this happen because the Council members don’t k now how to perform these tasks, or because the Council members are just not “doers”?

I have been led to believe that the Council is “working on” a performance evaluation process for highly compensated Borough personnel. Can I remind you that our Declaration of Independence (unmatched in its eloquence and expanse) was written by Thomas Jefferson overnight? What could possible take so long?

I have always been very curious about exactly what local elected officials think they were elected to do. I have served on many boards of many different types. Over the years my observation has been that there are “doers” and “loafers” on all boards and councils. Some take their jobs very seriously and get things done. Others simply show up and are there primarily for ego enhancement. The latter too often are not very interested in controversy and when the heat turns up in the kitchen they are nowhere to be found…making tough decisions and defending them rarely contributes to ego enhancement. There comes a time when each of the Borough Council members has to conduct a self-assessment and come to terms with who they really are. I can assure you that the next elections are not going to be a cake-walk…all of these recent developments and the continual shortcomings are going to be answered for either positively or negatively.

There are seven Council members (but only six for whom there are website pictures…thanks Mr. Borowsky for the picture on the website, finally). I have written to the current Council four times in the past few months. I have received responses from three and once four among Council members. Messrs. Wisniewski, Furmato and Borowsky have never responded to me. That is regretful for many reasons, but chief among them is that as a Borough resident, I am entitled to know what they are thinking and what they are doing. It is time for all the platitudes of electioneering to turn into action of some kind. If it is your opinion that you do not have to respond to your constituents, then start looking for a new volunteer activity. If someone told you that the Council job was easy and that you only have answer to people who are NOT critical of your actions, then you were seriously misled.

As a final note, I renew my criticism of the Borough Website. It is dull, boring, unrepresentative and riddled with errors. I suppose that I should simply just throw up my hands and admit… “par for the course”. I wish someone would simply explain to me how things work in Point Pleasant…everyone knows the Website is lousy. So what is the pathway to improvement…does the Council have to vote agreement that it is lousy? If the Council does, what happens next? Is the need for improvement request passed on to the staff? Does a Council person take on the responsibility? How exactly do things happen? Does anybody get a report on progress? Is there any oversight?

I have served as CEO of several national not-for-profit organizations. If someone brought up that the website is not up to standard I would be mortified that I hadn’t already reviewed the website, sought professional help for design and implementation, etc. That aside, if I were the highly compensated administrator of the Borough, I would take on the responsibility and get the improvements done. Then, I would report back to the Council that the task was done and stage a little “show-and-tell” for the Council and the audience at a Council meeting. In other words, make sure the job was done, demonstrate that I understand accountability and take credit for a job well done. Exactly what am I missing here? Would you take a moment and explain to me what I am missing and how things get done…how things work. Thanks.

Dr. Ian R. Horen