With HF, every year brings a new controversy. First, there was Lemonade-gate when HF put a disabled child at the center in order to embarrass others and make themselves look good.
There was Airport-gate, where hundreds of thousands of dollars of fill-dirt went missing at the Hammonton Airport and the state Attorney General subpoenaed local officials. We still do not know the extent of this investigation or who was involved.
Then, there was Chief-gate, when then-Mayor John DiDonato and then Coucilman, now airport adminstrator Rock Colasurdo went after the Chief of Police for whatever reason. A judge threw the charges out.
Last year, there was Campus-gate. HF announced the building of a satellite campus by Stockton. Yet the Town had no paperwork available on the grant request, no record of any emails about this issue or even any conversations as if like the mythical kingdom of Brigadoon, this campus would suddenly appear one day.
And now, we have Canoe-gate. Seven months after the building of a Community Center or Senior Center or whatever we are calling it, the issues are sprouting like weeds. First,we were promised that the $5.9 million for Town Hall would include a community center. We cannot confirm or deny this since no one has ever given a full accounting of the Town Hall Construction. This is odd since our current Mayor was in charge of the building committee.
Then, Rock Colasurdo stated that the old, old Town Hall (that was moved) would be the community/senior center even though there walk-in closets that are bigger. This was so HF could use the $450,000 grant that Anthony Ingemi had secured from the federal government for a community center to finance the moving of the building.
Then, HF decided that we would place the senior center at the lake because John DiDonator saw something neat-looking in San Diego. (Ever hear about the kid in the candy store). However, we were going to refurbish the caretakers building. Suddenly we decide to tear down the building. But we never get a permit to demolish the building.
No problem, building is torn down, new building built and opened in time for the election. And as Mickey Pullia said in his campaign video, we are paying for this with grants. But as we learned last month, the grants were not approved.
Now, the Council last night approved change orders, 7 months after the building opened. We were not told what the change orders were for. And Jerry Barberio voted against them. This is strange since he led the Canoe Club construction. So as with any scandal, the question remains, "What does the Council know and when did they know it?"
Maybe the crew at the Gazette can try asking this question since they were so upset about change orders at the school and were such cheerleaders for the Canoe Club?
As a taxpayer I am concerned how much all of these scandals are costing us...open and honest government, right Steve?
OMG...if half of this stuff is true why aren't they in jail??
Great post Admin! This is the truth! It's nice to see that someone is willing to talk about the truth!!!! The fact of the matter is that if you know the right people and have enough money you will NEVER serve jail time no matter what you do. Did you forget about the O.J. Simpson case? Money talks remember that! Politicians are getting more and more corrupt the only problem is that the higher up politicians are even more corrupt than the locals so who is going to rat out who? What a disgrace this town has turned in to. Just goes to show how low people will go for power and greed. I hope they all get exposed for what they are and jail time would just be icing on the cake.
You forgot to mention that HF's biggest contributor used stolen money to fund this corruption. Also how they used the death of a beautiful young girl to benefit their candidacy and the skate park never came to be. How sad!
I'm wondering how much a tracker trailer will cost us taxpayers to take them away? You're right will they have to add on a special room at the jail? Not only do they have fat asses they got fat heads because their egos are so big. Watching the council meeting last night they all act like they are big time politicians. They still haven't realized no one cares who they are or how much money they have... blah, blah, blah.
