Friday, August 9, 2013

Mayor Seeks Appointments

Monday's City Council packet contains several requests for appointments, five to the Plainfield Municipal Utilities Authority, one for the Housing Authority and two for the Zoning Board of Adjustment.

All are somewhat mysterious and will no doubt send bloggers to the Plainfield Public Library tomorrow for research.

Regarding the PMUA, the mayor wants the council to approve Malcolm Dunn, Cecil Sanders, Barbara James, Carol Brokaw and Alex Toliver. First of all, the PMUA reorganizes in February and terms begin and end then. Dunn's current term goes to February 2014 and Sanders has a term expiring in February 2015. Brokaw and Toliver are holdovers, both of whose terms expired in February 2012 (there is an error here - the authority began with staggered terms and one of these should be to 2013). The new name is Barbara James, who may be the putative successor to 2011 holdover Commissioner Harold Mitchell, a mayoral target for some time.

Because the terms and successions are not spelled out, Plaintalker and other interested parties will have to look at the background documents, if there are any.

James came to City Hall from Jerry Green's office in 2006. City records say she was hired on Jan. 30, 2006 as a "senior administrative analyst" but also say she was hired on the same date as "confidential assistant to the mayor," a title she apparently held until 2012. She has been the mayor's designee to the Planning Board since 2006 and was a member of the Democratic City Committee for most of those years. In 2013 she was not among Regular Democratic Organization candidates for the committee and ran off the line with the slogan "United Democrats of Plainfield."

The Housing Authority nominee is Rickey Williams, an appointee for a term ending in July 2006 and a holdover ever since. The seat he holds is reserved for a mayoral nominee and the mayor has put his name up for reappointment several times. In July, she offered his name for a five-year term ending July 1, 2018, which City Clerk Abubakar Jalloh said was incorrect. The same term is on the mayor's August request, but it should be until July 1, 2016. Meanwhile, the terms of Housing Authority Commissioners Hattie Williams and Pamela Dunn-Hale expired July 1, but their names have not been offered for reappointment.

The Zoning Board nominations, for Robert K. Graham and Eric Graham, are curious in that there are no seats up this year, according to a roster on the city web site. Here again, if there is a vacancy, the term and succession must be spelled out correctly.

Having lost the June primary, the mayor will not have a third term and so is in "lame duck" mode until Dec. 31. She can nominate people for existing vacancies and see whether the governing body will give advice and consent, but she cannot give out random five-year terms in her remaining days in office.

--Bernice

5 comments:

  1. PMUA has been running a lawless and fraudulent operation since 1998. Commissioners have stolen over $600,000 in illegal compensation, and two of these nominees have pocketed over $100,000 each. The City makes unauthorized payments to PMUA of $1.2 million annually, and tells us it's receiving revenue sharing when none actually exists. The Authority's auditor and law firm make prohibited campaign contributions to mayoral candidates. PMUA practices the fine art of nepotism and patronage, by its own admission, and 'settles' with former employees for a cool $1 million on the flimsiest of excuses, but with the maximum amount of subterfuge and indifference. What are a few random five-year terms in this scheme? Instead of nominations there should be removals.

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  2. I'd like to add to my previous comment a mention about conflict of interest.

    Also on the Council agenda is an item to add $2,700 to a demolition project for a property on Leland Avenue. The contract was not publically bid and was given to CHS Construction, the private business of Cecil Sanders, one of the PMUA nominees, and currently its Chairman. Sanders got the original contract with the City a few weeks after first becoming a commissioner. A few weeks later, his was one of three votes in favor of handing over $1 million to the two managerially-challenged PMUA executives who quit after years of missteps and deceptions. Now Sanders is back for more, and part of the tab are PMUA disposal charges as well.

    Heaven forbid that rules of ethical conduct apply. PMUA (at least as far as its Employee Handbook is concerned) says employees should not "solicit anything of value from any person or organization with which the PMUA has a current or potential business relationship". It further states that "Employees of the PMUA should not accept any item of value from any party in exchange for or in connection with a business transaction between the PMUA and that other party."

    There are a host of state and local laws too, but as we know, no laws or regulations, or contracts and agreements, are sacred when it comes to this 'agency and instrumentality of the City of Plainfield'.

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  3. Why do we keep recycling the same people who keep doing the same old thing? Staying in the past, we'll never move to the future.

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  4. I have to agree with the other commentators that we need new blood on the PMUA Board and we definitely need to get rid of those who gave over a million dollars of our money to two directors who did not deserve it. Anyone who voted for this rip-off need to go and this mayor is still taking the town to the cleaners, when we have shown our collective dislike of the job she's done in the June primary. I can't wait for January.

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  5. Once those Republicans are off the Council things will change!!

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