Dear Editor: In response to the bickering between Tom Gallagher, Schundler’s chief of scapegoating, and former Councilman Bill O’Dea, I’d like to set the record straight. I was at the budget hearings and the council meetings when the Fiscal Year Adjustment Bonds (FYAB) were voted on. I spoke against the nonsense logic of bonding for operating expenses with the excuse of changing fiscal years as it was presented. In 1991, unlike today, the tri-state area was in recession and compounding it for Jersey City was the botched reval that was put into place around 1988, at the height of the 80’s real estate boom. Every homeowner was appealing their taxes since the reval disproportionately raised taxes for 1 to 4 family homeowners while commercial owners saw their taxes unjustifiably drop. It pushed the tax burden from the commercial properties to the 1 to 4 family homeowners. Consequently, the city was hit with huge, successful tax appeals since real estate values had peaked around 1989. Then under the Florio administration, the city, to pay off the tax appeals, would float one year notes but had to pay off by year five. The FYABs gave the city a one-time shot to bond for several years of tax appeals, five years of “regular” police and fire pensions, operating deficits, etc. Today under Whitman and Schundler, the city bonds for tax appeals for 10 years! As a matter of fact, Schundler lobbied the change soon after he got into office. Also Whitman let Schundler bond for 33 years the ludicrous 1994 $28.1 million police and fire pension assessment for “early retirement buyouts.” Operating deficits, well that’s a tradition under Schundler. I remember distinctly that when I quizzed some of McCann’s council members, then Business Administrator Fred Thompkins, had assured them that the $123 million FYAB would guarantee no tax increased for five years. Music to their ears! We now know that was a lot of bull just like Schundler’s 1993/94 bulk lien sales, the United Water deal and establishing the MUA would all reduce taxes! The McCann council members didn’t get their tax freeze just like Schundler’s didn’t get their community centers when they voted for Schundler’s $10 million charter school, MUA and United Water. Fred Thompkins was the architect for the Fiscal Year Adjustment Bonds and guess what? He’s back! Schundler fired Deloitte & Touche, one of the Big 5 CPA firms who had the account for at least two decades and replaced them with Donohue, Gironda & Doria of which Fred Thompkins is a partner. The firm is known for being major fundraisers. From my many years of budget and council meetings, all are at fault. It’s what happens when you have councilpersons who do whatever the mayor wants and have no understanding of finance. But the last six years have been the worse. Schundler buys them off cheap and Council President DeGise has made rubber stamping into an art form. Now we’re in a bigger real estate boom than the 80’s, and Schundler keeps giving out outrageous, luxury waterfront tax abatements on the backs of the 1 to 4 family homeowners. How can it be that commercial properties are still, annually, winning tens of millions of dollars of tax appeals when Jersey City’s “Gold Coast” has never been so high? I think there should be an investigation of Schundler’s inept defense against the commercial property owners in State Tax Court. It is just another form of quid pro for campaign contributions past and future in a city on the verge of bankruptcy? Mia Scanga CPA