With two TV cameras recording their every move, in a room packed with 300 political supporters and other interested parties, the five candidates for Bayonne mayor sparred but landed no body blows in a debate last week. The upcoming Nov. 4 election will decide who will lead Bayonne until the regularly scheduled election in May, 2010.
The candidates are vying to replace former Mayor Joe Doria, who accepted a state position last year. Since Doria left last year, former town Chief Financial Officer Terrence Malloy has been serving as mayor. He is not running in November.
Hosted by the Rotary Club of Bayonne, the debate took place at The Arts Factory. Mark Smith, Richard Rutkowski, Robert Sloan, Raymond Rokicki, and Patrick Conaghan were positioned in order of their appearance on the upcoming ballot.
Few fights.
Some of the people at the live debate had expected Smith and Conaghan – the perceived frontrunners – to slug it out. But for the most part, candidates stuck to the scripts of their respective campaigns, giving their history, accomplishments, and vision for the future.
The sharpest exchange of the night came near the end of the debate, when Smith and Conaghan clashed over the use of city vehicles. Conaghan singled out Smith for driving a gas-guzzling SUV, while Smith claimed Conaghan’s sister, a department director, had cost the city of Bayonne $400,000 after a car accident while using her city-supplied vehicle for a shopping trip out of town. Conaghan then replied to Smith’s charges by saying his sister had been on city business at the time of the accident, attending meetings with county officials. But he also said that he has warned his sister that she would also have to comply with the restriction that city officials would not be allowed to use vehicles to go to and from work should he become mayor.
An orchestrated effort by Conaghan to firmly connect Smith to former Mayor Joseph Doria fell flat when supporters in the audience failed to begin quacking. Conaghan had cited the old adage that if Smith looks, sounds, and acts like a duck, he must be a duck, suggesting that Doria and Smith would follow the same policies. Smith vehemently refuted the claim.
Format
Candidates had a strict time limit, and managed to get through a handful of the two-dozen questions prepared for the debate by Al Sullivan (this reporter) of the Bayonne Community News and Ron Leir of The Jersey Journal.
The candidates managed to agree on many points – although each presented a slightly different approach.
The moderator was Sal Monte. Timekeepers were Maureen Caswell and Erika Monte.
What follows is a paraphrased summary of the candidates’ answers to some of the questions.
Cutting the city budget
Question: To bring the city back to operating within its budget, which municipal services would you keep, and which services are expendable?
Smith: He would reduce spending and increase revenue, proposing a new business office for development that would shepherd projects from start to finish, with the idea of getting them running as soon as possible.
Rutkowski: He would cut expenses as he had when mayor from 1990 to 1994, by privatizing where necessary, restructuring the police and fire departments, and laying off or reassigning personnel.
Sloan: He said the city needs to do more with less, but that the municipal budget cannot be balanced on the backs of the employees. He agreed that patronage jobs should be cut and positions consolidated where possible.
Rokicki: He said two areas he would not cut are senior citizen services and programs for special needs. But Rokicki said he would cut patronage jobs. He also stated that the city needs to seek ways to reduce salary costs and get back tax dollars from the state and federal governments.
Conaghan: He said mismanagement of the city over the last 10 years has left the city deeply in debt and said the city needs to do away with all unessential services, including the positions of police and fire director, and restrict or eliminate the use of city cars by city employees.
Finding funds for projects
Question: How would each candidate fill the yearly budget gap and still find funding to do infrastructure improvements needed to develop the former Military Ocean Terminal, avoiding some of the one shot revenue deals made in the past?
Smith: He said the development of MOTBY has been hampered by the fact that the land was in poor condition when the U.S. Army turned it over to the city. Smith said the newly promoted idea of using future tax revenues to pay for improvements has been used successfully elsewhere in the United States and should be used here in Bayonne.
Rutkowski: He said the city missed its opportunity back in 2002 when he proposed selling off the land with the provision that developers would do all of the infrastructure improvements. While the city would lose the sale value of the land because of restrictions imposed by the federal government, taxpayers would gain because development of the land will bring new taxes into the city.
Sloan: He said one-shot deals are bad because the city can’t repeat them the next year. But he claimed a proposed use of future tax revenues from the MOTBY to fund infrastructure improvements looked very promising and could also be used to reduce passed debt.
Rokicki: He was very critical of past practices of borrowing money to do the work, and suggested new taxes such as the hotel and parking taxes on those using the MOTBY, and possibly expanding the hotel tax concept to passengers using cruise ships.
Conaghan: He cited his long time standing against the use of one-time revenue generation and the city’s bad habit of borrowing to fill the current city operating expenses. He said the MOTBY must be used to generate jobs and revenue.
Despite layoffs, is gov’t bloated?
Question: Despite more than 70 layoffs last year, is the municipal government still bloated?
Smith: “I believe we need to shrink and consolidate [the municipal] government,” he said, saying that the city needs to open a dialogue with other communities as well as Hudson County to help supply services.
Rutkowski: He said he has in the past consolidated services and substituted civilians for uniformed services where possible to cut costs.
Sloan: “Our city government isn’t bloated, although it may be a little fat,” he said. “We need to put in on a diet.” Rokicki: “In my view, laying off 70 employees to cut $1.4 million from the municipal budget is a joke when some of the top salaries are $100, 000,” he said. “We need to cut some of those who make $100,000, not the crossing guards.”
Conaghan: “The payroll is bloated,” he said. “We have an excess of people in some departments and yet we also have a shortage in key departments. When someone goes on vacation in personnel or employee benefits departments, we don’t have anyone to fill them in.”
Question: How much should the city contribute to help Bayonne Medical Center after it survived bankruptcy?
Smith: Despite the fact that his parents met there, his brother worked there, and his strong affectionate feelings for Bayonne Medical Center, Smith said the hospital has become a for-profit entity, and that all must be done to help it provided the facility pays its fair share of taxes and lives up to promises made when the city expended $6 million to help it survive.
Rutkowski: He said Bayonne needs a hospital, and that the mayor, who sits on the hospital’s advisory board, should keep close watch on possible problems there.
Sloan: “The hospital is a business like any other business,” Sloan said. “The best way to help it is to promote Bayonne. We need to advertise Bayonne as a great place to live.”
Rokicki: “We need to give the hospital every assistance we can,” he said, saying the hospital and its employees have made sacrifices to remain in business. “Bayonne is too big a city to be without a hospital.”
Conaghan: “It a great thing the city did to help Bayonne Medical Center,” he said. “But this medical debacle is larger than Bayonne.” He said the city has to lobby legislators in the U.S. Congress to make the climate better so that hospitals can survive.
Question: Should the city have an elected school board to help control the costs of schools better?
Smith: He said while he applauds some of the recent grass roots efforts to get the city to revert to an elected board of education, Smith believes the school district can be run well by having a mayor appoint responsible trustees.
Rutkowski: He said that elections in the past cost a lot, but only resulted in one candidate outside the political machine being elected. Rutkowski believes that the mayor should know what is going on in the schools so as to appoint the right people.
Sloan: Sloan said he is opposed to the elected school board, partly because it was not cost-effective. Each municipal election in the city cost $250,000. Currently, the city has a municipal election every four years. With an elected school board, the city would be spending the same amount every year.
Rokicki: He said the biggest flaw with an appointed board is that the mayor often picked people that had the same train of thought. Those appointed should come from various organizations in the city, such as the Rotary Club or Windmill Alliance, in order to get the most diversified membership possible.
Conaghan: “We used to have an elected board. I feel that the school board is only as good as the members who are on it, and that the mayor must appoint responsible, good people,” he said, noting that voter turnout for elected boards is very small. “Looking at the current trustees, I think they are all doing a good job.”