To the Editor:
Last week at the Bayonne Board of School Estimate meeting, Mayor Smith claimed there should be no tax increase and that he didn’t want to lay anyone off. With a $5 million deficit facing the Board of Education, Mayor Smith’s statement wasn’t realistic, but just campaign rhetoric. The people of Bayonne are not stupid, and it’s ridiculous for Mayor Smith to believe that our highly qualified educators are not able to “do the math.”
Mayor Smith is basing his “anticipated” savings on 23 retirees who may or may not retire and that others may do so as well. In order to fool people to win an election, Mayor Smith is not being honest with our residents. You mathematically cannot make up $5 million with 23 retirees and other minor financial adjustments, which will have little or no effect. In the city of Woodbridge, where the school budget is $182 million (ours is $115 million), they are laying off 260 employees (including teachers) and raising everyone’s taxes $156 per home. Towns with smaller amounts of lost aid are making the following adjustments: Cliffside Park, 25 teachers; Freehold, 55 employees; Belleville, 60 layoffs; and Glen Rock, 58 layoffs. These are just to name a few and there are many more.
Mayor Smith, every town is either laying off workers, raising taxes or doing both. Are you really saying Bayonne will definitely do neither? The very least you can do is to be honest with the voters. It is either yes or no. You have had this budget in front of you for months. You’re taking a page out of the previous Mayor’s playbook, lying to the people by saying there will no tax increase and no layoffs – just to not make anyone angry – and then after the election, BANG! A big fat tax increase with layoffs.
The Board of Education budget is only one of our pressing problems. The City of Bayonne is currently $10 million over last year’s budget, and when you include the lost UEZ money (all those employees on the UEZ roles go back to city payroll), we are about $43 million in the hole. The “anticipated” transaction for Fidelco has not occurred, and there is reason to believe that the “deal” (a non-competitive bid to an entity you hand selected) has fallen apart. Further compounding the problem is your action through your Chief of Staff Steve Gallo to allow the MUA to borrow and bond $3 million to pay operating expenses.
Finally, with everyone’s financial lives here at stake in Bayonne, you have an obligation to at least be honest with our residents. You have no plan. Your budget is based on speculation, false promises and borrowing. Mayor, instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in this election with false commercials, inaccurate ads and glamorized huge photo banners of your face on vacant lots, for the benefit of Bayonne’s citizens, if you agree to spend that money on bringing in a team of qualified auditors and professionals to give Bayonne an accurate plan and assessment of how to restructure and fix Bayonne’s budget, I’ll agree to give my campaign money (the little I have) to buy this team lunch and dinner and to give the rest to a city program of your choice.
ASSEMBLYMAN ANTHONY CHIAPPONE
Candidate for Mayor