IT STILL IS OZ

According to the May 17 Plaintalker II blog there was a legal notice published in the Courier, which I no longer, to the effect that the Council is seeking “AN INDEPENDENT COUNSEL TO CONDUCT AN INITIAL INQUIRY ON BEHALF OF THE CITY COUNCIL RELATED TO THE NORTH AVENUE EMERGENCY DEMOLITION PROJECT”.

Too much has already been written about that fiasco, and a legitimate inquiry into the circumstances that led to the contracting the Yates Real Estate Inc. to do the demolishing is a “must do”. If there was as appears likely something irregular in the process the public needs to know and proper action taken

However this is turning into an obvious attempt by a faction of the Council with ties to the City Party to turn it into a political witch hunt to discredit the Mapp administration. This is from a group whose previous membership blocked attempts to investigate financial irregularities in Recreation, and disregarded weird financial transactions by the Robinson-Briggs administration. Also since this is a focused probe there will be no investigation why the problem had existed from 2010.

Since Bill Reid is no longer a Council member I am sure that there will be no objections to the money spent this time. I wonder how many responses will be received besides one from Weber Dowd Law, LLC the firm supposedly chosen when the original resolution was adopted.

I am sure that this year’s CBAC will recommend that funds for this project should be included in the Council’s amended budget.

In my recent fee time I have been reading reports of the “Budget Hearings, the latest one being the Public Works hearing. Emphasis was upon local streets, their condition and repairing. Little mention was made of the 2006 long term plan that lasted in place to 2007 at best.

Little mention has been made that a certain Engineering firm was given contracts over and beyond its contract to supply the City with an in-house engineer to do planning and supervision of the works. Little mentioned made that years ago the City purchased equipment to resurface sections with pothole deterioration.

For several years there were resolution passed authorizing the seeking of grant funding for repaving East Second Street and West Second Street from Terrill Rd to Plainfield Ave. I have no recollection if any Grants were sought or if granted what happened to the dollars but that street is still a mess.





It was not until the last portion of the previous administration that there was a Director of Public Works who started a plant to repair bad stretches of main thoroughfares, as well as secondary roads. The stretch of Leland Ave from the city line (the brook) to Front Street which for years looked like a refugee from the Iraq war was finally fixed, a yet I understand that a Councilor considered that of less importance than some side streets.



However there is one street, Watchung Ave from Woodland to Leland that should merit belated possible legal action. Within 2 weeks of its resurfacing there were at least a half dozen openings by the water company in the section that to this day have not been closed according to City Ordinance. Moreover there are numerous lengthwise surface cracks in that section which would suggest that either the surfacing material was not up to specification or that the base for the pavement was not properly constructed.