Common Sense For New Hampshire

There really seems to be no limit to our mayor’s willingness to use the government of Belmar to benefit himself politically.  He used the monies generously donated to the Sandy Relief Fund in an exploitative and secret manner with the beneficiaries known only to himself and one borough employee.  He tweeted an endorsement of Magovern and Blackburn on the official borough website on the day of last June’s primary.  He also used the borough website to attack opponents of his big redevelopment plan.  He allowed candidate Brian Magovern to use the town’s reverse-911 system to make a public service announcement just two and a half weeks before the election.  (That sort of thing is supposed to be avoided for ninety days before an election.)  Today I received a campaign letter from him with a lot of, um, things that aren’t true.  It had the official Belmar logo at the top just like the town’s official letterhead.

He also made a political campaign stump speech Wednesday night as his report to council.  In it he talked about how important it is for the voters to only elect people who have a good relationship with him, the council Democrats and borough administrator Colleen Connolly.  If you weren’t at the meeting, please fast forward the tape to 1:17:45.

 
You see in Belmar it really is all about relationships.  For example, let’s say Mrs. Higginbottom calls Councilman Bean because there’s a pothole in her street the size of a minivan.  Well Bean could ask Connolly to send out DPW to fix it, but, you know, they just don’t have a good relationship.  He can’t walk around her house blindfolded, in fact he’s never even been to her house.  He doesn’t know how her son is doing in school.  He doesn’t even know the kid’s name.  How can Bean  expect our administrator to get the pothole fixed when his relationship with her leaves so much to be desired?  If Mrs. Higginbottom really wanted to keep her street maintained, she should have elected someone who had a great relationship with Ms. Connolly.

By the way, relationships really is a big part of the way business is done in this administration.  When the mayor decided to replace long-time administrator Robbin Kirk, he needed someone with whom he had a great relationship so he picked old friend Bill Young.  When Young quit two weeks after Sandy, he was replaced with the mayor’s wife’s old college chum and former co-worker for Corzine, Colleen Connolly.

And of course with all the no-bid contracts that seem to be a hallmark of this administration, you would never want to take a chance with a company with which you didn’t already have a really, really close relationship, right?