Something fishy at the docks? Here’s what I know. You can decide.
So let’s get right into it.
All this information is gleaned from an OPRA made this week from someone other than myself. The OPRA request and the Borough’s full response can be seen here.
Part of the OPRA was a list of occupants, starting in 2016, of the slips known by this person to be utilized by the Borough itself for municipal purposes. Here we see the part of the list for 2016 and 2017.
Then in January of 2018, while Matt was still mayor and Colleen was still BA, Mike Campbell made on behalf of the town some kind of agreement with Ed Kirschenbaum to let Ed keep his boat in one of those slips in exchange for the town being able to move or utilize his boat in the event of an “emergency”. This seems like kind of a strange thing, particularly considering that Kirschenbaum wasn’t a public official in Belmar at the time and wasn’t even a resident. But here it is:
Sure enough, in 2018 one of the Borough’s slips was domicile to Ed’s boat.
If you’ll allow me to go off on somewhat of a tangent here I would be much obliged. I have been urging the Borough for many years now to make the meeting minutes searchable. If you are trying to research something or find something that was stated at a meeting or was part of the agenda at a meeting, it is often impossible without reading through hundreds of pages of meeting minutes. Even if you are committed to finding it you could miss it and hours of work could be for nothing. I feel so strongly that this would be an important tool for transparency and government accountability that in 2014 when I was co-chair of Jim Bean’s mayoral campaign I asked that it be made part of his platform. Of course Jim agreed completely and was happy to do it.
I would like to see all resolutions passed in the last three years regarding marina rates and the minutes where the topic was discussed by the Council. I am not going to read three years of minutes to find what I want. If the minutes were searchable I could have found what I wanted in five minutes. On Thursday I OPRAed all resolutions for 2018 through 2020 regarding the setting of rates at the marina. Unfortunately the Borough hasn’t responded yet.
A couple of days ago Mark Levis posted some of the OPRAed information I am discussing here to the Belmar Locals Only Facebook page. He also posted this 2019 resolution he found:
In his post Levis says that no such resolution was passed in 2020. I have no reason not to believe him. Still, if the minutes were searchable, or if I had gotten my OPRA back I could have confirmed this.
Anyway in 2019, as authorized by this resolution, and in 2020, in the apparent absence of an authorizing resolution, some of the Borough’s own slips were leased out classified “as is”.
Not all the slips leased “as is” at cut rates, as per the 2019 resolution, were ones previously used by the Borough. Part of the OPRA was slip sales reports for all slips at the marina for the years 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Of course in 2017 and 2018 there are no “as is” slips mentioned.
The 2019 report shows 7 “as is” slips rented. (Click on the image to see the full report. You can scroll down for the “as is” slips.
In 2020 the number more than doubled even more though, as Mark Levis points out, there was no authorizing resolution.
There also is no mention of the availability of discounted slips on the marina’s “rates” web page.
So that’s what I have. Should the rates currently being charged for these less desirable slips be authorized by resolution? Yes, they should do that. Should the availability of these discounted rates be made more widely known to potential customers and not, apparently, just be by word of mouth? Of course. Is this some sort of scandal? You can decide that for yourselves but in my opinion the thing I find weirdest is that 2018 agreement between Kirschenbaum and Mike Campbell. Maybe someone should ask how that came to be.
