To the Editor:
I have to question the integrity of a candidate running for Town Council on May 9.
At the Candidates Forum at Temple Beth Ahm on April 26 Ted Giblin professed not to know which “municipal purposes” the temple was being purchased for. In his closing statement he said of those municipal purposes, “what does that mean? I’m not sure”. But because Mr. Giblin told us all at the Town Council Meeting on Monday that he’d actually been fully informed by our Town Manager prior to the forum he knew that Verona came upon an opportunity to provide a suitable home for the Verona Rescue Squad that would accommodate their vehicles and provide a place to train its members. He stood up at the Council meeting on Monday evening and spoke against the move. He railed against spending money on our Rescue Squad, a volunteer organization that provides our residents with vital services and at no charge to those residents. Then yesterday I received a mailing from him which accused Verona of “spending MILLIONS to buy up private property with no plans on what to do with it.” The same mailing (on the other side) listed his concern for public safety. There is a disconnect between what he says and what he does.
Which Ted Giblin should we believe? I choose NOT to believe either of them and would not want him to be my representative. His lack of understanding of Verona’s needs as well as his knowledge of our municipal government is appalling. Verona needs its volunteer Rescue Squad and if we can provide them with a central location, room to shelter its vehicles, and a training room, it can only serve to make Verona safer.
Anita De Old
Verona
I’ll question the integrity of the letter writer.
She notes, “[Giblin] railed against spending money on our Rescue Squad, a volunteer organization that provides our residents with vital services and at no charge to those residents.”
His exact words:
“Since 1927, the entirely volunteer Verona Rescue Squad has been serving our community. In 2016, they responded to an astounding 1508 calls for service. Verona Fire Department, founded in 1909 has been a tremendous asset to the town. Both are available 24/7, 365 – and serve the town, for FREE. In addition, the generosity of these members and the time they contribute has a discernible effect on the bottom-line of our municipality. Without these volunteers, our town would have a much larger outlay of salaries to pay for services that we could not go without.”
“Both the Verona Rescue Squad Building and Fire Department #2 need to be brought into the 21st century. I believe that is the right thing to do given their respective missions and I FULLY support providing these groups the proper facilities to carry out their work.”
To say that the above constitutes “railing” against spending on the Rescue Squad is disingenuous.
I have known Ted Giblin for many years and can attest to his character and integrity. Ted has nothing against the Verona Rescue Squad; his concerns are directed at the cost of purchasing the property and retrofitting the building for the rescue squad. As Ted explained in another forum: “[The Township Manager] did a rough estimate that the renovations would costs somewhere in the vicinity of $1.5 M, thus bringing the total purchase payment and renovations to nearly $2.5M. On Tuesday April 25th, I met with Matthew Laracy, our CFO. There we discussed the bonding aspect of this purchase. Since many other items are typically thrown into a bonding ordinance Mr. Laracy felt it would be safe to consider a 15-year time frame and a 3% long term interest rate for this project. Considering these inputs, and including the amortization schedule, the total cost of this purchase now climbs to nearly $3.895 M. And we still have no new firehouse.”
I find it interesting that, three weeks before the above letter to the editor was published, this website published another letter from the same author expressing their strong support for two other candidates for town council. In that letter, the author wrote: “If you were unhappy with the large tax increases of previous administrations, it was because of the ‘Yes Men’ who voted for those increases. It has recently come to my attention that 2 of these ‘Yes Men’ are now working with 2 of the other candidates running for Town Council. We don’t want to go back to excessive fiscal policies and a repeat of the past.” Where is the outrage for the inevitable tax increase that will accompany this nearly $4M purchase? And who are the “Yes Men” that this previous letter is referring to? Ted Giblin certainly isn’t one of them.