{"id":34,"date":"2011-10-11T04:26:07","date_gmt":"2011-10-11T04:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pearlsofwisdom.guru\/?p=34"},"modified":"2016-08-11T20:08:57","modified_gmt":"2016-08-11T20:08:57","slug":"review-of-candidates-debate-october-11-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pearlsofwisdom.guru\/?p=34","title":{"rendered":"Review of Candidates’ Debate October 11, 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On Monday night, there was a candidates\u2019 debate, sponsored by the Fort Lee Homeowners\u2019 Association, and held at the Lewis F. Cole Middle School.\u00a0 The usual rhetoric permeated the room, with each candidate throwing barbs at the opposition.<\/p>\n

Note: \u00a0To clarify the record, so there are no misunderstandings, I believe that I am a registered Democrat! However, it was so long ago, I might have registered with the Whig Party.<\/i> I do have one radical belief; I prefer to vote for the best candidate, rather than party line.<\/p>\n

Candidates:<\/b><\/p>\n

Democrats:\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Mayor: Mark Sokolich; Town Council:\u00a0 Armand Pohan; Michael Sargenti<\/p>\n

Republicans:<\/b><\/p>\n

Mayor: Judith Fisher; Town Council:\u00a0 Martha Cohen; Alfred Norton<\/p>\n

For the most part, candidates for both parties performed well with a few notable exceptions:<\/p>\n

(1)\u00a0\u00a0 It was totally condescending when Armand Pohan implied that Judith Fisher\u00a0\u00a0 had difficulty reading a Fort Lee financial statement. For the record, Ms. Fisher\u2019s company sells accounting software<\/i>.<\/p>\n

(2)\u00a0\u00a0 Judith Fisher was a bit presumptuous in stating that she would be more available to the public than Mayor Sokolich. It is unlikely that any mayor would be more available than Mark Sokolich, who responds to e-mails and phone calls very quickly and puts in an exorbitant amount of time on the job.<\/p>\n

(3)\u00a0\u00a0 Martha Cohen was directly on point with her issues regarding the Council\u2019s use of \u201cemergency appropriations.\u201d<\/i><\/b>\u00a0 If the Town Council is going to publicly state that they are balancing the budget, they have to be more open about additional expenditures to pay off civil servant pensions and other retiree benefits, e.g. accrued sick days and accrued vacation time. These specific items do not appear to have been included in the budget projections.<\/p>\n

The award for \u201cgaffe of the night<\/i><\/b>\u201d should be awarded to Councilman Michael Sargenti. His responses to questions regarding his position as liaison to the Board of Education were ludicrous. The fact that he confirmed that he remembered attending exactly ONE meeting in his nine years as Councilman was embarrassing at the very least. One of his responses reflected indignation, \u201cI am not running for the Board of Education.\u201d He stated that he was also liaison to the Police Dept. and the Fire Dept. and that he rarely attended Police Dept meetings, but sometimes attended Fire Dept meetings. He joked that if the BOE had problems they could contact him. He referred three times to Charlie Luppino, a BOE member in the audience, as if they had personally conferred on BOE matters.<\/p>\n

First, I think that Councilman Sargenti should understand what a \u201cliaison\u201d position entails, so I have downloaded a definition:<\/p>\n

Definition:\u00a0 li\u00b7ai\u00b7son<\/b>:<\/p>\n

Communication or cooperation that facilitates a close working relationship between people or organizations.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

A person who acts as a link to assist communication or cooperation between groups of people.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Please note that a liaison is an \u201cactive position,\u201d<\/b> not a passive position, as exemplified by \u201cclose working relationship\u201d in the definition.<\/p>\n

Over the last two years, these are some of the major issues that have confronted the Board of Education in Fort Lee:<\/p>\n

(1)\u00a0\u00a0 A new superintendent, Dr. Raymond Bandlow, was hired to replace a departing superintendent, Joann Calabro, whose contract was not renewed for various reasons.<\/p>\n

(2)\u00a0\u00a0 There have been two major referendums on bond issues that have been defeated, with a third referendum scheduled for January. If this referendum is not passed, there will be no funds to address the deterioration of the school buildings.\u00a0 To the best of my knowledge, Councilman Sargenti has not weighed in on any of these referendums.<\/p>\n

(3)\u00a0\u00a0 The School Budget was passed by THREE VOTES. It is my understanding that if it had it been defeated, by law<\/i><\/b>, the budget issue would have been sent to the Town Council for review and revisions. One might surmise that the liaison would be called upon to inform the Town Council members on BOE issues, structural problems with the buildings, and a general overview of Fort Lee education. It would appear Councilman Sargenti would have been ill-prepared to fulfill this role.<\/p>\n

(4)\u00a0\u00a0 A new Freshman Academy was created and opened in 2011 to improve the transition of students from the middle school to the high school.<\/p>\n

(5)\u00a0\u00a0 Dr. Bandlow resigned after two years, creating a new Superintendent crisis, with major opposition to the appointment of the Assistant Superintendent, Steve Engravalle as \u201cActing Superintendent.\u201d<\/p>\n

(6)\u00a0\u00a0 New anti-bullying legislation was passed and new programs were implemented into the Fort Lee school system.<\/p>\n

(7)\u00a0\u00a0 There have been several major lawsuits against the Board of Education, with severe ramifications as a result of the Jay Berman lawsuit.<\/p>\n

With all of these major educational issues facing the Fort Lee community, with his absentee status, and with his answers to questions on Monday night, Councilman Michael Sargenti hardly inspired confidence in his qualifications to be \u201cCouncil Liaison\u201d <\/i><\/b>to the Board of Education.<\/p>\n

It is my understanding that there will be several more debates. We should all look forward to each of the candidates defining his or her position with hard facts and less rhetoric. Fort Lee is a community that needs solid leadership more than any time in our history to guide us through the current economic downturn and the educational crises that we will face in the next few years.<\/p>\n

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by Taboola<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday night, there was a candidates\u2019 debate, sponsored by the Fort Lee Homeowners\u2019 Association, and held at the Lewis F. Cole Middle School.\u00a0 The usual rhetoric permeated the room, with each candidate throwing barbs at the opposition. Note: \u00a0To clarify the record, so there are no misunderstandings, I believe that I am a registered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pearlsofwisdom.guru\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pearlsofwisdom.guru\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pearlsofwisdom.guru\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pearlsofwisdom.guru\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pearlsofwisdom.guru\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pearlsofwisdom.guru\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52,"href":"https:\/\/pearlsofwisdom.guru\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/52"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pearlsofwisdom.guru\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pearlsofwisdom.guru\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pearlsofwisdom.guru\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}