Bergen County is one sorry place to live, and not just because it’s one of the top five counties in the nation with respect to property taxes.
Bergen County is a sorry place also because of the inordinate amount of apologies being offered and solicited.
Northwest Bergen County Utilities Authority Chairman William F. Dator is demanding an apology from County Executive Donovan because she has insisted that the board stop taking stipends for their part-time position and, even more expensively, stop receiving full health benefits for their part-time position.
The NBCUA board, which includes the former chair of the Democratic Party, Michael Kasparian and the ubiquitary borough attorney, Brian Chewcaskie has been the target of Donovan’s ire as she seeks avenues to keep Bergen County spending under control.
According to the Bergen Record article, the NBCUA 2012 budget includes $40,000 for stipends for the commissioners and $97,189 in health benefits. Readers can view the 2012 Budget online.
William Dator is seeking an apology from Donovan who has stated that the board should not be collecting these benefits.
Turning the other cheek, County Executive Donovan is waiting for an apology from Bergen County Sheriff Saudino for his previous use of a vulgar term. The lack of an apology by Saudino is apparently the reason as to why Donovan has refused to meet with him on a one-to-one basis.
The solicitation of apologies in Bergen County also includes Bergen County Republican Chairman Bob Yudin who wanted an apology from The Record’s Alfred Doblin for his use of the word “Jesus” in an article concerning the infighting of the county’s Republican Party leaders.
It was Yudin’s contention that the phrase, “a come to Jesus moment” conjures up images of anti-semitic injustices covering the last five hundred years. The Record, in a response published on PolitickerNJ, explained the secular history of the phrase “a come to Jesus moment”, and said no apology would be forthcoming.
The trend in Bergen County becoming a sorry place to live seems to be a trend towards an epidemic of “the vapors” plaguing politics.
There was the recent Bergen County Freeholder meeting where county administrator Ed Trawinski got a serious case of the vapors and called the police because his *hiney was threatened.
More locally – Mayor Schwager of Oakland has apologized profusely at two council meetings to a member of Oakland’s Communication Commission who caught a case of the vapors; all in an effort to get the town’s website updated in 2012.
Exemplifying how “the vapors” can become epidemic, former Oakland mayor John Szabo caught a case of the vapors in the fall of 2011 while reading a blog highly critical of his administration.
The former mayor then passed the vapors on to the Oakland Chief of Police who conducted a two week investigation of the local blogger in response to the former mayor becoming “disturbed”.
The Oakland Chief of Police apparently then passed the vapors on to sitting council member Christopher Visconti who publicly succumbed to the vapors during a subsequent council meeting.
Yudin is still around, I thought after his candidates took a serious beating he would have been put out to pasture. His quest for an apology is a politically correct imaginative quest for attention. Be a man, take your lumps and resign.
Is this character in the video supposed to represent the Utility Board? Because looks like those guys are not sorry for taking the money.
Hey Charlie,
Maybe you will get an apology from Visconti and the Chief! I wouldn’t hold your breath though. LOL
Charlie is too much of a man to cry, I mean ask, for an apology. What a bunch of light-weights!