In my years of attempting "when pigs fly" experiments, I have learned that no flight plan is going to work [short of an explosive device] if the pig don't wanna fly. The fact is, these Administrator type pigs, don't even like being above ground in the "open" air and they are thoroughly terrified by the prospect of boldly soaring, through a come clean pure atmosphere, aimed at a horizon of social progress.
Departing from my poetic flying pig metaphor, here in paraphrase is what Steve Mountain said.
He basically claims that the Township website is complete. That it contains all the information you need or are entitled to know. He claims that he would be doing the "public" an "unfairness" to provide public information to anyone at a reduced rate-- regardless of extenuating facts like the persons intention to distribute the information for free to perhaps dozens or hundreds of other residents. He claimed a right to withhold certain information-- like any details regarding what ideas and plans are being considered regarding the library merger. In simplistic summation, he basically said if you wanna know what government is doing, you can go to council meetings, or you can come into the office and look at documents... AND if you don't have the time or ability to do that --tough luck!
In other Borough/Township related news: The Township Committee voted as expected [ considering they're facing the prospect of having to build a new Police Facility] to move on to phase 2 of the Police Merger feasibility study.
If I was the Mayor's speech writer I might have put it this way.
As with every year the year 2003 was fraught with problems of our own creation. As the corrupt and dysfunctional local manifestation of tyrannical Government we (myself and the town council) have done our best to earn your contempt. This year however, we embraced a new "power-drunk" style that has your local government functioning as if it were a third world dictatorship. Consistent with our personal animosity for constitutional principles like equal justice, free-speech and free press we have done you the "public service" of spending thousands of your dollars to conduct a witch hunt tribunal and we have used every loophole technicality at our disposal to ensure that you "the people" remain as ignorant as possible regarding this and other activities of your public government. As we like to say, the only good government is sneaky, "don't let them know until it's too late to do anything about it" government. Our big brother challenge for 2004, will be to make you really feel like it's Orwell's 1984.
The not too exciting products of the 2004 re-organization meeting
If you would like to download 4 times larger PDF versions of the documents the town website provides the opportunity to pointlessly waste Internet bandwidth.
There is a started (but not much else) discussion regarding the Police merger here.
On the subject of the Mendhams, I ran across another town[s] information site, mendham.org . I would post a hyperlink, but the search engines count that as a vote-- and as the site isn't likely to "vote" for this site in return-- I would just be doing more damage to this sites dismal search engine profile by providing a link. The site is produced by kolaco --and is one of those slick, stylish e-commerce kind of websites. The content is thin (and kind of old and inaccurate) but it is nicely formatted. -- Unfortunately, there is no hostile blog, or vulgar message board to give you much reason to visit more than once.
A Bridge Too Ugly
[kind of too big and expensive also]:
Okay the ugly part is just my subjective opinion... ignoring what it looks like, I think there is still a lot not to like about the new Borough Pond Bridge. At 10 cents a crossing, there needs to be some 370,000 crossings for this bridge to earn its keep. I will try to do 50 a year, but I think unless the town puts something of entertainment value on that "other side" of the pond [besides snakes and such] the bridge better last a hundred years. Personally I think a bridge over a lazy stream, feeding a lazy pond, should be kind of a lazy bridge... you know the kind you can sit on and watch the water (and your life) go by. If your going to use stockade fencing, as a handrail [I assume for some stupidly excessive child safety reason] then you probably shouldn't put a ten inch wide cap on top of it-- I'm middle-aged and I still felt the temptation to walk it. 
The bridge seems to have a lot of pointy corners and square edges to be designed with kids in mind. To really appreciate how over done this bridge is take a walk a few hundred yards downstream and see that an adequate (most of the time) stream crossing can be accomplished with a few cements stepping stones. Somewhere between these two variations of a stream crossing was the right solution. If I was town dictator, I probably would have gone with something low-profile (at water level ) made out of cement and stones ( like the nearby fireplace). A mini dam of sorts, with a few 12 inch wide troughs crossing the walking surface and creating a nice little waterfall effect [estimated cost... maybe $2,000]. The advantages would be-- more oxygen in the water which means you could stock better fish. Virtually indestructible-- as any flood stage debris would just sail over without having anything to snag on.
It would also help trap rocks and sediment before it got into the pond. The only disadvantages would be you couldn't use the crossing the 3% of the time that the water level would be too high... and of course there wouldn't be any rail to fall over or off of, or any 12 foot drop to break your neck. Perhaps when the town agrees to settle my lawsuit, I can get a "he gets to second guess any engineering project before approval" clause written into the settlement. - in real life I'm not nearly this arrogant.
A still in process construction project- the second story addition to one of the sewage plant buildings- looks okay, but at $170,000 I hope this lunchroom includes a Sauna and a Jacuzzi.
In an unrelated bridge story... the bridge over India brook at the bottom of snake hill [mountainside road] has apparently been damaged by something. From the looks of the guard rail I would guess a big something. 
It's too bad this isn't the 21st century and there's still no technology-- like an Internet or something-- that would enable the police department to easily post notices about hazardous local road conditions. I imagine they might even be able to explain what happened moments after it happens... too bad we were born too soon to enjoy the benefits of any such futuristic technology. - just a crazy dream
Giving the NJTCA the once over the phrase "putrid, disgusting, duplicity and hypocrisy" comes to mind. If this is the kind of "democratic law" we are killing people to impose on Iraq we surely do deserve to go directly to Hell, no passing Go, no $500. By kind of ironic coincidence, Mendham Township recently passed a resolution codifying that governments support of a Senate bill that would convert this "Government employees are free to rape and pillage act" into the "Government employees can do anything they want, including but not limited to, rape and pillage, act". American Democracy, ain't it great!
As promised in an earlier post, I will be developing separate webspace for these kinds of rants, and for providing an outline of the "process" of this litigation. Beyond brief update notices, or comments relevant to actions of the town council-- this should be the last blog "commentary" for a while regarding the case of Me vs. The Borough of Mendham.
In other Mendham Township News: The Township is sponsoring (undisclosed prizes) a photo contest. You (Borough or Township) need to submit a print (at least 5 X 7) along with the negative or digital file. The photograph must have been or be taken between October 1st and December 30th in one of the Township parks.
Summation of the December 15th meeting of the Borough Council
The ordinance officially recognizing the new [yet old] now independent first-aid squad achieved final passage. The current membership listed will be "grandfatherered in" and exempted from the new ordinance requiring FBI background checks.
The town council... lets say "acquiesced"... to my advice that they do some work on the ordinance regarding fees for copies of public information. Councilmen Gerard Dolan attempted to have my "communication" to the council invalidated because I referenced the ordinance by "subsection" title [and one of these jerks has the arrogance to call me petty] The kind of funny part is the "communication" was a courtesy to the council [a warning regarding legal jeopardy] and in practical fact, if invalidation were possible, only I would benefit from it being declared. The Mayor/Babysitter did prevent Mr. Dolan from sticking both his feet in his mouth... but later showed he also has a preference for foot, when he described the current fees as a "little bit"... "not significantly" out of line. I'm guessing in the end they might be shown to be about 600% out of line-- I think that's at least kind-of-significant.
there was also some more silly talk about charging for e-mail-- they are supposed to be drafting some amendments to be introduced after the new year. [I guess I'm guaranteed one good laugh next year]
Verbatim transcript of this "fees" portion of the meeting.
The new ordinance requiring FBI background checks [I think unfortunately] did pass. there was mention that the 30 days provided in the ordinance for the completion of a background check will likely have to be extended as they may take longer to process. [ volunteer today, get fingerprinted, and maybe get to work in a month or two. Besides the "solution" without a problem aspect of this legislation-- It has just occurred to me that the town may be setting itself up for greater liability if a public employee ever does "go postal" so to speak. If they excuse some minor infraction, in someone's history check and allow them to work for the Borough, they are now gonna be vulnerable to having that judgment second guessed. Also if a grandfathered employee, does something wrong and it is learned that a criminal history check would have revealed a vulnerability, the town is liable to have to explain, on the one hand --passing an ordinance because you perceive there to be a risk-- and on the other hand --arbitrarily grandfathering current employees or volunteers you have no reason to believe are "more safe".]
Animal control: the one-year contract was awarded to St. Huberts ( approximately $10,000 ) There was was some talk about the $100.00 charge between 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. and the suggestion that next year they might consider some other provider of the service. Although there was general agreement that St. Hubert does a good job.
Legal fees: The Council approved a resolution forwarding $30,000 in over-budget legal fees into next year's budget.
Environmental Issues: There was some talk regarding the "10 towns committee", slope and erosion issues. In a rather convoluted exchange, there was apparent re-codification of the standing general policy that unless a Borough action causes a water runoff problem-- the problem is the homeowners to solve.
Police merger: Apparently a couple of council members have already written opinions regarding the Phase 1 study. Councilmen Louis Garubo is apparently against even giving the issue any further consideration. Apparently Councilman Henry is likewise opposed to a merger. It seems clear that the mayor and Councilman Dolan see some potential merit. Apparently most of the police department was in attendance at the meeting and there seemed a lot of placating talk about how force numbers are not going to be reduced [even if it does make sense] The phrase "currently under contract" did come up which might mean that councilmembers would be agreeable to reduce the overall force numbers through attrition. There was mention the members of the public have commented on the subject to councilmembers' and have expressed a desire to be in on the discussion. [ maybe I can get someone who has a copy of the Phase one report to send me a copy for posting here... or maybe one of the two town sites will post the report-- miracles do happen as they say] The phase one report has elements that apparently everyone has disagreement with-- apparently the general conclusion of the report is "that significant benefits can be achieved".-- higher quality more efficient.
There was some semi-related conversation regarding the need to hire an additional one or two officers because of some "touchy subject" [ I guess it must be a bad-touch-y subject]
There was agreement to cancel the December 29th meeting.
The complete text of the e-mail can be viewed at the bottom of this page [December 16th entry]. Although some of the imbecility, needs explanation to be apparent-- it is the upside-down, ass backwardness, overall idea that has my brain trying to sneak out through my ears. The Borough of Mendham is paying the Mendham Messenger some $3,000 a year to publish stuff like this and this. -- yet they expect this not-for-profit [actually at-a-loss] website to "pay them" $.75 a page for the "privilege" of re-formatting, and publishing for the public the most important information used in the formation of public policy. All in the context of the added irony of Borough employees complaining about what a burden it is to provide access to public information. In essence, I'm willing to give any resident of Mendham a copy of any and all public information--at no cost-- and the town wants to charge me, rather than hire me [or get the hell out of my way] to provide that service. I defy you to make any sense out of that.
The raw tedium, of this perpetual tug-of-war is admittedly wearing me down. I hate, the hate they are provoking in me. There are days I see past it, and start thinking about settling for any arrangement that gets me more information at less cost in money and aggravation-- Then there are days like today, where I enjoy contemplating making these "people" --Passionately Regret-- sticking that stick where they stuck it.
No surprise, but the information the Borough "transmitted" today, wouldn't have been worth the paper they tried to sell it to me on.
Library Merger Agreement: They sent me this 58 Kb PDF file. Which only contains this 6kb of content. [I will fix the formatting as time permits] It seems pretty obvious this isn't all whole agreement-- or even a significant portion of the public information that should be available on the subject of the library merger.
Engineering Costs: They sent me this 56kb PDF file. which converts into about 5kb of information. I reduced it to this 3kb file by killing the "who cares" and hard to format "by month" information.
MONTHLY POLICE REPORT: They sent me this 63kb PDF file. it converts into this 3kb of information. Notice the words "Attached are Computerized Printouts of" yet they claim that these "attachments" are not available as computerized records???
Two other documents were the two linked to previously.
2004 HOLIDAYS: this 36kb PDF file = 1kb text
2004 SCHEDULED REGULAR MEETINGS OF THE BOROUGH COUNCIL: this 18kb PDF file = 2kb text
fees for paper documents:
Police merger: The Phase I Feasibility Study is available in paper only 47 pages= $19.25
The DEP correspondence is 12 pages, paper only, the cost is $8.50.
Budget Summary is not available in an electronic format. The cost for this is $4.50.
I would like to secure and publish these documents... but in frank and embarrassing truth, I can't afford to.
The agenda for tonight's [12/15/03] council meeting is posted here... in regular half-the-size, fast loading, HTML vs. the town sites, big file-and load another program to view- PDF format.
The agenda document has a resolution in it [205-03] regarding: Emergency! Legal Expenses. Apparently an extra $30,000 is needed. Most this "emergency spending" is likely the result of the police contract negotiations, and the "all wet"-down, fire department fiasco. As the Borough hasn't committed a legally sensible act since I filed my lawsuit, and hasn't even contacted me regarding a settlement.-- it's hard to imagine any of this money having been spent on my "pro se" litigation.
The ordinance regarding fees, is due for final approval tonight. I did send the town council a note suggesting what I think they should do with their ordinance.
The "no generous volunteer should go without the reward of a good fingerprinting" ordinance is also scheduled for final passage. At least we won't have any more of those ex-homicidal maniacs volunteering any more.
My summation of the November 17th meeting:
The ordinance regarding FEEs [should be renamed "the attack InMendham.com ordinance"] came up early in the agenda. There wasn't much discussion but a council member did ask how the exact dollar amounts were established. The answer from the Clerk and the council attorney was that the fees are based on what "others are charging" and an estimation of the "actual cost". I'm not going to provide the Borough (my adversary in pending litigation) with free legal research-- so I won't be providing links to actual case law-- but, settled law would indicate that much more than a charge of $15 for a "videotape" would not be upheld in court. Charging $25 for an "audiotape", likely has no legal precedent. Considering the fundamental nature of council meetings as a function of government any fee that can be judged to preclude access, isn't likely to survive constitutional testing.
More discussion focused on a council members proposal that there be a fee establish for e-mail. This proposal was challenged, with the obvious question-- how do you do that? Apparently the answer to the "Why" would you do that? question, is because "someone" [apparently me] is making "very very heavy requests" and consuming an "enormous" amount of time. It was also implied that "e-mail" is this "gentlemans" preferred mode of communication-- for the record it was the Borough administrator who insisted on everything being put "in writing". I think as the record clearly demonstrates, it's not my document requests that are consuming an enormous amount of time-- it is the town government's effort to illegally avoid providing the information that is "wasting time" [mine and there's and maybe even yours] . One council member was going to use a "suppose question" to demonstrate the horror that e-mail represents, unfortunately, he was interrupted before he could finish his "e-mail me a copy of the minutes" example. I'll finish it for him. 1. You open an e-mail program 2. You press "attachment" and type a file name. 3. You press the send button.... I guess by bureaucrat standards this constitutes a days labor.
There was some discussion regarding the council's recognition by ordinance of the now independent First Aid Squad. There was some irrelevant nitpicking regarding the wording of the ordinance as to "bylaws".
Sidewalks: Apparently they "cost a little more" than the original contract.
Police merger: There was some discussion regarding the report done some 13 years ago on the subject. It was agreed that the previous report should be part of the information considered.
High School traffic problem: In the Mayor's estimation the town hasn't received any useful concessions from the schoolboard regarding reducing student parking and drop-offs.
Phoenix House Restoration: bids of $504,000. and $679,000 were submitted.
Bulk item pickup: There have apparently been a lot of complaints regarding Waste Managements unwillingness to pick up certain items, or items from non customers. It was pointed out that the contract includes all residents. It was suggested that complaints be documented to provide for the possibility of contract nullification.
On the subject of "trash"-- "19 pages of trash" is councilmen Haverkost opinion, of the "opinions" expressed on the message board provided by this website. As I have already spoken on this subject, I will let their words speak for themselves.
There was some discussion regarding the possibility of there being "no left turn" access to 24 from Tempewick
Some very brief discussion regarding one of the library merger agreements.
Public comment:
A 69 year resident expressed a favorable opinion regarding the police department merger. Another town resident expressed an opposing view essentially arguing that the two forces have incompatible personalities [writing tickets verses public service]
There was an assurance that the council does not intend to reduce patrol forces and that a merger is just in the discussion phase.
A member of the public brought up the issue of "a serious accident" that took place Friday night in which a 13 year-old girl was apparently injured crossing Route 24 near Tempewick.
My summation of the December 1st meeting:
The meeting was dominated by discussion regarding the "accidental" double yellow line "striping" of Dean Rd . Apparently a lot of Dean Rd residents were in attendance and well-prepared to fight to a "tar and striped feather" conclusion if necessary. The council conceded that the "highway" striping was a mistake, and agree to remedy the problem. The $2,700 "fix" will be to apply black striping over the yellow striping. A rejected $5,500 option to "grind" the paint off wasn't given much consideration. [I am thinking a 1 ft. wide application of grit and tar down the center of the road might provide a more aesthetic and functional (ground away over time) repair.]
Some members of the public did attempt to get some clarification regarding how this "mistake" was made, but the explanations provided seemed kind of implausible. The story goes, that the Public Works Superintendent on his own accord decided to implement a decades old "road map" to road striping.
The town council took my legal advice, and "held over" to the next council meeting final passage of a couple of new ordinances'. A member of the public seemed "disappointed" that the ordinance regarding fingerprint background checks for selected town employees was going to be held up for two weeks. [It was not my intention to hold-up this ordinance... But in my opinion I don't see any benefit to this legislation-- there are a lot of people who generally don't like or trust government. It seems to me, the Borough is unnecessarily reducing the potential volunteer and employe candidate pool-- by assuming that no one will find being fingerprinted prohibitively intrusive and offensive. Seems to me that this "ounce of prevention" is going to cost us a lot in the long run.]
On the subject of the "fee ordinance", which I did deliberately delay. The council didn't indicate any need your willingness to alter any of the provisions of the ordinance. I will send a brief note regarding what I see as the blatant unconstitutionality of some of the provisions, but I'm not gonna give them the benefit of my complete legal analysis, unless they have the good sense to ask for it. I will suggest that the entire ordinance be scrapped and that more thorough legal research be done as recklessness [and maliciousness] will not make very good future legal defenses.
Phoenix House restoration: The low bid for the contract had to be rejected because the general contractor had not provided required information regarding what companies would be used as subcontractors. The next lowest $670,000 bid was apparently accepted.
Open Space: The Borough may secure a yearly $400,000 matching grant that can be "rolled over" for open-space land purchases.
The budget: The process is processing
Water Reclamation: Construction on the $170,000.00 addition [so as to provide space for eating lunch] has begun.
There was some discussion regarding attorney fees, and how time is to be billed. Apparently some attorneys want to assess applicant escrow accounts ( for a site plan for example) the for legal opinions expressed at board meetings. Sounds a little like greedy lawyer tricks.
There was a little discussion regarding analysis of the town's engineering costs. A report should be available soon.
There was some discussion regarding Chains and Gates at the back-door entrances to the high-school. Apparently some kids are removing links from the chains making them unusable. Apparently a resolution will have to be drafted, for a formal acquisition of a couple of $1,500 gates. [maybe they should make this a school metal shop project instead]
There was discussion regarding the countys unwillingness to pick up recycling on an alternative day when there is a Thursday holiday [a lot of them this year].
Bulk trash: There was more discussion regarding Waste management's poor performance. Borough Administrator has e-mailed Waste Management regarding the problems. [using e-mail? I thought that was too labor-intensive]
Police merger: It was some discussion regarding the Police merger proposal. A "phase one" report should be available soon [I will try to get a copy]. In standard borough administrator style Ralph Blakeslee informed the Council, that they might want the Public Safety Committee to look this report over First, to avoid it becoming a public document. The council attorney expressed the opinion that you couldn't prevent it from becoming a public document. The mayor made a strange, out of character, statement in defense of "the public's right to know". [good grief]
