Transparency is a term used by politicians while running for elected office. Once elected, however, the rhetoric vanishes. Instead, we get something like a reluctant criminal investigation — but arbitrarily, subjectively declared not a criminal investigation — like a buried detective’s report showing four months’ worth of work. How much did that investigation cost taxpayers’ to conduct and bury?
Are you curious that no one — ranging from the mayor to the hand-picked six-figure business administrator (who is unaware why she was terminated by her previous employer) to your elected council persons to your police chief — is outraged at the hijacking of a legitimate police investigation by the $244,000 no-bid, part-time township attorney and Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office? Let me be clear: This is an outrage.
As unpaid volunteers, we have served seven months on a committee to repair the trashed Grover House. Meanwhile, your elected and administrative officials had a paid, fiduciary responsibility to protect taxpayer assets in the Grover House for three years and three months, following Mrs. Grover’s departure. Instead, a former business administrator rode out of town with neither questions asked nor an exit report demanded by the transparent, no-nonsense mayor and Council. Why?
During the most recent Council meeting of January 22, those of us who continually raise questions are portrayed by the mayor’s supporters (aka pigeons) as “liars.” Why would your elected officials take a cue from our mayor by remaining silent?
The Township attorney and Mercer County Prosecutor’s office buried the detective’s report in mid-December, but now the attorney cannot even produce a redacted copy for the public more than a month later?
The West Windsor Council is complicit in this coverup because it has already spent $44,000 to an outside attorney to protect the mayor from having to answer any questions from a former West Windsor Councilman. There has been no legal accounting for the costs associated with the Grover matter! These legal costs will not be available until March, according to a recently filed OPRA request.
Let me be clear: The historic preservation mayor (his words, not ours) was willing to spend $60,000 to raze the Grover Homestead, including permitting trashing the interior of this splendid home and yet permit others to take a center hall staircase, multiple fireplace mantels, solid core doors, century-old hand-blown window glass, wide-plank flooring, window casings, cast iron radiators … and theft of the copper piping, wiring, and relatively new heating system to a Trenton scrap yard?
Public assets cannot be given away to others to benefit individuals or private enterprises. There has been no public accounting of artifacts removed despite countless requests.
We request using that very township-budgeted $60,000 in taxpayer money to replace windows ($43,000 or less) and secure the Grove House roof due to the Council’s and Administration’s negligence. Our committee is being branded derelict for doing precisely what the Council didn’t do. Our analysis shows the property can be self-sustaining.
Please come out to either write or voice your opinions when you know the facts.
Together, let us get West Windsor back on a track of accountability and not get trapped in the political quicksand of indifference.
Pete Weale
Vice Chairman, Grover Homestead Restoration Committee
