Accountability Matters

During my campaign for Borough Council last year, I was regularly accused by the Piarulli/Salmon Republicans of “personal attacks”. This is what they do to prevent anyone pointing out the deliberate fact-twisting and conflating unrelated issues we see from them every year.

As a politician, Mrs. Salmon should know judgements of character, integrity and ability to do the job are left to the voters to judge. Serving members of the Council have both the right and the responsibility to inform Garwood’s residents about misinformation originating from Mrs. Salmon’s campaign. We do not speak for Clarissa Nolde and Jeff Jotz. They speak for themselves here on the Patch and on their own site at: https://www.dems4garwood.com/

Regarding Mrs. Salmon’s comments today:

1. In our last Council meeting, Borough Administrator Kyle Harris gave a detailed explanation of why it was a bad idea to have the Administrator also serve as the DPW Superintendent and also why he was not interested in the position. Mrs. Salmon was present for that meeting, yet here she is on social media criticizing the current Council for not doing “outside the box” thinking when she knows the truth. To hear Mayor Sara Todisco and Mr. Harris address this, please go to 44:56 on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1XJOLPP3ac&t=5297s
2. “Social media person”: This is what Mrs. Salmon calls our Public Information Officer, a position which has been essential during the pandemic and does much more than social media.
3. “Vanity Projects”: The purchase of $6900 in decorative snowflakes was funded by money remaining on a 2019 bond for public facilities & beautification, which also helped fund repairs to the DPW building. This money could not be spent on raises and is not nearly enough for a new building.

Mrs. Salmon singling out the purchase of new holiday decorations, replacing ones over 15 years old which were worn out, shows there is literally no action this Council could take that she wouldn’t criticize. I can just see the headline now if I hadn’t, and there were no decorations to put up this year: “Garwood Democrats declare war on Christmas”.

The bottom line is, Mrs. Salmon is pushing bad policy ideas which will cost our taxpayers a lot of money, while accusing the current Council of the same thing.

Councilman Vincent Kearney
Garwood, NJ