WILDWOOD — No one likes having to pay the bills, but in this city the monthly bill payment has turned into another point of contention for the divided City Commission.
During the Wednesday March 25 meeting at Commissioner Gary DeMarzo’s request, bills from the city departments were made a separate item on the commission meeting agenda. That means they would require a separate vote from the rest of the city’s bills.
DeMarzo had been abstaining from voting on the bill payment because of a court ruling that limited some of his duties on the commission because of his status as a member of the city Police Department.
In a 2007 court decision, Superior Court Judge Joseph Visalli ordered that DeMarzo “recuse himself on all issues relating to budget items, conditions, terms, salary, benefits, discipline, contracts and litigation relating to and involving the Wildwood Police Department and all members thereof, the Fraternal Order of Police local bargaining unit and involving all other Wildwood city employees working under collective bargaining agreement including but not limited to the UAW Local 2327 and FMBA Local 50.”
Visalli also said DeMarzo must recuse himself “from all matters involving appointments and compensation of the municipal judge, municipal prosecutor, public defender and/or their firms” as well as “ matters dealing with the funding for any budgetary line item relating to matters of litigation that directly or indirectly affect the Wildwood Police Department.”
His decision on the new voting method, DeMarzo said, came from the judicial restriction and because he had not had a chance to review bills coming from departments that he doesn’t oversee.
City Solicitor Marcus Karavan said the city had been extracting items that DeMarzo was not supposed to vote on and DeMarzo was free to vote on the rest. DeMarzo’s new method of voting on bill payment was not keeping with the restrictions.
City Clerk Chris Wood interjected that if DeMarzo only supported his bills and the other commissioners each only supported their bills, nothing and no one would get paid.
“Everyone here has to pitch in somehow,” Wood told DeMarzo. “And you are just hiding, for lack of a better word, behind a jurisdictional restriction.”
Wood said that now DeMarzo insists on keeping his bills separate despite the effort made to extract agenda items in keeping with the court order.
Mayor Ernie Troiano said that he trusts the people that were elected to office to be able to operate their departments and their budgets.
Troiano said he would put DeMarzo’s “childish behavior aside” and vote on all bills payments to make sure the city’s vendors and employees are paid.
Commissioner Bill Davenport said that he was disappointed that DeMarzo didn’t want to participate in the city’s operation.
Davenport said DeMarzo has left them to pay the bills, so they can take the blame for the city’s spending as they face a possible recall election.
“He’s forcing the mayor and I to run the city,” Davenport added.
By the time resolutions were voted on, all three commissioners voted to pay the $797,136 from DeMarzo’s departments. Troiano and Davenport voted to pay the remaining $1.73 million of city bills. DeMarzo voted no.
Villas – I guess Kamala Harris was just too honest, too intelligent and too sane of a person to win an election in a racist, sexist, backward country like America.
