Submitted by J.E. Abrams, former mayor of Edgewood
I have more questions about the Town of Edgewood’s finances because there are things that I do not understand. I have said in the past that there is no place to see the Town’s accounting without an Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) request. IPRA requests are either delayed or effectively denied because the Town is overwhelmed by them, so getting to the records is difficult and extremely time-consuming, or, as in the case of the Commission, requires a lawsuit. Instead, I have been looking into reporting that the Town is required to send to the State. Since the “new government organization” was instituted, I have found something of interest to the community, our State Legislators, and perhaps, the town Commissioners. Over the last 4-5 years, the State Legislature’s capital outlay funds for our communities’ projects have been reverted to the State for lack of activity.
This means the Town hasn’t acted to fund its match on some projects or hasn’t accomplished the necessary tasks to move a project forward. If this lack of progress continues till the end of this fiscal year, the town looks to have had over two and a half million dollars returned to the State General Fund. Those projects will go unfunded. This seems to be the case with some of the badly needed money for the Church Street paving project, as well as several other projects that the Town has asked the State Legislature for assistance to fund through the Capital outlay process.
Yet another symptom of something wrong with our town’s abilities and direction.
Losing major funding for projects and projects not moving forward for lack of progress is a good reason to rethink the way things are being done. As a citizen and as a former elected member of our governing body, I expected more from our leaders. I know, firsthand, the difficulty getting agreement on the board; however, when there is consensus to act to build infrastructure or community works, and money gets pledged to do it, I expect results, not for the state to rake back the funding for no progress.
This is a failure in leadership, bad management, or incompetence, or all three. In any private corporate structure, these types of fiscal and performance failures would lead to the removal and replacement of individuals responsible, as well as restructuring or even the dissolution of the company. The fact that the town has had 4 town managers in the last 4 years may have something to do with this issue. That alone begs another question… But the bickering and lawsuits, as well as the disarray in the town offices, show a disintegration of the town’s administration at a very basic level.
The responsibility falls on the Commission to do the job and manage the public trust or step aside, as several have already done, so that we can move forward with real leadership. Unfortunately, the election didn’t change things for the better.