August 26, 2009
Hon. Joseph N. DiVincenzo, Jr.
Essex County Executive
Hall of Records, Room 405
465 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.
Newark, NJ, 07102
Re: OPRA Request
Golf Clubs’ Superintendent Hiring
Dear Mr. DiVincenzo:
Attached, please find a copy of the Open Public Records Request (OPRA) request CWA Local 1081 has submitted this day to the County of Essex for a copy of all documents within the Administration’s possession regarding Timothy Crist whom you have hired as the first Essex County golf course superintendent at an annual salary of $105,000. Said documents should include the delineation of the funding source for Mr. Crist’s salary as was reported within the attached article published within today’s edition of The Star Ledger, entitled “The county gets serious about golfing”.
CWA Local 1081 and our Union’s members, needless to say, are not nearly as enthusiastic as you were when you were quoted within the article regarding the first ever hiring of an Essex County golf course superintendent at an annual salary of $105,000.
Perhaps our decided dearth of delight with your most recent excessive expenditure upon the County’s recreational facilities is due to the fact that you have wantonly withheld similar interest in improving the livelihoods of the County’s rank and file employees by denying them fair remuneration for their significantly successful efforts to provide the preeminent services possible the residents of the County of Essex enjoy.
Or, perhaps our absence of ardor for your Administration’s most recent excess expended upon such comparatively petty pursuits is due as well to the fact that many thousands of County residents are unemployed while the Administration’s welfare-to-work and WIA (Workforce Investment Act) programs suffer a scandalously scant nineteen percent training placement rate even as the Division of Welfare’s caseload has increased by thirty percent over the past twenty months as our agency’s staffing has increased a mere five percent during that same time span.
In order for your Administration to truly succeed in achieving its clichéd catchphrase of “Putting Essex County First”, it must learn to “walk and chew gum at the same time” and get serious about more critical County concerns that its golf courses, parks and zoo. In addition to letting the golfers know you’re “committed to keeping the public courses in good shape”; why not let the County’s employees and the men, women and children they serve know you are equally committed to keeping their livelihoods, and lives, “in good shape” as well.
Sincerely,
David H. Weiner, President
CWA Local 1081