Be careful of folks spreading b.s. about Clerk/ Sheriff

County Clerk Jeff Parrott and Sheriff Mike Strada are both reformers who have reorganized their departments, cut spending, increased revenues, and saved taxpayers millions.  Over the past few years, certain freeholders have attempted to mess with their offices which are – by design and by law – INDEPENDENT of the Freeholders who, as we have seen time and time again, have enough to do to keep from messing up what they’re in charge of. 

But that hasn’t prevented them from casting a jealous eye at two departments that are reducing staffing while increasing revenue to the taxpayers (Also-Known-As “property tax relief”).  The opportunities by the Board to slip in a favored employee or two are great, but have been resolutely resisted by Parrott and Strada.   

And so it seems that those certain someones on the Board have leaned on the county’s largest (?) newspaper to stir the pot and lay out some propaganda with which to smear our Clerk and Sheriff.  After all, the Board and the newspaper share the same lawyer. 

Take the Clerk’s office as a for instance.  At a Board meeting earlier this summer, one of the Freeholders crowed and scratched like some bellicose rooster.  He was on and on about a word he had just discovered, called “breakage.” 

He was so fond of the word that he used it over and over again… whether it was the appropriate word or not.  He liked the sound of the word. It made a pleasant, romantic sound, not unlike the word “garbage.”  But there you are.

What he was actually talking about was people.  Good people who work for the county’s taxpayers and who are earning for the taxpayers from their good work hundreds of thousands in revenue that wasn’t there before – revenue that is going back to the county as property tax relief.  If only those certain members of the Board will allow it, not spend it, on shit like lawyers studies, at over $8,000 a page… to tell us silly stuff that we already know. 

Under Jeff Parrott, the Clerk’s office has cut its staff and has not hired extra staff – even when two employees became seriously ill and could not work. Instead, their duties were split up and reassigned to those remaining staff.  And they still handled more documents, collected more fees, and earned more revenue for the County and property tax relief for the taxpayers. So one would think that, having come out so far ahead, nobody would begrudge those hard working employees (who made do with less staff and covered for their two grievously ill compatriots) a small bonus in their pay packets, by way of a thank you. 

Oh, but that’s where our rooster comes in.  “It’s breakage” he snorts!  Of course, it’s not “breakage” when they spend a half million on a no-bid contract for a friend who produces a thin report that isn’t worth the paper to wipe your bunghole with.  “Why that thar is goooood gov’ment,” says the rooster.

So let’s be very wary about a rooster who crows to distract us from the real issues facing the county’s taxpayers.

Sheriff Mike Strada endorses Fantasia & Hertzberg for Freeholder

The Definition of Insanity

By Sam Adams

No, it's not what you think, because in Sussex it takes on a whole new meaning. 

Here we have a solar program that has gone bad and cost us millions. But to add insult to injury, we are sold a bill of goods by the freeholder board, that they will investigate where the money went.  Except for some of them on the board its more about politics than getting your money, why? 

    You don’t hire someone with more conflicts than James Comey to do the investigation, and that’s what Matthew Boxer has.  He worked as someone who would have a hand in the review process for the State when he worked there before he returned to the private sector law firm that conducted this so-called investigation into the same deal he had to approve. 

    But at a recent Tea Party meeting, that’s what Freeholder Rose hung his hat on. The fact that they had a pile of documents to wade through that could be used for litigation to get back your money. That investigation cost you almost $518,000, by the way.   

     Remember when I said you don’t hire the guy that signed off on a deal to investigate it?  Yeah, how’s that going to work out?  About as well as a screen door on a submarine. Get your snorkel, it’s getting deep. 

    In no way will anything be uncovered that is incriminating by Mr. Boxer because to do so would be an implication to the fact he was incompetent when he did the initial review. So, Freeholder Rose is selling you a whopper with no beef, there are no documents. Freeholders Rose and Graham know that.   

     But queue up the twilight zone music folks, to add to the insanity, the democrat in sheep's clothing John McCann, gets an endorsement from Freeholder Rose. 

   Now, who is suing Freeholders Rose, Lazzaro, and Graham?   Sheriff Strada.  He is doing so because he is the constitutionally elected law enforcement in the county, he requires his budgetary needs to be met, and the Freeholders have been fighting him on this, why?  Probably politics.  Strada’s budgets have always been reasonable, and significantly less than they could have been.   But here is where it gets insane, did Freeholder Rose endorse McCann in the hope that in some way he could get out of the lawsuit??  Because McCann was legal counsel to the Sheriff's association when he worked with Sheriff Saudino in Bergen County, a Hillary supporter, and democrat himself, as well.  And as a result of that connection, he may have made a promise to Freeholder Rose that he could pull something off.  Make it all go away for Freeholder Rose. After all, McCann has as many endorsements as Charles Manson and needs any he can get. 

     I don’t see Sheriff Strada caving on the lawsuit, the sheriff’s department needs to be funded.

 This is nothing more than a very, very desperate move by both McCann, and Freeholder Rose to try to save each other.  The voters of Sussex county are smarter than that.

Why is Rose using Morris operative to attack Fantasia?

Attendees at last evening's Skylands Tea Party meeting were shocked by the language used by supporters of Freeholder Jonathan Rose against one of his rivals for the GOP nomination, Dawn Fantasia.  Rose, a single man, is running against Fantasia, a single mom with three children.  Both are Republicans. 

In advance of his appearance before the Tea Party, Rose had evidently asked supporters to attend.  This is a standard practice, but how those attendees behaved is not.  One Rose supporter loudly suggested that Mrs. Fantasia be "placed in a cage" -- for what purpose was unclear.  But clearly the intent was to create a threatening situation so that Mrs. Fantasia would be bullied into not speaking.

Through it all, Freeholder Rose's running mate, Freeholder Carl Lazzaro, was a gentleman, calling for restraint.  One would have expected Jonathan to have pitched-in to help.

The ring leader of the attack on Freeholder candidate Dawn Fantasia appears to have been a relative of a political operative from Morris County, who is also running for Freeholder in that county.  With memories of the last time Morris County involved itself in Sussex County's affairs -- and the resulting solar fiasco -- still fresh, we wonder how well this action was thought through. 

Sheriff Mike Strada was the target of some particularly nasty attacks.  Strada, is suing the Freeholder Board and those three named Freeholders -- Graham, Rose, and Lazzaro -- for wasting taxpayers' money and interfering in the operations of his department for political ends. 

Some supporters of congressional candidate John McCann were in attendance and apparently were part of an attempt to spread the lie about Sheriff Strada that he was not in opposition to Democrat Governor Phil Murphy's attempts to impose Sanctuary State status on New Jersey's 21 counties.  In fact, Sheriff Strada is a law enforcement leader in opposing Governor Murphy and his Sanctuary movement, going so far as to let the Governor know, in writing, that the Sussex County Sheriff's office will not comply with the liberal state and will work with the Trump administration in enforcing federal law.

We thank the Skyland's Tea Party leadership for addressing this falsehood at last evening's meeting and making it right.  

We trust that this will put these rumors to an end.

Fantasia & Hertzberg for Sussex County Freeholder Kick Off Their 2018 Campaign With More than 200 Supporters

info@dawnandjoshforfreeholder.com

Sparta, NJ – Dawn Fantasia and Josh Hertzberg kicked off their Freeholder campaign last night at the Mohawk House in Sparta with over 200 supporters in attendance!

Among those in attendance were Senator Steve Oroho, Assemblyman Parker Space, Assemblyman Hal Wirths, Assemblywoman Betty Lou DeCroce, Sussex County Sheriff Mike Strada, Freeholder Herb Yardley,  Congressional Candidate Steve Lonegan, CD 5  and  Congressional Candidate Antony Ghee, CD 11, Sussex County Surrogate Gary Chiusano, Franklin Mayor Nick Giordano, Franklin Councilman Stephen Skellenger, Sparta Deputy Mayor Christine Quinn, Sparta Councilwoman Molly Whilesmith, Sparta Councilman Jerry Murphy, Sparta Councilman Gilbert Gibbs as well as many other Sussex County town and county leaders. 

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