BIPARTISAN ACTION VERSUS PARTISAN POLITICAL RHETORIC
North Arlington seeks common sense, not a failed status quo! 
NORTH ARLINGTON – At the January 5th Reorganization of the Mayor and Council we were hit with a laundry list of “accomplishments,” and “statistics” that seem to go unquestioned or even remotely challenged. One observation is the way this all-Republican Borough Council led by Brian Fitzhenry conducts basic borough business, with “consent agenda” votes that see dozens of appointments and approvals of spending that lack any specificity or detail. While many of the appointments are the same political supporters of the NA GOP, why doesn’t the Mayor & Council even consider competitive bidding or requests for proposals that place taxpayers and homeowners first? Why aren’t the names of these appointees listed, and at what cost to taxpayers? Positions such as borough planner, website coordinator, grant consultant, appraiser, labor counsel, public relations attached with a nominee, scope of services and costs? To award so many contracts and appointments on a single day without the name of a single appointee seems almost too arrogant to most sitting in the audience asking a simple question, who is benefitting from these actions? For if you needed one reason why two-party government is needed, this appointment process is in dire need of reform. For the only appointments slated and stated were to the Recreation Commission, Planning and Library Boards. Is it too much to ask how tax dollars are being expended and who is being selected and what are there collective qualifications?
And as the rhetoric poured at full speed on the notion of senior housing, proclamations of walking and bike paths are old Democratic proposals that have been ignored for years and if Democrats were to assume office in January of 2025, they would work hand-in-hand with our Democratic elected officials at the county, state and federal levels to make the landscaping of the Passaic riverfront a reality. For having Democrats, at least two (2) on the Borough Council certainly makes sense for North Arlington when it comes to a major infrastructure of the Passaic riverfront where cooperation and alliance with other levels of government are necessary.
For North Arlington is a political island to itself, with no government partners, but rather political antagonists pointing there nose in municipalities like Kearny only to be thoroughly embarrassed and just accumulating more enemies. For change only occurs when one changes one’s mind. You can’t have the hard-hearted or the half-witted representing a notion that you will only work with members of your own party, and no one else thus getting little accomplished.
One final note that this Mayor & Council have miraculously lowered spending or cut Municipal Taxes is just false. All one needs to do is examine the municipal spending, debt statements and bonding practices to figure that out. For how do you award raises and promotions without increasing spending? It’s a little insulting and little too much of patting one’s own back if nothing else! For it is the added assessments and sky-rocketing values in residential real estate that have been a boom in every municipality in the state of New Jersey and not some magic wand that does not exist, except in the rhetoric and the minds of a political few
For what we know is that John Balwierczak and John Yampaglia will work in a bipartisan fashion and are happy to see the ideas of Democrats be embraced by the local GOP. For that is progress in and of itself!
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