Brick Mayor Proposes Alternative Job Elimination Ordinance

Brick-(PR)– Mayor Stephen Acropolis and Councilman Joseph Sangiovanni are going to present the Township Council with an ordinance that will cut five positions from the township organization.  The positions were included in a recent ordinance that was vetoed by the Mayor.

“In our form of government, I do not have a line item veto.  If I did, I would have allowed the Council to eliminate these five positions while vetoing the three positions that the Council was trying to create with their ordinance,” said Mayor Acropolis.  “This ordinance will give the Council another chance to eliminate these positions to make sure they are never filled and not add any further supervisors.”

“Throughout my time on Council, I have worked to save taxpayers money,” said Councilman Sangiovanni.  “I voted against the ordinance introduced and approved by my fellow council members because it created positions that we don’t need.  The Mayor and I spoke and we decided to introduce this ordinance to eliminate the potential for these supervisory positions to be filled in the future.”

The ordinance that Mayor Acropolis and Councilman Sangiovanni will present to the Council will cut five Deputy Municipal Department Head positions.  The positions were created in 2008 when the Township reorganized several departments.  Those positions were never filled.  The top salary for each title is $118,761.  The savings in salaries and associated employee costs including pension, health care, FICA and workers compensation is potentially about $866,000.

“The positions were created but never filled during a restructuring of the Township. We never saw the necessity in filling them,” said Mayor Acropolis.  “Our department heads and employees are doing a great job so we never saw the need to fill the positions and add supervisors.  Taking these titles off the books will prevent them from being filled now or in the future by any Mayor which will potentially save our taxpayers a lot of money.”

Mayor Acropolis vetoed an ordinance that would have eliminated these positions and two others, as well as two director titles while simultaneously creating three new positions, Deputy Department Head of Finance, Deputy Department Head of Tax Assessor and a Deputy Municipal Clerk costing.

“Simply put, the Council’s original vetoed ordinance did not create the savings they had claimed.  I have always said good government makes good politics but politics does not make good government.  Their ordinance was pure politics and it wasn’t good,” said Mayor Acropolis. “This ordinance if passed by the Council will actually create potential savings now and in the future and guarantee that more supervisors won’t be added down the road.”

Posted by Ocean County News on Oct 18 2012. Filed under Brick, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.