It is outrageous that Wayne should foot the pay raise hike and accompanying medical insurance for Mayor Vergano just because he has decided to retire early from his present place of employment. In total a raise of 647%. And it is even more outrageous in how the council and Mayor Vergano have gone about “presenting” it to the public. A cost this large should have been brought to public attention for a discussion to complete a comprehensive study of the need for an all of a sudden full time mayor. Has any job description been provided? If anything is apparent, it shows the detriment of a one party rule.

Unless Webster’s dictionary has changed the definition of exemplary, Mayor Vergano’s performance doesn’t even come close.

· He came into office and immediately raised our taxes. Thank you to the one lone council member Sedowsky for voting your conscience and saying no.

· He has consistently cut back on town employees through attrition and other means which begs the question: was the budget being padded for all of these years or are employees at the breaking point?

· His term has brought to light serious defects in the building and zoning departments along with rumors of “pay to play”.

· A ride through Wayne shows an enormous amount of vacant buildings, both business and industrial, going to waste. Many of these vacancies were here before Mayor Vergano came into office which shows it was never a priority to bring in businesses the town needs. For him to say now he looks to lure development and redevelopment is nothing more than air. He speaks with bravado of privately making deals in his office, something that can be heard in fairly recent town hall meeting videos, but the results are less than stellar – more strip malls providing the same old, same old – drying up malls like the Preakness Shopping Center. We’ve recently lost another iconic building in Wayne, the Candy Barn to another unneeded fast food site which includes gas pumps that pose a serious environmental hazard to a lake community.

It’s time for him to work openly and transparently with contemplative developers that look for businesses the town needs. Take a page from Nutley/Clifton in the renewal of Hoffman La Roche property which is bringing in more revenue than those towns could have imagined.

People have said Mayor Vergano is a nice guy but a nice guy wouldn’t look to bleed our town dry for his own personal gain. He needs to go a long way in getting any kind of raise. He needs to remember he is a public servant not the other way around.

Also interesting this never came up when he was running not that long ago.

Mayor Vergano has been quoted as saying something to the effect of “when being mayor stops being fun, I’ll stop running”. Guess you can have a lot of fun for $140,000!

Sincerely,

Arlene Sullivan

Full disclosure, Sullivan was a recent candidate for the Wayne Ward 1 Council race and for Mayor