Team Mayer's Dirty Politics within the School Board

There are members of Team Mayer who get offended when residents and parents complain about the politicization of the school boards, calling them Radicals and other derogatory terms.  They will try to smear them personally using a "kill the messenger" philosophy while ignoring the underlying issue that is Team Mayer has indeed politicized the school boards!  They hire politicians into patronage jobs, give out contracts to donors (the engineering firm being used to install the multi-million dollar HVAC system in Mullen is a donor), they even have all of their campaign pictures taken in the law library of Solicitor Wade. 

I have had enough.  Tonight I saw a Facebook post that lays out yet another unethical and disgusting act by Team Mayer.  I am pasting, unedited and complete, a post from three non-political fathers running for school board because it highlights just how bad the political problem has become.  What is left out of the posting below are the names of those involved.  It is probably because the candidates were trying to show some class.  I am listing the names because I have had enough and those who do unethical things need to be held accountable for their actions.

Raymond Carr is the sitting school board member (and GTMUA employee) mentioned, and Jay Smith is the GT Democrat party member, and GTMUA employee and patsy used to file the bogus complaint.  The resident they falsely claimed to not be a resident is Trish Schwartz, and her well known business is Skeeters. 

Shame on you Ray Carr and the rest of Team Mayer for your role in forcing a father to spend thousands of dollars to win the right in court to run for a board that you use a patronage pit and place to launder kickbacks to your donors through contracts.  You have access to hundreds of thousands of dollars you use for false and misleading advertising.  Why are you so afraid of a group of parents with little financial backing?

From the Bobbe, Gagliardi and Hengst for Gloucester Township Board of Education  Facebook page:

We received an e-mail yesterday from local attorney, business-owner and former state Assemblyman and Gloucester Township Democratic Committee Chairman Dennis L. Riley. As we've expressed previously, we are not running for the School Board with any political motivations or backing. Our goal is to remove politics from the Board, as it is not only required (http://www.state.nj.us/education/ethics/coe.htm) but morally appropriate. As parents of children currently attending district schools, we want the best interests of the children to be put first, something we do not believe has been the reality recently. In support of that goal, we are posting Mr. Riley's unsolicited statement as we believe it speaks to just how endemic politics have become regarding the Board as it sits now.

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October 21, 2013

I am ashamed to say that this current school board election, or in reality the process leading up to it, showed the worst of the political system in Gloucester Township. As a five term Assemblyman and then the Democratic Chairman for many years, I tried to convey to my friends and colleagues the law, namely that the school board elections were not to be political.

Several months ago I was shocked and dismayed to see my party had become so patronage-conscious that they would stoop to filing a frivolous, unsupported, false law suit. They did so in an attempt to stop a parent from running for the board. Dominic Gagliardi and his wife are both attorneys. They approached my office as a challenge had been filed against Dominic because he had the audacity to run for the school board, as an independent. He did so with the best intentions possible, namely to run for the school board to have members seek the seats who at the least have a child in the school system, unlike 8 of the 9 incumbents on the board. Imagine, a candidate wanting to make sure the children come first, and not to fill the administrative jobs created.

Much to my consternation, when I researched the matter I learned that the politicians were so unobservant that they challenged the signature and residency of a life long resident of Glen Oaks and then Broadmoor West. Moreover, she is the mother of two of our local students and wife of a major businessman in the township. I could not imagine their lack of research was so bad as to question her qualifications. Worse, they tried to knock a candidate off of the ballot because of a phony challenge by a close friend of the person directing the challenge [a current member of the School Board].

While Dominic's challenge to this unprecedented, unsupportable quest prevailed and he remains on the ballot, I must note that the opposition refused to even question our lawsuit for obvious reasons. I felt compelled to outline how Dominic was so sincere in his convictions that he spent a considerable amount of his own money to stay on the ballot for a non-paying position. He did so to let the people decide, not the politicians, and to help our children obtain the education we all want them to achieve.

On November 5th, please vote for Dominic Gagliardi and fellow parents of current Gloucester Township students, Sean Hengst and Richard Bobbe, to put the focus of the school board back on the children and not on politics. To use the current incumbents' misleading campaign slogan, "Let's Take Back Our Schools" from Gloucester Township's politics as usual.

Dennis L. Riley, Esquire