According to Common Council majority leader Tom Serra, the Democratic caucus of the Council is aghast that Mayor Sebastian Giuliano place a police officer at the Board of Education administrative offices to guard against tampering with potential evidence.
"The fact that he cited the Common Council as justification for his actions was totally inappropriate," Serra said. "By resolution, we want to hire a totally independent auditor to conduct an audit so that there will be no allegations that the audit was influenced by anyone. We want to move cautiously."
Serra explained that the Common Council did, in fact, vote on an amendment to the mayor's budget proposal which included language calling for a Board of Education audit: "It will also be necessary to conduct a formal independent audit of the Board of Education financial records at the earliest conceivable opportunity, to ensure that all record-keeping is consistent with sound financial and business practices and able to be used by the Council when evaluating the BOE budget requests."
"This language did not, in any way, authorize the mayor to post a police officer, take over administration building offices, collect evidence or search employees," Serra said. "In my lifetime in town politics I've never seen anything like this happen."
Serra said the first he heard of the police officer posting was in a call from Board of Education chair Ted Raczka who was in New Hampshire picking up his son from college.
Serra also noted that the Council, in the same amendment, called for a change in charter language to ensure that charter language did not conflict with state statute when it came to laws concerning Board of Education automony.
2 comments:
so if this is the case does that mean our mayor dispatched police like Hitler would dispatch soldiers? While I think the BoE needs to let audits happen, it scares me to think our mayor would act as a strong arm with our police department. I hope this is not the case.
Oh come on Tom! Did you forget the controversy you caused as Mayor? Did you forget the debacule created when you tried to hire your administrative assistant as Town Clerk the night before the election. I don't really care who came forward or why they came forward I'm just glad they did and that the Mayor acted. Sorry but I'm a democrat who truly believes that the party I belong to has been in power way to long in this town.
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