Millville Transparency


Santiago, Parent, Udalovas, Pepitone, and Cooper were sworn into office on January 2, 2018 promising to “stop partisan politics at city hall” and “increase transparency of local government”.

In the previous blog partisan polictics was discussed. It is now time to address how Team Santiago approach to “increase transparency of local government”.

The definition of transparency is the quality or state of being free from deceit, the ability to be easily understood, and increased accessibility of information especially concerning business practices. Words that come to mind when thinking of transparency are apparent, evident, obvious, straightforward, understandable, uncomplicated, and fair. The opposite of transparency is unfathomable, unclear, incomprehensible, and sketchy.

In January of 2014, the Millville City Commission began having work sessions that the public could attend and ask questions. The work sessions allowed for all the commissioners to be together at one time to exchange ideas, to hear presentations, to discuss issues, and hear citizen concerns. The work sessions were aired on YouTube so the information was available to everyone. At the January 16, 2018 Millville City Commission Meeting, Mayor Santiago was asked if the work sessions would still be aired on YouTube. The answer was no. When asked why, no reason was given. Of note is that the work session agenda also did not list any topics on it. The public, unless they attend the work session, will not know what is going to be discussed. In two short meetings Michael Santiago, James Parent, Ashleigh Udalovas, Joseph Pepitone, and Bruce Cooper have closed the door on transparency.


To further hinder transparency, the commissioners went into closed session at the end of the commission meeting and then came from the closed session and immediately voted on the topics discussed. Previously all closed sessions were held before commission meetings so that matters were voted on during a commission meeting. This way the public could ask questions during either the agenda or public comment portion of the meeting regarding closed session matters. Under the new method there is no chance for public to ask questions or make comments.

So much for transparency and progress, so far Mayor Santiago’s Team has not kept their promises.





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