Millville Insider

At what point does Team Santiago start to care about the citizens of Millville, the citizens who voted them into office? The citizens who are looking at a substantial tax increase this year. Team Santiago proved they do not care about the citizens of Millville with the $2 million dollar demolition payback to their campaign contributors. Further proof was Team Santiago’s renegotiation of the Levoy’s loan agreement and forgiving over $200,000 the Levoy owed the city. Team Santiago showed further disregard for the citizens of Millville by moving the fireworks to the Millville Motorsports Park and the city, yes the taxpayers, paid for the fireworks while the Millville Motorsports Park reaped the financial benefits. And now Team Santiago is extending the Millville Motorsports track PILOT out to 30 years! This means that the track will not pay their share of the tax burden for 30 years! Team Santiago is increasing the citizens of Millville’s taxes while the Millvil...

A copy of the construction permit for the demolition of 214 N. High Street shows the cost to be $80,000. Many of you will remember 214 N. High Street as the site of Champion’s Hardware. Champion’s is actually a brick and mortar 2 story T-shaped building and is quite large. In fact it appears to be larger than the site of the infamous $2 million dollar no-bid demo at 109 E. Main Street next to Jim’s lunch. Santiago (without the legal authority to do so) hired a contractor with a phone call and the Commissioners without a single question endorsed what he did. Your elected officials decided to pay for the demolition without getting at least one other price! The City paid 25 times as much to demolition 109 Main St. than a private citizen is paying to demolish 214 High. And I’d be willing to bet the private owner isn’t paying for the contractor’s insurance like the City did. Millville taxpayers should be livid! How long will the city of Millville put up with this wasteful spending...

The City of Millville has relied on Don Ayres for economic development for many years.   Just look around town to judge his work. A recent article was posted on NJ.com regarding a decision made by Mr. Ayres and the city commission which, at the time, included Mr. Parent. Copy and paste the link to read complete article:   https://www.nj.com/cumberland/2019/04/if-a-space-elevator-was-ever-going-to-happen-it-could-have-gotten-its-start-in-nj-heres-how-it-went-wrong.html     The article discusses how the city of Millville gave Liftport   $50,000 to develop an elevator to the moon, yes to the moon! The Cumberland County Empowerment Zone also gave Liftport $50,000. Of course the company never came to Millville and never developed the elevator to the moon and never gave the money back. Of course, the owner of Liftport would love to do business with Millville again. Below is an excerpt from the article.       ...

At the May 7, 2019 meeting, an ordinance was introduced by Mr. Pepitone to increase the number of lieutenants and sergeants in the police department. The question is why. According to Mr. Pepitone it will look cleaner in the ordinance book as this ordinance has been changed 6 times since 2011.   Now what will this ordinance really do? It will allow the chief of police to promote more officers to superior officers. This at a time when Millville needs more police on the street not more officers doing administrative duty. If Chief Farabella fills all those administration positions it will once again cost the taxpayers and not leave enough money in the budget for the officers who are sorely underpaid. Farabella has already proven that he is not concerned about his officers or the taxpayers when he renegotiated his recently signed contract that was less than a year old. Pepitone thought this was a good idea. At the meeting, when the other commissioners questioned ...

Team Santiago adopted the 2019 budget and yes they raised your taxes. Every Millville taxpayer will be hammered with an increase in your city, your school board, and your county taxes. Where is all this additional money going? Are the schools and government services better?   School population is decreasing. City and County services have not expanded or improved. However, the consultants and professional hires are doing quite well. Team Santiago will tell you that the increase is needed for extra police officers. That is not true. The last commission put the money for those officers in the budget with no increase. It just took Team Santiago this long to fill the positions. Make no mistake the increase in the budget is due to the $2 million dollar demolition of the Eagles building next to Jim’s Lunch that was not bid and was not an emergency. How do you like the grotesque looking expensive support system that now occupies a prime spot on Main Street? ...

For the past 15 months all the taxpayers of Millville have been hearing from Team Santiago is that good things are coming. The question is what and when. So far the voters don’t have a clue as to what the Commissioners are talking about because all their discussions are in closed session in the back room. So much for transparency by your government. However, we do know one thing for certain. There will be a hefty tax increase for 2019 voted for by all 5 Commissioners.   So this year the citizens of Millville will be saddled with tax increases from the County, City, and Board of Education. Many of the homeowners in Millville will not be able to afford this. How many boarded up houses will result? Why are the Commissioners increasing our taxes? In two words WASTEFUL   SPENDING. A few examples: 1.     A $2 million dollar demolition done without getting a bid 2.     Costly and unnecessary appointments made as paybacks ...