Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Monmouth County Freeholder John Culrey Says More Cuts are Needed

As a businessman and Monmouth County Freeholder, John Curley is gravely concerned over the dire economic climate in New Jersey and Monmouth County. The Freeholder states, “the reports from Trenton are discerning with dramatic cuts in state aid to counties and municipalities being cut by as much as 15%.”

The Freeholder believes that under the present operation of most counties including Monmouth that sustainability of services will become impossible. The state pension system is bankrupt having been robbed and not properly funded over the decades.

As financially difficult as it is for employees “my goal” states Freeholder Curley “is to protect existing jobs and benefit programs. I take great pride in our County workforce and am committed to keeping jobs and benefit packages intact.”

As a business person committed to Governor Christies plan to revamp government, Freeholder Curley believes that in good and bad times we must act quickly and effectively to change the way business is conducted.

Monmouth County must work harder and more effectively to serve the need of the taxpayers.

- Department heads report directly to the Freeholders and Administrator.

- Learn to live within caps, my no vote on raising budget caps stands

- Continue 5% across the board reductions with the possibility of greater cuts

- Salary freeze for all non-civil service employees, while requesting the unions to give back their fair share to the taxpayers

- Cap management and non civil service salaries and provide a wage scale similar to state employees

- Maintain a hiring freeze (layoffs through attrition)

- Initiate furloughs on County employees until the County is on more fiscal footing

- Don’t balance budgets on grants that are non-recurring funds- This is a ponzi scheme

- Don’t create new positions or departments through grant funding. Those existing departments cannot and should not be sustained

- Keep the work week at 35 hours. All departments that have gone to 40 hours should now revert back to 35 hours.

- Utilize part-time employees for mandatory functions eliminating the financial drain of benefit packages

- Mandate that employees pay 1.5% of their health benefits

o Institute a heath benefits verification plan

o All participants in health benefits program must prove any member of their family who participates meets all eligibility criteria

- Freeze equipment purchases

- Freeze the $3 million of unnecessary IT updates

- Investigate outsourcing of departments such as IT. Realize the expense of salaries, pensions, and health benefits we provide for 39 employees.

- Halt 3rd floor renovations in the Hall of Records

- Delay prosecutors building construction on Jerseyville Ave. When your income is down you don’t build a new house.

- Pass a resolution rejecting unfunded mandates from the state. The County is at the mercy of the courts and prosecutors office with mandated financial responsibility and no structural or administrative purview.

- Sheriffs Blue Ribbon panel on privatizing the County Jail, should consist of financial professionals who are qualified to do real cost benefit analysis

- Provide benefit analysis of our care facilities to determine their economic viability

- Provide a comparative analysis of park housing and private rentals to ascertain a fair and equitable compensation.

- Eliminating the extra layer of middle management bureaucracy that is now in place.

- Eliminate shared services that create deficits for the county

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Would have been nice if he shared these ideas with other members of the Board during budget deliberations. Press release to print and broadcast media with no prior discussion is reckless but consistent with his past history.

Anonymous said...

My understanding is he did, it just fell on the deaf ears of the "business as usual" Freeholders.

Anonymous said...

Wow. Trouble in River City.

ambrosiajr said...

He's more of a democrat than the democrats. I must admit, I was wrong about him. He, at least, wants to keep our taxes from exploding once Christie puts his cuts in place. I would bet though, that Madame Burry will nix many of his ideas since she's part of the old boy network and part of the problem.

Anonymous said...

well, so much for the "team" concept: way to help Rob!..yes,absolutely, plenty of places to cut, absolutely stop the high ticket purchases,but very unfair on the backs of the regular, hard-working rank and file, who provide the services and make it all work every day, (no, NOT the "top dogs" everyone wants to kill!)of what benefit to society for more to lose their houses, go on relief, and overtax the already full programs??....talking those fired ones who worked 15, 20, 25 yrs. and never even cracked $50,000!..

Anonymous said...

Queen Burry isn't happy! These cuts were not shared with her, the other freeholders or professional staff. If shared Curley's grandstanding would have been exposed because most of these are old ideas which have already been addressed.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 9:04 PM - Can you please explain your post? "Rob" who - Clifton?

Anonymous said...

I love it! To the clowns who post that he should have shared this information in advance - WHY! WHY DIDN'T QUEEN BURRY KNOW THIS AFTER SITTING AROUND FOR YEARS ON THE BOARD? Everyone knows this is old news but the party machine doesn't want to end the favor system. Anyone who doesn't think these ideas are just the start is part of the problem and probably feeding at the public trough. You could eliminate 15% of the public employees by atrition and not see any impact on services, provided you fire the lazy and incompetent. Go go Curley!!!!! Keep tilting at the corrupt machine maybe something will finally give.

Anonymous said...

Is anyone really suprised by this?

Anonymous said...

anybody notice they held an appointed position? rumor is an investigation is being conducted as the bridge superintendent who they were reappointing falsified payroll for no show palughi and the new board had questions.
11. HELD Resolution appointing Superintendent of Bridges – Keith Duncan (5 year term ending
March 1, 2015). Resolution

http://www.co.monmouth.nj.us/freeholdersagenda/index.asp

Anonymous said...

Curley enjoys seeing his name in the paper and doesn't care what he has to say to get there.

He is a hypocrite! Curley was irrate when he found out previous board cut their salaries, eliminated their health benefits and he wouldn't be able to tack Red Bank time onto his pension. Threatened to resign.

Anonymous said...

I don't understand why there are all these press releases. You have the majority. If you have viable ideas share them. Is this being done just to see your name in the paper? Stirring up _ _ _ _ just for the hell of it is a waste of everyones time. Plus if you sat through budget hearings most of these real ideas are one coming from the other freeholders in consensus. Curley really needs to stop his drama is draining.

Anonymous said...

8:49, yes, Clifton: the "senior"(longest-serving) freeholder, the one we need to re-elect in a bad economy,with a new GOP team member, Clifton,who is the member in-charge of the budget, and is really trying to do the right thing, and needs help from his colleagues...how about we address the departments the two Dems are over, and let THEM offer some reasonable, helpful cuts: Mallet has Human Services, which is the biggest chunk of our money in the county's budget:she needs to cut those useless programs that do nothing but largely keep people dependent, and get gov't. relief checks, and who then turn around and keep electing more Dems to keep the checks coming: the "cycle of dependence" (read, redistribution/socialism), is how we got into this mess over decades,and that's where we cut, and therefore,start winning.. ..