By Grace Cangemi
John Curley’s at it again.
“If I’ve got to sign these things, they better be right.”
That’s Curley’s position on the medium-duty trucks the county is purchasing.
What’s the problem? Curley’s not sure if it’s just administrative or if it might be something more, and that’s why he sat down with the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office.
Curley’s been looking at the bid specs for medium duty trucks and a couple of things are bothering him.
Curley says the specs are overly specific and the 30 day delivery period is too short to allow for fair competition. He says that the specs are so specific and the time frame so short that a dealer would have to have the vehicle on the lot to meet the spec, and that violates the spirit of the state statute.
“The intent of the state statute is not being met and that is to be inclusive to everybody,” Curley said in a call this afternoon. He said he worries about collusion, maybe more than anyone acting for profit, but he’s concerned about the process.
Curley’s not sure what the motivation is behind issuing these specs and that’s why he has gone to the prosecutor’s office. He says he wants the motive behind these specs checked out by law enforcement, and until then, he won’t sign off on them.
In the interim, Curley says he’s working with county employees to address the administrative part of the problem to make sure that future bids follow the intent of the state statute.
And, he was quick to remind me, “in case anybody says anything about me being in the car and truck business, you can let them know that we haven’t done business with Monmouth County in ten years, and GMC doesn’t make medium duty trucks. We have nothing to sell the county.” He says he’s been working with the other Freeholders on this and answers are on the way.
Freeholder Director Lillian Burry says she’s been involved and that a report is forthcoming. She says she’s more than fine with the prosecutor’s office’s involvement. Open bidding and confidence in the process are what the public deserves.
Is she afraid of another Bid Rig?
“Absolutely not,” says the Freeholder Director who gained her seat after the Bid Rig scandal. “We have worked hard to get past that terrible time. We have been very careful. There are questions and it’s our job to get answers, but I’m confident that we’re doing things correctly.”
Freeholder Burry, like Curley, feels that his is mostly an administrative issue that can and will be solved by writing broader bid specs, so that “bids don’t appear to be being steered.” Still, she says she thinks it’s a good idea to have it looked into and awaits the report.
Still, trucks, prosecutors, bidding processes are sure to bring a shiver down the spine if any Monmouth County Republican with a memory.
The Healey Mirage
1 day ago
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11 comments:
Curely should be ashamed of himself for not supporting proposals to privatize the Monmouth County Jail.
Thank you John for doing your job and looking out for the tax payers.
Today I noticed something about the Monmouth County Road Crews, actually the Bridge Department.
They were clean off weeds that grew out of cracks in the curbs and sidewalks on the East End Avenue bridge between Neptune City & Shark River.
THREE TRUCKS AND 7 PEOPLE to do the job that one OR two guys could do.
Freespeaker, you mean 1-2 private landscapers can do it. But they're probably union members, it's hard and expensive to fire them, so you have to keep them busy.
Huge ethical problem for Curley to be dealing with vehicles. Question is not if Curley's dealership has done business with county but rather could they? Cleary, Curley has a pecuniary interest which is different then rest of the general public's due to his relationship with the dealership. Parenthetically, please note that Curley's dealearship has done service/warranty work on County vehicles in last ten years. This needs to be investigated and exposed.
Poster #1, AKA Flippy Lover, says Curley should be ashamed for not supporting Flippy's jail privatization proposal.
That's because Flippy is completely ignorant on the subject of all things penal. You will never see the jail privatized, and trust me, you don't want to. Case and point: the prison those 3 murderers in Arizona escaped from was privately run. That's just one example.You get what you pay for. There's a very good reason that NJ has no privately run jails.
then why help the Dems beat a long dead horse,and keep bringing the past up??..let's concentrate on beating all Dems this year, ok?
He says that the specs are so specific and the time frame so short that a dealer would have to have the vehicle on the lot to meet the spec, and that violates the spirit of the state statute. Is this true?
There are a lot of things the government does that it should not be doing.
Running prisons is not one of them.
That is the epitome of the type of thing government should be doing.
Actually, I think even Flippy gets that now. He finally took that tour of the jail that he neglected to do prior to making his rediculous proposal, and posting those completely false op eds in papers that conveniently don't allow comments. Seems he hasn't had much to say on that subject since his (escorted, of course) visit.
All I ask is that people don't take what that idiot, and his cronies at the APP write as gospel, because it's far from it.
curely is on the right track but he will be led down the wrong path- public works director has set up his knights of the round table-they do his bidding and he gets away with things that he should be held accountable for,but he has his puppets do the dirty work.
hard to prove that some of those involved have family members working at this dealership- a phone call to a relivtive saying i have this truck in stock write up the bid-how you gonna prove that?
hey freespeaker i saw the same crew at wawa on rt 537 by great adventure sitting in the parking lot for three days 1:45-2:30-2:45
talk about waste of our tax money
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