BY JOHN SNYDER
OF PASCACK PRESS
TOWNSHIP OF WASHINGTON, N.J.—Councilman Robert Bruno secured $10,000 in the township budget for a courtroom-quality accounting of the town’s finances and said he’s urged state agencies to take a hand in the investigation.
Saying “The whole thing stinks,” Bruno led the call for a forensic accountant at the April 4 budget meeting after it came to light that Mayor Peter Calamari had rewarded a full-time town finance worker with a $15,000 (33 percent) pay raise and a onetime bump of $2,000 in late 2018.
Bruno alleged at the televised meeting that the administration ignored a payroll ordinance that sets as law what positions are to be paid and then “got caught.”
Calamari defended the raise in an interview with Pascack Press on April 9, saying in part, “This governing body approved many other salary increases last year and this year to bring positions up to market. We feel that amount is fair.”
And in the words of Council President Michael DeSena, it is “disgusting” that former township engineer Paul Azzolina of Azzolina & Feury has not been made whole after he presented the township with a stack of unpaid invoices dating to 2005 that last year towered at $131,680.75.
Councilmen said Calamari made them aware of the invoices after last year’s budget talks. Closed door meetings, allegedly with the town’s former interim business administrator and his attorney, followed, as did $80,000 in payments.
Calamari told Pascack Press that township Chief Financial Officer Judith Curran is reconciling and collecting where needed from businesses and residents for underpaid escrow accounts. He said Azzolina shows a balance of $43,000, of which $23,000 is current for 2019.
“Now that we are past the understaffed situation that this body inherited, we are dedicating the necessary resources to this and many other things that were not being done properly,” Calamari said.
The council has complained about other finance irregularities vexing the town, including years of ordinances that have been approved but not funded; others approved and funded but the monies never spent (or spent with some left over, resulting in excess cash); and at least as recently as last year’s budget, trust fund balances that hadn’t been used and other cash reserves sitting idle.
Hoping to get ahead of all this, the council held a fact-finding meeting last summer with then-CFO Ashley Morrone and the town’s recent auditing teams. The word after was that officials were encouraged.
Last week, it was a different story.
“There are a lot of controls here, and it’s money, and it’s resident money, and we’ve worked hard for the last three years to clean this mess up, and now it became an even bigger mess this year,” Bruno said.
The council agreed to fund $10,000 for forensic accounting, a technique used, for example, in white-collar criminal cases.
Bruno, an independent and a finance professional who had campaigned for mayor in 2017 on a pledge to sort out the town’s finances, lost in a bruising election to Calamari, a Republican who owns a trucking company.
Bruno told Pascack Press on April 8 that he has contacted the State Ethics Commission, the New Jersey State Comptroller, and the county prosecutor’s office.
“They’ve been notified. We’ll see who picks up on it,” he said.
Payroll line item ‘blown out of the water’
Just how the finance worker was collecting a $15,000 pay increase with onetime $2,000 adjustment remained a mystery to the council into the April 4 budget session.
Curran discovered the discrepancy after she came on board in December, replacing Morrone, one of several people to have been nominally responsible for financial oversight in town.
Curran told the council that one of her first actions was to run the budget to look for overspending. In comparing one worker’s pay stubs against her W-2s, she found it.
“I thought a mistake had to have been made…this was so blown out of the water that I couldn’t really sit with that negative balance there, otherwise I would have had to raise that money in this year’s budget and I couldn’t because…you should never overspend [a salary and wages] line item,” Curran said.
Of the bump, Curran said, “I did have to ask the payroll person, because she did nothing with this, and she said $2,000 was given out and it was charged to Planning and Zoning through payroll.”
Importantly, no one is alleging any wrongdoing by the town worker whose position was rewarded above what the payroll ordinance stipulates. Her name was not used in the open meeting and her job performance was not questioned. Pascack Press has chosen not to name her here.
Calamari told Pascack Press she’s worked as tax collector, deputy treasurer, finance assistant, and benefits coordinator and has filled in elsewhere.
Under fire from Bruno and others at the April 4 meeting, Calamari appealed for the matter to be discussed only in closed session. He said he did not recall precisely how the pay hike came about.
After he tried punting to the town’s purchasing assistant and payroll clerk, Ullman pressed him:
“I’ve never met her [the clerk] and I wouldn’t want to speak for her, but my guess is that she would not go in and give someone a $2,000 adjustment. Someone had to instruct it. So who instructed it? Do we know that?”
Then Calamari said, “I instructed it. Yes. […] And it was for secretarial work, like I said, and escrow work.”
At that, Cascio put in, “Maybe I’ve been misinformed. But being here for nine years I haven’t seen another case such as that. So it’s a little bit perplexing to me. […] I don’t understand why there’s a bump in compensation.”
Calamari said, “I’d just like to say no one ever told me we were overspending the line. It was news to me.”
Bruno wasn’t having it.
“If you gave someone an increase you’d have to know you were overspending the line. A $15,000 increase, no one has to tell you you overspent the line. You have an increase so you have to know you overspent the line,” he said.
Records Pascack Press has seen show the position in question was paid $33,000 in 2015 and raised since annually, to $45,000, by 2018. This year the position was on track for pay of $52,363, including a reward for passing a class and a 1.5 percent boost other workers also were getting.
Instead the position is being paid, at press time, $60,000 plus benefits. The base has been negotiated down to $55,000 for the foreseeable future.
Calamari told Pascack Press on April 9 that in the closed session meeting of Sept. 4, 2018 the administration proposed to the council a potential salary agreement such that it would rise to $60,000 and that this July 1 it would go to $65,000.
Calamari said it was also proposed that the position of Finance Assistant would be broken out into a full-time position handled by a new hire, with the existing person assigned the position of Central Cashier to replace the Finance Assistant duty.
“No council member objected to what was outlined, and no formal vote was requested or taken by the council…A formal vote on the proposed salary increase was not necessary at the time because…there was enough money already allocated in the 2018 budget and salary ordinance,” Calamari said.
Bruno told Pascack Press the employee started out on the low end of the market and was “coming along,” as are others on the town payroll. He takes issue with the process.
The only paper trail on the raise was a note in the worker’s file signed by the employee herself, former interim administrator Matthew Cavallo, and Calamari.
And that took weeks to uncover.
“So we ask the question for three weeks, and now lo and behold there’s a form that shows up in the file. I want to be honest, the whole thing stinks. And it’s quite obvious what was done here except it was discovered: You got caught,” Bruno said in part.
Shortly after that he called for a forensic accountant “to come in here and rip through these books once and for all.”
Former borough engineer is owed thousands
Also discussed April 4 was the matter of Paul Azzolina, of Azzolina & Feury, the former township engineer, who had submitted monthly invoices since 2005 that went largely ignored.
Azzolina did not charge interest, apply fees, or file any claims.
The decades of pay owed, according to an eight-page, single-spaced bill dated Aug. 2, 2018 (the most recent in the possession of Pascack Press) gave an invoice amount of $133,735.25 less payment of $2,054.50.
“The invoices listed above are currently outstanding. Please check your records and remit payment or advise. Thank you,” the sheaf encourages at the bottom of each page.
The oldest project to go unpaid was 4,888 days old as of last August: Pascack Road Culvert over Pine, overdue at $1,372.
There were bills over the National Flood Insurance Program, U.S. Census Bureau–2010, tax maps, athletic field improvements, soil moving, the 2006 Road Program, sinkholes, 2012 road resurfacing, storm drains, sidewalks, zoning applications, general services, wireless telecommunications, and so much more.
According to Azzolina, most of the money is in escrow from those on whose behalf the township sent him out to work. It was the township’s responsibility to get him such money.
A portion of it was due him for capital projects payable on his hourly rate—that is, from the town directly.
Heading for his car following a Planning Board meeting over a proposed Viviano subdivision on Sept. 26, 2018 Azzolina explained to Pascack Press his theory of business.
“You have to be patient, yes. Because if you’re impatient you’ll be a former employee. It doesn’t make sense to cause waves,” he said.
Asked if a town administration had ever conveyed to him that he wouldn’t be paid for years, if ever, Azzolina said “It’s a business decision that you make. We had the ability to say ‘We’re not working for you if you’re not paying,’ but it’s a business decision.”
Azzolina & Feury Engineering also contracts for Alpine, Cresskill, and Fair Lawn, he said at the time.
“You don’t always get paid by them either, so while I’m working for the town I’m not going to make waves by demanding payment,” Azzolina said, moving for his car.
He added, “I just prefer to do my job without being headline news. I think I’ve done a good job for the town over the years. I live in this town.”
Officials said professional billing matters would properly be handled by the mayor and/or business administrator.
DeSena, also an engineer, was the councilmember most outspoken on this matter April 4.
“I would think that if Mr. Azzolina billed something in January 2018 under [New Jersey’s Prompt Payment Act], by March it’s a crime if we don’t pay it if the money is there. And if if the money isn’t there it’s our responsibility to call the applicant and say no more work will be done until you post additional escrow.”
He added, “It’s disgusting for me as a councilmember to know how the process really works and he’s had to accept this substandard [treatment].”
Curran ventured, “I think people didn’t follow up.”
Boswell Engineering is the township engineer now. Azzolina was appointed township construction engineer in January.
