QUESTIONS & ANSWERS REGARDING THE CONCERNED CITIZENS OF ROSELLE PARK V.

THE BOROUGH OF ROSELLE PARK July 31, 2011 Is it true that the Concerned Citizens of Roselle Park are suing the Borough? Why? Yes, The Concerned Citizens of Roselle Park have filed a lawsuit because the organization believes that the municipality has violated the Open Public Records Act (OPRA) and the common law right of access on two (2) occasions.

The Concerned Citizens of Roselle Park

The first instance happened when the municipality refused an OPRA request for the settlement agreement between the municipality and Monica Montoya. The municipality claimed that the agreement is not in the Boroughs possession. We believe that the New Jersey Joint Insurance Fund (NJJIF) was acting as an agent for the Borough and that the municipality, not NJJIF, has the responsibility to provide the requested information. The second instance occurred when the organization requested a simple export of the municipalitys check register to an electronic format from the Munidex software program. An initial request was made where the organization asked for just the check register to be provided in electronic format. The municipality returned with a demand to have the Concerned Citizens of Roselle Park provide a minimum $400 deposit because the municipality claimed it would require additional work to retrieve that specific information from what they called a data dump, which is a simple exporting of all information to a computer file. The organization returned and asked for the data dump so it could do all the additional work. The municipality returned with the same demand of a $400 deposit. We feel that government should be open, accountable, and transparent and our requests are aimed to further that belief since what we are asking for concerns taxpayers money. Is it true you are going to cost taxpayers $5,000? I thought you were supposed to help the residents, not hurt them. During the July 14th Mayor & Council meeting, Resolution 160-11 was put on the agenda and the governing body voted and agreed to budget $5,000 to fight our requests. The original request for the resolution was made by the Borough Clerk and the amount originally requested was up to $10,000. The final amount of $5,000 was voted to unanimously by council representatives Larry Dinardo, Marc Caswell, Tanya Torres, Modesto Miranda, and Carl Hokanson. As a matter of reference, this amount is twice the amount that the governing body approved to re-open negotiations with AvalonBay Communities. Even though Mayor Joseph Accardi was not required to vote on Resolution 160-11, he nevertheless commented on the issue, We feel firmly that we are doing the right thing by expending taxpayer dollars to defend ourselves in this matter. - more Post Office Box 144 Roselle Park, NJ 07204 www.rp-citizens.org (908) 998-1300

This comment was made just one week after Mayor Accardi stated that council agreed to only spend $2,500 to re-open negotiations with AvalonBay because the governing body did not want to spend a lot of taxpayer money on legal fees needlessly. We had hoped that our OPRA requests would have not been unreasonably denied which would have avoided litigation. We do not understand why mayor & council are willing to spend taxpayer dollars to deny information on how and where tax dollars are being spent. We believe that if the municipality really wanted to save taxpayers money, it would cost less to place a phone call to their insurance carrier for a copy of a settlement agreement and to adequately learn how to export a computer file. Even according to the fees provided by the Borough Clerks office, four (4) hours of extraordinary expenditure would come out to less than half of the $5,000 that council approved to fight our requests. I thought you had an us with them not an us versus them attitude. Why didnt you try to work it out without suing? We did try to work with the municipality to avoid a lawsuit. We filed two (2) OPRA requests to accommodate the municipality in their claim that extra work would be required for retrieval of our requested information. We stated that we would accept the raw data and then do all the work. It was when the municipality returned with absolutely no change or leeway in their position that negotiations were no longer possible outside of the courts. On July 26th, 2011, the municipality sent our attorney, Walter Luers, the settlement agreement between Monica Montoya and the Borough of Roselle Park. We are glad that one of our OPRA requests have been provided and we are hopeful that the municipality will comply with our remaining request regarding information on Roselle Park taxpayer dollars.

Please feel free to visit our website at www.rp-citizens.org to review our OPRA requests and the denials by the municipality. Also, please feel free to contact your council representatives and ask them why they have decided to spend $5,000 of taxpayer money to fight requests for information that belongs to the residents. Mayor Joseph Accardi 1st Ward Council Larry Dinardo 2nd Ward Council Marc Caswell 3rd Ward Council Tanya Torres 4th Ward Council Modesto Miranda Council-At-Large Carl Hokanson jaccardi@rosellepark.net larrydinardo@gmail.com mcaswell@rosellepark.net ttorres@rosellepark.net mmiranda@rosellepark.net councilmanhokrp@gmail.com (908) 245-6180 (908) 403-2945 (908) 241-6116 (908) 477-6412 (908) 247-8384