In Verona, a neighbor filmed DPW Superintendent Charles Molinaro using a municipal truck and other municipal resources for personal use.
From the Verona-Cedar Grove Times…
The superintendent, Charles “Chuck” Molinaro, has worked for Verona for 24 years.
According to Verona Township Manager Joseph A. Martin, Molinaro is permitted to drive the municipal-owned truck to his Verona home because he is on call 24 hours a day.
Verona has no written policies or guidelines governing use of municipal-owned equipment.
“I assign and set the operating standards for municipal vehicle use,” Martin wrote to the Times on Feb. 13.
Watch the video here. One video watcher commented…
QPDOLL says: The truth probably is; if he’d only plowed his neighbor’s driveway also, there wouldn’t be a video or a complaint. Yeah, this is most likely sour garpes from the neighborhood jerk!
What’s your take — would you ever videotape a neighbor (or have you) and what kind of situation would justify the invasion of privacy?
This is a whole bunch of nothing.
I was expecting something BIG!! Instead the guy has a case of Vitamin Water in the Town car…
What’s next, he “stole” post-its? Some pens?
As for plowing, well c’mon, if you let the guy bring a big truck home with a giant plow, do you really not expect him to clear his driveway?
This is the worst type of vigilante videotaping.
Whatever happen to ABSCAM type video? With real crime?
No. Now we get a guy putting “household items” in a town car…
The issue isn’t the neighbor videotaping. The issue is a public employee using public dollars to plow his driveway and go on shopping trips with family members. Is it Watergate? No. But it’s abuse nonetheless. Fire him.
Nick,
The guy is required to have the truck because he is on call.
These little infractions are to be expected when you allow municipal equipment to be brought home.
(And if everyone were to be fired for “using” work stuff outside of work, I suspect unemployment would be near 75%.)
Again, this stuff is minor.
It’s not like he ran a plowing business WITH the city plow.
That’s grounds for firing.
This, at most, requires a memo.
The only problem that anyone should have here is that a municipal employee came to his house to change the lightbulb. That probably took all of 5 minutes, so lets move on.
How about posting a topic that has teeth…the article yesterday about the court ruling that approves the repealing the Abbott Districts. That will probably never happen, but its worth talking about.
There are no written policies or guidelines so this is a non-issue…
This was in the V-CG Times yesterday with a big banner headline…Obviously a slow news week…or a non-news week.
If there are no written policies, that doesn’t mean you get to do whatever you want.
“Well, it didn’t say I COULDN’T use the car to smuggle dope into the country, so I guess I can!”
Pretty mild reaction here today. If this were Joe Hartnett, there’d be a line of people marching down Claremont with pitchforks and torches.
Vitamin water —– dope—–Vitamin water —– dope—-Vitamin water —– dope—–Vitamin water —– dope
Yep. Treat ‘em the same!!
Fired, nah. But I’m sure he knows that he shouldn’t be using town resources like that, and having another town employee come to his house to do work certainly crosses the line.
The reactions here are quite interesting and it’ll be fun to refer back to this string when we discuss other issues like this.
I wonder what kind of relationship he has with his neighbor.
It is just another example of the entitlement attitude. He’s entitled to use work resources for personal reasons and the neighbor is entitled to make a show if it. They are both jerks imo.
not a big deal.
A nosey neighbor with too much time on their hands, every homeowner’s dream! The video has credits for godssake!
Molinaro may have abused his use of public property, but I think this video (which is obviously taped over the course of several months) is a little much.
I agree with prof, a strongly-worded memo and let’s get on with our lives.
You are kidding, right? All the pompous asses who work 9 to 5 would never understand this mans job. He works 24 hours a day. He gets a lunch hour and break time which he can use at his own discretion. He lives in that truck. That is is home away from home. When your tucked away in your cozy bed, this guy is out in snow storms, rain and wind storms and a variety of town emergencies. Those days may fall on his wife birthday, Christmas Eve or his kids graduation. I am sure he is a very honorable, trustworthy employee, otherwise he wouldn’t be employed there for 24 years. Just like our guy Rob from Montclair, this guys gives his all for the town. He then gets ridiculed in the town paper. Nice.
As for the neighbor, he probably wanted the DPW guy to plow his driveway and when he refused, the neighbor got pissed off. Again, nice!
I hope nobody here is using company IT resources to browse this website, clearly grounds for immediate termination.
I went to school with his kids, and remember Mr. Molinaro as a workaholic. I’m not saying he was a saint, but the guy broke his back for that town, I think he deserves a little slack.
I’m sure the Verona DPW is going to be stuck writing all kinds of awful regulations and contracts now thanks to one knucklehead neighbor. If it was tax dollars this idiot was worried about, I wonder if they considered what it would cost the township to deal with the fallout from this nonsense?
“The video has credits for godssake!”
If nothing comes of this video, at least Michael T. Fritz and Anthony Attrino have something to add to their IMDB credits.
If he’s like most public employees, he’s getting pension and health benefits that are so out of line with what the private sector, or what’s left of it, offers that it’s threatening to bankrupt local, state and federal governments. So perhaps he’s loyal and hardworking, but he’s also well compensated.
And the truck is town property, paid for by the taxpayers, including the snoopy neighbor. The guy should not be using it, if only because it looks bad. He deserves the ridicule.
I can’t imagine what would make a person want to accept a municipal job or run for local elected office. The pay is low, the work is mind-numbing, and the public is petty and pervasive.
I don’t know this guy and haven’t bothered to view the video, but it sounds an awful lot like his neighbor has too much time on his hands.
“I hope nobody here is using company IT resources to browse this website, clearly grounds for immediate termination.”
oh-oh…
Much ado abuot grass clippings.
I agree with Prof here, grounds for a memo or reprimand; nothing more. Wallerloo, a DPW supervisor most likely makes much less than he could in the private sector as say… a supervisor for a construction firm. I say that from the perspective of having good friends in both fields. Also, again, the difference between benefits in the public and private sector isn’t that much. The issue was always what employees contribute to the cost of the benefits. However, considering the size (and scale savings) of public sector health benefit contracts and how retirement funds in this state have been used to pay for and fund non related projects, I’m amazed that the public sector “benefit” argument is still being used. Personally, as a state employee my monthly health benefits cost me about $20 less per month than a good friend who makes $30K more than me at a large private firm with one tenth the number of employees. That doesn’t seem so outrageous to me.
I’ve tried to direct people here to where salary and benefits costs in the public sector are a problem (by posting links to readily available public information) but we always seem to fall back on the easy targets…the career civil servants. There are far more highly paid non-careerists in the public sector than the average citizen seems to realize.
Good thing he’s not on tape using a blower. All hell would have broken loose.
“I hope nobody here is using company IT resources to browse this website, clearly grounds for immediate termination.”
Just check out the times most of these posts are registered. It’s not after 6 or lunch break. What company resources are being used to surf the net while offering insightful opinions on everything and anything? And how much does this genius downtime cost the companies?
If every person who used company resources for personal benefit was fired I think the work force would be down to about four people.
I am biased as I knew the family very well but know that the man worked constantly. There were plenty of weekends that he spent plowing town roads or cleaning up one mess or another rather than sleeping at home. I can’t say that about most other people I know. I respected him for his work ethic and so did his fellow employee’s.
So what if he plowed his driveway? The neighbors seriously need a hobby. If their driveway was cleared I guarantee we would have never seen this.
Used “municipal resources for personal use”. The Township Manager says the man is on call 24 hours. His whole life is municipal business.
Hey, hs neighbor, not all of us work your typical 9-5!
hey banana, obviously, but the ? remains. How many posters day in and day out are at work, using co. resources to give their genius opinions about what this guy does or doesn’t do? all based on what, 1 quarter page story?