Rafael Riquelme swearing in

Congratulations to Mr. Rafael Riquelme for being elected to the borough governing body as Councilman with 54.34% of total votes cast, a 650 vote margin.

Independent voice or obedient soldier? Only time will tell.

Sounding Off: Some questions on ‘going green’

Dear Editor:

I read with interest the many letters to the editor that Dumont residents as well as the candidates themselves have appeared in recent weeks.

While it appears straightforward to read the positions taken by the Kruger/Hakim/Dondero team — agree or not — I have been less than successful in reading the positions taken by the Caspare/Manna/Riquelme team.

While I agree that the incumbents have established a record and history in serving the town, if I may, I have some questions.

The pilot program for alternative fuels ("Alternative Fuels for Thought," Oct. 8) seems impressive and ambitious. However:

• Regarding the biodiesel pilot for DPW diesel trucks, do Messrs. Manna and Riquelme, in their reserach, realize that the used cooking oil must be filtered, treated and stabilized before blending with diesel fuel, even then, at a maximum 20 percent concentration (B20) from established and reliable sources?
• Does Mr. Riquelme, with his food management experience, overlook the fact that restaurants now consider their used oil a valuable commodity, worth about $2.50 per gallon just months ago? What is his plan to compensate restaurant owners if the borough is unable to pay for this oil? Does he realize that the grease cannot be stored for long, as oil going rancid renders it unusable, even as a fuel component?

In fact, the "Biodiesel Handling and Use Guidelines" prepared by the U.S. Department of Energy stresses, in part, that "...recycled greases that have not been converted to biodiesel are not biodiesel and should be avoided" due to engine damage at concentrations as low as 10 percent". While adventurous folks have received overwhelmingly positive press with their homebrew converted vehicles, the reality is that using waste fat to power a vehicle remains a hobbyist realm and risky business for municipalities unable or unwilling to add new maintenance tasks to already burdened staff workloads.

• Regarding the propane pilot for DPW and police vehicles, do Messrs. Manna and Riquelme, in their research, reveal that setting up fueling infrastructure for propane is neither trivial nor cheap?

In "NJ Alternative Fuel Infrastructure Program" guidelines document, stresses, in part, that "Alternative fuels such as...compressed natural gas (CNG), propane...present different safety requirements than gas or diesel fuels. It is strongly recommended that any organization considering the use of alternative fuel vehicles have its vehicle maintenance and repair facilities evaluated to ensure that building systems, including lighting and HVAC, and existing operating procedures, are compatible with the use of gaseous or other fuels."

• Is it a good idea to convert police vehicles, considering their use in security and life-safety, where even minor decreases in availability and reliability are not tolerated? Just ask our police force to see whether they agree on a tradeoff.
• Regarding the program in general, have the conversion costs budgeted? Assuming Dumont receives the full rebate, where is the $3,000 per car difference coming from? How about the fueling facility, where only half the costs are rebated and capped at $50,000?
• Could it be that Messrs. Manna and Riquelme put the cart before the horse? According to the project coordinator for New Jersey Alternative Fuel Rebate program, he seems unable to recall Dumont applying for any rebate programs. Current contracted fuel costs can be found at http://www.state.nj.us/cgi-bin/treasury/purchase/fuel/fuelsummary.pl. I find it difficult to find savings in biodiesel over diesel.

While it is laudable that Dumont is launching a green initiative, I challenge Messrs. Manna and Riquelme to scale back, share with adjacent municipalities or find a better way to "go green" without spending a lot of green, as what this pilot program seems to imply upon closer examination.

Switching gears, I am a bit dismayed to read that, in an earlier Sounding Off (Oct. 15, "Candidates cite positive changes"), Messrs. Caspare, Manna and Riquelme strongly object to their challengers’ call for making council meetings available on telecast, citing undisclosed cost and delay, defeating the purpose of such an idea. Could it be that the cost was undisclosed because there are none? There are a number of companies, in the spirit of Google, offering free services that allow live video streaming over the Internet without charge. For example, Ustream.tv is cited in the March 31entry of the Dumont High School principal’s personal blog as a way to save money.

• Have the current council contacted their site contractor Xquizit to see if recorded video streams can be made available as soon as an event ends?

This should be a trivial task to put on the borough Web site. Anything less from the contractor would be a sign of incompetence.

Sincerely,

Kai Chen
Dumont

Agree? Disagree? Discuss on a forum or write a letter.

Sounding Off: On C3, agreeing to disagree

Dear Editor:

I thank Mayor McHale for patiently responding to some of my questions regarding C3. I am a little disappointed, however, that he seems more interested in rehashing the Dumont C3 press release and associating me with a council candidate (It’s funny; I am not running for office) rather than refuting my findings should they prove false. To clarify:

• Where is the value of GIS provided by C3 when Bergen County offers it for free, with a municipal-only area where area residents can also be, quoting Mayor McHale, "geo-coded for targeting purposes via GIS mapping technology" and found at http://gis.co.bergen.nj.us/default.htm?
• Alluding to the "…possibility of better and improved municipal services," is Mayor McHale tacitly admitting that wireless coverage in the borough could be better? Did the borough squander opportunities in terms of needed revenue and servicing residents’ communications needs by rejecting formal requests from Verizon and T-Mobile in 2007 to provide coverage in Dumont, for Dumont?
• If the C3 system is now, quoting Mayor McHale, "administered by the borough of Dumont." is it true that the system contract is actually much more than $1,500 monthly, when administration costs included under the old contract must now be performed by borough labor and consequently accounted for? What is this additional cost? Suppose that for three full-time borough administrative staff each spending, on average, 60 minutes per day at $50 overhead hourly rate and 20 days per month, that equals, on average, another $3,000 per month…$4,500 total monthly and $108,000 over the contract term. Yikes!
  Is it true that the borough is left paying a ton of money for some online storage and a license for glorified social networking software?
• All kidding aside, now that a lot of detailed data is being collected from the 1,000 households participating in Dumont’s C3, submitting municipal service and other borough requests, when will the data be aggregated and compiled into reports used to measure borough performance (akin to a report card), made available on the borough Web site and utilized as a tool for future planning purposes? Similar software packages can generate such reports in minutes. Making this feature available would seem consistent with Mayor McHale’s pledge to "...new innovative ways and approaches of how the Borough of Dumont can better serve its residents".

While I have no doubt that C3 has some positive merits and is here to stay, frankly I think that the value of C3 remains questionable, given its cost, if only to send subscribers an overnight parking extension message. But that is just my personal view. Perhaps others may agree with the mayor over the course of this exchange. While I continue to challenge Dumont residents to consider our points, research our sources and decide for themselves, I guess I will just have to agree to disagree with Mayor McHale. Isn’t that the American way?

Sincerely,

Kai Chen
Dumont

Agree? Disagree? Discuss on a forum or write a letter.

Sounding Off: C3 is more than just a Web site

This letter originally appeared on the October 8, 2008 edition of the Twin-Boro News, Sounding Off section.

Dear Editor:

Last week Mr. Joseph Hakim and Ms. Kai Chen submitted letters regarding Dumont’s newly implemented Citizens Communication Center (C3). I thank them for their concerns and questions.

As the Democratic mayor of Dumont, the free exchange of ideas and opinions is a priority of my administration. Along with my fellow colleagues on the Council, we have worked tirelessly to engage our constituents in the hopes of reaffirming and practicing our collective democratic principles.

Regardless, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to any controversies or implied controversies regarding C3 and the Borough of Dumont.

C3 is more than just a Web site as Mr. Hakim and Ms. Chen have intimated. Dumont’s C3 system is completely administered by the Borough of Dumont, which allows Dumont residents to receive e-mails, text messages, calls to their home and cell phones, updates on borough news, process municipal service requests, register their emergency contacts, refer friends, and provide special needs information, as well as a host of other services solely for and about Dumont.

Dumont’s C3 system is further complemented on the administrative side by managing this information for residents with full GIS capabilities and other important functionality like surveys, polls, content management, frequently asked questions, and by centralizing municipal services requests.

Upon signing up, registrants are geo-coded for targeting purposes via GIS mapping technology so in the event of an emergency, power outage or evacuation, the Borough of Dumont can identify affected individuals.

However, this technology is also helpful for non-emergencies and for the administration of borough services. For example, the recent notification that overnight parking would be extended from Oct. 1 to Nov. 1.

Other important mapping tools further allow the Borough of Dumont to zone alerts to particular sections of town, streets, or for that matter, target an individual property.

This feature is not covered under the County of Bergen’s contract with C3. The County of Bergen’s contract with C3 allows every municipality, so long as the municipality pays for usage, to administer voice messaging only.

The Borough of Dumont has full access to the previously described services, and not just the voice messaging.

The ability to communicate over various types of communicative devices affords the Borough of Dumont and its residents the possibility of better and improved municipal services.

The centralization of advance technological communications provides Dumont’s taxpayers with a value which would have had to been contracted with over five different vendors resulting in a lack of integration and higher cost. We have achieved this service at a monthly rate of $1,500 over a two-year period.

I am most dismayed by both Mr. Hakim and Ms. Chen’s lack of information and am happy to be able to explain further.

Having served as Dumont’s mayor for almost three years, I have made it a point to be available to all constituents, regardless of forum, whether it be meeting in person, answering questions at council meetings, or returning phone or e-mail inquiries, However, neither Mr. Hakim nor Ms. Chen have attempted to contact me.

Their inactions have led me to question their underlying motivations. Both individuals falsely imply facts and furthermore, as in the case of Mr. Hakim, make accusations regarding my and the council’s intent, as well as who owns C3.

As a candidate for council, Mr. Hakim especially should perform his public service by uncovering the facts before making such statements.

To date almost 1,000 household have signed up with the borough for this important and worthwhile service, C3.

I am happy to have an open forum and engage more residents on not only the benefits and attributes but also the new innovative ways and approaches of how the Borough of Dumont can better serve its residents.

I encourage all residents to visit www.dumontnj.gov and sign up for this groundbreaking initiative.

Sincerely,

Matt McHale
Mayor
Dumont

Sounding Off: C3 responses still raises concerns

Dear Editor:

I wish to take the opportunity to thank you for printing my questions in Sounding Off. I would also like to thank Mayor McHale for taking his time out of his busy schedule to try and answer some of my questions regarding C3 in the Sept. 17 Sounding Off.
It seems to me; however, he may have overlooked others and spawned new concerns I have:

• Is Mr. Hakim’s claim in his Sept. 19 letter that the C3 contract cost $1,500 per month true?
• Is Mr. Hakim’s claim that the borough is paying two contractors seven or more months for duplicative work true?
• If Mayor McHale characterizes the work of www.dumontboro.org as "antiquated," why did he approve the renewal contract in 2007? In 2006? Were there attempts to negotiate a shorter term contract in 2007 to place the contractor on notice, if the work was determined by the council to be unsatisfactory?
• Mayor McHale states that C3 features "state-of-the-art mapping technology." What specific need is currently being satisfied for a borough occupying less than two square miles? Are there any specific instances?

I have subsequently discovered that Bergen County now offers an alert system that is free to all county residents and appears to be indistinguishable from Dumont’s C3, located at http://www.co.bergen.nj.us/bcresources/reverse911.aspx. I now see why Old Tappan passed on this deal (Northern Valley Suburbanite, April 29) if indeed the county is generously picking up the tab.

• Why is the Borough of Dumont paying for a service the county already purchased for its residents?
• For those who either do not have continuous access to the Internet or choose not to register with C3, are these folks the newly underserved? Are there any plans to normalize the gap between the communications haves and have-nots?
• Did the mayor and borough council consider the wisdom of sending photo, audio and video files to residents over commercial wireless networks when those very networks have historically been first to become unreliable and fail (Sept. 11, 2001, August 2003 blackout, April 16, 2007 flooding)? Since wireless carriers must serve Dumont from other municipalities, are residents living in fringe coverage areas lulled in to a sense that they will be notified when they may not be notified in a timely manner?
• In the interest of open government often hailed by Mayor McHale, now that the borough has C3 in place for some time and have accumulated some historical data, will making various performance metrics such as time to open a case, response time, type of service and related parameters tabulated in monthly reports be posted on the borough Web site to gauge the performance of municipal service requests? What timetable can Mayor McHale commit to if this cannot be completed in 30 days?
  

I am puzzled as to why the mayor would think of my questions as criticism. I am a resident, and pay my taxes just like all the others in this fine borough. While I am unable to comment about the motivation of others, I can say that I care about where my taxes go, and want assurance that the borough gets the most bang for its buck.

Perhaps others feel whether arguing over what the borough spends on its Web site ($1,500 per month vs. $399 per month) is still chump change, either way but I think it is significant.
I think that an open forum where all sides can offer more thought-out questions and answers only benefits everyone, preferable over calling the borough and talking to a machine, or attending a borough council meeting where officials are understandably more interested in adjourning the meeting sooner than later in order to return home see their loved ones after a full day at the office.

I challenge all Dumont residents to verify the references I have cited. Decide for themselves whether this fellow Kai’s research is credible. If Dumont officials feel my questions seem unreasonable, they can simply ignore me until only I see my words in print.

Sincerely,

Kai Chen
Dumont

Agree? Disagree? Discuss on a forum or write a letter.