Memo appears to estimate Yaede security cost at $346K
HAMILTON >> A smoking-gun internal memo apparently hand-delivered by the chief financial officer last March to one of the top guns in Mayor Kelly Yaede’s inner circle contradicts her claim that the township spent fewer than $15,000 last year on her security detail.
The memo estimated the cost of the mayor’s security detail at more than $346,000 in 2018, a number 24 times more expensive than what Yaede claimed in a statement she sent out last week attacking the township council for allegedly piling up a bigger bill for having cops staff meetings to keep the public safe.
The administration appears to have suppressed the memo, authored by chief financial officer John Barrett, not turning it over to residents who made repeated public records requests for documents in an attempt to pin down the exact cost for the mayor’s protection.
Even before the bombshell memo surfaced on the same day of the mayor’s State of the Township address, Yaede’s security detail was a politically divisive issue that continued to haunt her as she seeks a second four-year term.
Barrett provided the memo to The Trentonian and said he conducted a cost analysis of the mayor’s security team, wrote up the March 8, 2018 memo and hand-delivered it to business administrator Dave Kenny.
Barrett said he put together the memo months before his falling out with the administration, which now seeks to fire him over allegations of incompetence and insubordination.
The now-suspended chief financial officer said Kenny directed him to conduct the cost analysis for the mayor’s security detail after a staff meeting a couple days before he handed over his report.
Township minutes from March 6, 2018, show that township resident David Henderson discussed the costs of Yaede’s security detail for 2016 and 2017 and was told that information was off-limits because it could jeopardize the mayor’s protection.
The mayor did not respond to phone calls seeking comment about the memo, instead texting over a statement that didn’t address any of the lingering questions about whether she misled the public over the cost to the township for her bodyguards.
“We put the facts out about my detail and its expenses,” Yaede said. “The information provided is accurate pertaining to security.”
But a member of Yaede’s inner circle tried smothering the damaging political grenade, claiming the memo is a fake.
“I think I would have remembered something like that,” Kenny said.
Barrett has usually chosen to remain quiet and let his lawyer do the talking since filing a whistleblower lawsuit against the Yaede administration.
But he was so incensed by Kenny’s suggestion that he doctored up the memo to make Yaede look bad that he broke his silence.
“I did not fabricate this,” Barrett said in a phone interview.
Response to Memo
Members of the Democratic-controlled legislative body were dismayed to learn about the memo, pointing out they just grilled Kenny at Tuesday night’s meeting.
The interrogation was prompted when mayoral candidate Henderson complained the administration claimed to not have any documents “responsive” to a public records request related to the cost of the mayor’s detail.
Henderson said he made a subsequent request for the information on the detail after the mayor told The Trentonian in an interview the cost was less than $25,000.
She subsequently claimed the figure was even lower, less than $15,000, in a news release sent out not long after Mercer County Prosecutor Angelo Onofri said at a previous meeting that releasing a financial figure wouldn’t compromise efforts to protect Yaede.
Yaede and her administration had steadfastly refused to release the figure claiming the prosecutor advised against it because it could reveal details about the mayor’s security detail.
“You cannot get a straight answer from these people,” Republican councilwoman Ileana Schirmer said in an interview Wednesday.
She said she was “pissed off” as a public official and a township taxpayer, calling on the mayor and Kenny to step down for “outright” lying to the public about the cost of the detail.
“You lie to the public, you need to step down,” Schirmer said. “There is no gray area. You lie, you go. We deserve better. I would put my money on Barrett over this administration.”
Despite the strong suggestion from business administrator Kenny that Barrett fabricated the memo, Yaede’s mayoral opponents weren’t buying it.
“I have no reason at this point to doubt Mr. Barrett doing the cost analysis on Mr. Kenny’s behalf when two days prior to the date of the memo the topic of security costs for the mayor was brought up by a resident,” Democratic mayoral challenger and Hamilton Council president Jeff Martin said.
Henderson, who is squaring off against Yaede in the June primary, accused the administration of “endeavoring to hide the cost of the security detail.”
“I think it’s an intentional act of deception,” he said, “by them not keeping track of the cost by not having a line item in the mayor’s budget for security. They don’ t want anybody to know that, for whatever reason.”
He called Team Yaede’s torrent of attacks on Barrett’s character as “standard argument” in trying to discredit a smoking-gun document.
“It’s disgraceful and horrifying that they would hide these figures from taxpayers of Hamilton Township,” the gadfly said.
Contents of The Memo
Gripping in its detailed breakdown, the calculations in the memo were based on the base salaries of the four detectives assigned to Yaede’s security detail, including $1,000 base pay adjustments and health and pension benefits for each of them, outlined in the current PBA contract.
MEMO>>PAGE13