Councilwoman Vaughn goes scorched earth on officials
TRENTON » The Return of Radioactive Robin came a week into 2021.
The West Ward councilman blasted city officials in a profanity-laced tirade Thursday, directed at Mayor Reed Gusciora, business administrator Adam Cruz, water director Mark Lavenberg, “bad-apple cop” David Ordille and new interim law director Wes Bridges.
Vaughn got fired up after Cruz responded tersely to atlarge councilman Santiago Rodriguez’s allegations that city officials want to privatize Trenton Water Works.
“You keep voting down bonds and, yeah, you will be privatizing it,” Cruz said.
Insulted by the apparent slight, Vaughn suggested during her civic comment that “lying a**” public officials were trying to “deliberately disadvantage” the city by misinforming and miseducating residents.
She told Cruz to pack his bags and get out of Trenton.
“You either help us bring our utility to fiscal health, or you get out of this city and you get out of that job because we can find a business administrator in our borders,” she said. “If we can’t pay back those bonds, it’s gonna be on our backs, on our shoulders, and you can move your family back up to Perth Amboy, where you came from.”
The councilwoman shot down Cruz when he attempted to address her attacks.
“I’m not having outsiders come her and try to privatize our city,” Vaughn went on, repeating a claim that more than 400 city employees aren’t complying with residency requirements.
“You think you can come in here from 9 to 5, take my money and take it out the city then talk crap about Trenton. And how Trenton ain’t sh*t,” she said.
Cruz issued a statement through the mayor’s office Friday hoping for a return of civility at the meetings.
“Council members have been advised time and time again to cease personal attacks on employees during public meetings,” he said. “Demonizing employees for not being native Trentonians after they move into the city and asking them to pack their bags and leave is not helpful rhetoric. We must do better as leaders of our city and set a positive tone that can lead to positive changes for the good of all Trenton residents. At the end of the day I’m also a Trenton taxpayer.”
Vaughn, who was called on to resign following a coronavirus meltdown last year in which she crassly told a councilman to perform fellatio on the openly gay mayor, then laid into Gusciora for keeping a “bad-apple cop” on the police force.
“We get bad cops who pretty much are criminals. Just because the prosecutor didn’t press charges against him doesn’t mean he’s not a criminal,” Vaughn said.
She called for Sgt. Ordille to be prosecuted to the “full extent of the law” and for a neighboring department to take him off Trenton’s hands.
“That cop needs to stay in his own community, in Ewing Township. Let Ewing Police Department hire his ass. Because he don’t belong in Trenton,” she said. “All he can do is sit behind a desk, eat some damn popcorn.
“[Gusciora] doesn’t care about police reform. He doesn’t Trenton. He doesn’t care about Black and brown people. He doesn’t care about recidivism and his whole reentry program that he has for some PR stunt and hope to get re-elected.”
The city moved to fire Ordille after a federal judge excoriated him for lying in a search-warrant affidavit in a multi-defendant federal drug and weapons case.
Gusciora said he supported police director Sheilah’s Coley’s push to fire Ordille.
But a hearing officer, after listening to all the evidence, ruled that a six-month suspension was more appropriate.
The Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office initially said it considered Ordille a Brady cop and no longer planned to call him as a witness.
It softened its position saying Ordille could be rehabilitated with more training.
Ordille is expected back at work next week and will perform administrative duties at police headquarters as part
of his assignment to patrol, a city spokesman said.
Charles Sciarra, Ordille’s attorney, urged the councilwoman to focus her anger “on the bad guys murdering Trenton’s kids and residents and less on the cops trying to stop them.”
Vaughn then voiced her dissatisfaction with TWW’s progress on lead-service line replacement, laying much of the blame at Lavenberg’s feet.
She cautioned the water director not to come to council for any more money, after council begrudgingly approved tens of millions in bond packages.
The Department of Environmental Protection sued
the city after the council rejected some of the bonds last year. Trenton is under administrative consent orders with the state.
“We done gave him enough bonds to finish Phase I,” Vaughn said.
Lavenberg said Friday that the city was working diligently to finish Phase I of the project, which is 68 percent complete with 2,618 of 3,850 lines replaced since February.
One of the contractors hired by the city was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, which delayed it from meeting deliverables by a couple months, the water director said.
On the fiscal end, Lavenberg
stressed the department is working with the firm tapped to complete a forensic audit of TWW.
“We’re moving as quickly as the auditor can go,” he said.
At the end of her nearly 10-minute diatribe, Vaughn told followers to look out for her keyboard-warrior advocacy on Twitter about Ordille.
Bridges, the law director, got the cold shoulder when he interjected that Vaughn shouldn’t be discussing Ordille.
“Don’t tell me, Mr. Bridges, about what I can be discussing,” the councilwoman shouted. “Keep your opinion to yourself.”