At a first glance of the City of Perth Amboy’s website, one notices that there are always announcements being made about what’s going on in the City. These will include grants, community meetings, vacancies on municipal boards, advisories for storms just to name a few.

But, here is our bone of contention: we needed to look at the schedule of some of the municipal boards and what we saw kind of took us aback.

Many of the boards listed on the City’s website are in desperate need of updating. Here are a few examples: out of 11 members listed in the Art’s Council, the site shows one expired term and another person who is deceased. Of the Board of Adjustment of the 9 members listed, only one person listed has a term that hasn’t expired and another member who is deceased. For the Housing Authority: Of 6 members listed, only 3 people are shown to have unexpired terms. When clicking on Insurance Fund Commission the  page shows an error. For the Library Board of Trustees: 3 of 7 members terms are shown to be expired. For the Planning Board only 3 of 11 members are shown to have terms that have not expired. Also the 2016 meeting schedule is not posted. For PARA, out of 7 members, 3 have terms that have expired. In the Rent Leveling Board, there are supposed to be 5 members. There are 3 members listed and 2 vacancies. Every single member including the vacancies, they all say that the terms expired in 2008.

Sorry to say this, but we must. THIS IS EMBARRASSING. We know that some of the members on these various boards may have been reappointed. We also know that vacancies on some of these boards may have been filled because the Council have passed resolutions approving the appointments of new members.

Why are the municipal boards taking so long to be updated?

A person who just moved into the City or for that matter, anyone who wants to contact a person on one of these boards is given outdated information. Imagine seeing that a member whose term expired 8 years ago and is still listed. This does not bode well for the City.

Another problem is when you call the City’s main line and it prompts you what number to press for different departments. Unfortunately, when you hit the number for UEZ, it still lists an individual who has been retired from that department for at least 6 years. This too, is embarrassing.

Someone should have caught that a long time ago.

In the City of South Amboy there used to be a complete calendar of events for the year printed out and copies readily available to the public. This is no longer so. I remember that notice would have all the meetings whether they be City Council, Business, SARA or the South Amboy Board of Education and Holiday events.

I know that South Amboy has been depending a lot on their Facebook pages and a few months ago, they had a glossy full page leaflet with different events that would be taking place.

We understand that it’s hard to keep updating information on a regular basis,

You can hit us with a wet noodle if you want to, but if this is frustrating to us, can you imagine someone who is new in town looking at this outdated information?

So this message is for all municipalities. It’s important to keep your website up to date, especially when listing your municipal board members.

C.M. & K.M.