By: Carolyn Maxwell

PERTH AMBOY – CFO/Comptroller Jill Goldy gave a presentation on where Perth Amboy stands on Best Practices. She started out by stating that a city must score at least 16 “Yes” answers in order not to lose any funding from the state. She stated that we had 19 “Yes” answers. There were 28 questions in all. Some were worth only half a point. Also included was an unscored survey. Some of the questions pertained to things that would impact municipalities such as: “Are we participating in shared services?” There were also questions about the environment, recycling, utilities, and financial practices. Each year, they may have limited questions asked from the previous year and are not always uniform from each year. There is also an anti-nepotism policy (that is in employee manual) which is not addressing what is asked in the budget. Anyone can view the last few years of the budget, audits, and bids that are posted on the city’s website. We don’t have all the minutes, meetings, and agendas for all of the boards and commissions. 

City Clerk Victoria Kupsch spoke up, “John Alleman (IT Technician) updates the city’s website. We may have not gotten all the agendas and minutes from the municipal boards and commissions because of Covid cancelling some of the meetings.”

Goldy continued, stating that she, the Business Administrator, the Department Heads, Unit Heads, and the IT Coordinator have discussed the social media account created for the city and the policies for the people using this site: who can post and who uses the site either privately or as a city employee. 

Council President Petrick spoke up and suggested that the city council needs to set up an ordinance regarding social media accounts for the city.

Interim B.A. Patricia Perkins responded, “John (Alleman) monitors activity on the social media account. 

Petrick still wasn’t satisfied, “We need to govern this.”

Councilman Fernando Irizarry spoke up, “I thank Ms. Goldy and anyone else who helped in putting this Best Practice information in a format that we and the residents can understand.”