And a community that didn’t mind
The day I arrived to manage a small daily newspaper in Naugatuck, Conn., as a young man in the 1980s, the receptionist said I had a collect call from the mayor, William Rado. She asked if I wanted to accept the charges.
“Why is the mayor calling collect?” I asked her.
“Because he’s calling from jail,” she replied.
That started a colorful two years working in an area rife with overt public corruption.
Over the years I think of that place whenever I hear people throw out accusations that their municipal leaders are corrupt. Although I have been at odds with numerous public officials over my more than 40 years in the newspaper business, I am always cautious about bandying about terms such as “corruption” because I have seen it firsthand. Making that kind of allegation deserves more than a generalized suspicion that all politicians must be corrupt.
I thought of that last week when Ocean City Mayor Jay Gillian went off during the City Council meeting. He was frustrated because former councilman Michael DeVlieger showed up and doubled down on comments he made during the April 25 Candidates Forum that the mayor is in developers’ pockets, insinuating favoritism.
Gillian is close to two developers. That is public knowledge. He has been tight with Scott Halliday, a major developer/builder in the resort considered one of the political kingmakers in town. A few years ago, luxury developer Eustace Mita stepped in and saved Gillian’s Wonderland Pier amusement park when $8 million in loans were called in as everyone was still feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. That wasn’t a secret. That was a press release.
Over the weekend, days before yesterday’s municipal election in which four of the seven City Council seats were filled, DeVlieger and Cecilia Gallelli-Keyes, both running for council, made hay by posting documents linking Mita and Halliday and Gillian.
Ocean City is no Naugatuck, at least how Naugatuck was when I was there. Unlike this small but wealthy barrier island community that is envied for its nearly $13 billion in ratables, its beaches, boardwalk and thriving business community, that Connecticut town was tough.
This is a beautiful and safe resort with a love-hate relationship with developers. They are blamed for the overbuilding on the island; putting up oversized houses that block neighbors’ sun and air; homes that stuff extra bathrooms and bedrooms to maximize rentals with minimal parking; turn garages into pool-side bars to get around restrictions; and a myriad of other issues.
That is the hate part.
The reason developers get away with that is the love part. Most property owners, while upset when their own home is dwarfed by a McMansion, love developers because they want to be able to maximize the value of their properties. People want to ensure when they cash out, there aren’t limitations that lower the return on their own investment.
The belief that developers run this town, that Ocean City is overbuilt and that mayors and council members are in developers’ pockets goes back decades, long before Gillian took office. When I arrived to take over the Sentinel in 1997, people joked to me about the overdevelopment, saying they lived so close to their neighbors they waved at each other from their dining room tables.
That said, politicians, including Gillian and members of City Council, can and should be scrutinized for their relationships and how that may affect their decisions. That is a given.
But politicians are the ones who appoint the members of the Zoning Board and Planning Board, and are involved in the Master Plan of the resort. When voters re-elect those who have been in charge, they are sending their own message. When was the last time any elected official in this community lobbied relentlessly for wholesale change to what people can do on their properties?
But back to Naugatuck, in a corridor known as the Brass Valley for industry that once dominated the region. Rough and tumble was the order of the day. Multiple mayors of the neighboring city, Waterbury, went to jail.
It was a place where a reporter had to hide behind me when his story’s subject chased and physically threatened him in our newsroom. Where a motorcycle gang member walked in to complain it wasn’t his club that fired the shot into a child’s bedroom as the police claimed in another story. Where the letters to the editor decrying actual documented behaviors of public officials would curdle the milk in Ocean City’s refrigerators.
Even the congressman at the time, an affable young man named John Rowland who was often in our office, was part of it. Rowland went on to become a multi-term Connecticut governor, until he resigned because of a corruption probe and went to prison. After he got out of prison, he ended up back there less than a decade later after a conviction in another fraud case.
It’s good that people here on this barrier island are on the lookout for corruption. Some populations don’t mind.
In that Connecticut town, the day the mayor was paroled from prison he marched through town in a parade even though it wasn’t for him. A few years later, after he became eligible and I had moved on, he ran for mayor again. The citizens of Naugatuck elected him again.
And did I tell you about the police chief suspended because he reportedly pulled a gun on a homeowner who came out to complain about the drunk cop who was urinating on his lawn?
David Nahan is editor and publisher of the Ocean City Sentinel, Upper Township Sentinel and The Sentinel of Somers Point, Linwood and Northfield.