Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST
Where is the Accountability In Hamilton Township?
Residents in Hamilton Township are fed up. The township employees feel they have the privilege to ignore residents and outright lie to them in writing.
At the end of December 2018; we contacted the Hamilton Township public library to rent one of the meeting rooms. We called the library over the course of several days after Christmas and left messages for Sue Martinez. She never returned our calls. So we went to the township website; https://hamiltonnjpl.org/meeting-room-policy/) to see if there was another way to try and rent a meeting room. We wanted the meeting room for Jan 17th at 7pm.
Applications for meeting room reservations must be submitted to the Library Director or his/her designee at least three weeks in advance using forms available at the Library or downloadable from the Library web site. Applications will be considered in order of receipt and acceptance or rejection will be acknowledged. We were well within the 3 week lead time so we sent the form in. We still got zero response from Ms. Martinez.
On Jan 2 2019, we attended the Hamilton township council meeting and asked council for assistance. The council members stated they would assist and asked for us to send them an email, and they would send her email address to us. We did that and obtained the email address on Jan 3, 2019 at 9:37am and sent her an email that day at 3:45pm. (see below)
From:
Sent: Thursday, January 3, 2019 3:45 PM
To: "smartinez@hamiltonnjpl.org" <smartinez@hamiltonnjpl.org>
Subject: Room rental
Sue
We have left a couple of messages as well as sending in the application to rent a room on the 17th of this month at the library. We haven't gotten any response. Could you be so kind to let us know what is happening with our application and respond to our messages. Thank you
We did not get a response that day, Friday or Monday morning of the following week. We called the library and was told she was in and left yet another message. She never called back. There was more than one person on our team reaching out to Ms. Martinez, they received the same lack of response. We did however finally received an email at 12:19pm (see below) stating she was out on Thursday and Friday (which would be Jan 3 and 4th 2019) attending to her sick kids. Her email asked how many people we would have. This was annoying to us for we had mailed in the form with all the information and left messages for her as well with all this information numerous times. We responded with the details. (see email below) She stated she had no email from us. Which is completely false.
From: Sue Martinez <smartinez@hamiltonnjpl.org>
To: tammy.duffy@yahoo.com <tammy.duffy@yahoo.com>
Sent: Monday, January 7, 2019 10:12:19 AM EST
Subject: re: Room rental
I apologize I was out Thursday and Friday with sick kids. I have a small room available how many people?
From: "Tammy Duffy" <tammy.duffy@yahoo.com>
Sent: Monday, January 7, 2019 10:10 AM
To: "smartinez@hamiltonnjpl.org" <smartinez@hamiltonnjpl.org>, "Tammy Duffy" <tammy.duffy@yahoo.com>
Subject: re: Room rental
Sue
We called twice and left messages I'm sent the emails. I also mailed in the form. We are looking for January 17th at 7 p.m.
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
On Mon, Jan 7, 2019 at 9:25 AM, Sue Martinez
<smartinez@hamiltonnjpl.org> wrote:
Tammy - I just checked and I don't have another email from you. What time on the 17th, how many people?
Ms. Martinez then sent us a message asking if a room for 40 people would be ok? We responded quickly our response, Yes. (see email below)
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Tammy Duffy <tammy.duffy@yahoo.com>
To: smartinez@hamiltonnjpl.org <smartinez@hamiltonnjpl.org>
Sent: Monday, January 7, 2019 03:24:24 PM EST
Subject: re: Room rental
Yes
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
On Mon, Jan 7, 2019 at 1:11 PM, Sue Martinez
<smartinez@hamiltonnjpl.org> wrote:
I have a room that will fit 40 people max...will this be ok?
After our email at 3:24pm on the 7th of January, we never heard back from Ms. Martinez. We reached out to her again at 7:30pm on January 8th and copied the member of council. On January 10th at 947pm, we send another message for we received no response from anyone.
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Tammy Duffy <tammy.duffy@yahoo.com>
To: smartinez@hamiltonnjpl.org <smartinez@hamiltonnjpl.org>; Tammy Duffy <tammy.duffy@yahoo.com>; acarabelli@hamiltonnj.com <acarabelli@hamiltonnj.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 8, 2019 07:20:25 PM EST
Subject: Re: Room rental
Sue
We really need to sure up this room. Do you have an update?
We did not receive any response until January 14th at 9:22am. She stated the room was reserved and she was out with the flu. (see email below)
Re: Room rental
Yahoo/Personal
· Sue Martinez <smartinez@hamiltonnjpl.org>
To:Tammy Duffy
Jan 14 at 9:22 AM
Tammy - I just returned to the office was out with the flu. The room is reserved for you.
She then sent another email documenting that she was out with the flu for 4 days.
Sue Martinez <smartinez@hamiltonnjpl.org>
To:acarabelli@hamiltonnj.com,Tammy Duffy
Jan 14 at 9:31 AM
Tammy - I just returned to work I was out with the flu for four days. The room was reserved for you.
We were very annoyed with this interaction with the township employee. Their lack of response for a simple task was baffling. We decided to OPRA Ms. Martinez’s time card. We sent up an OPRA request on Jan 7 to the township. We never received any response. So, we sent the OPRA request to Ms. Gore. Still no response that they got the OPRA request. Today. January 19th we just received the response to the OPRA request from Jan 7 2019. This is beyond the acceptable 7 day turn around time that the township is required by law to respond to OPRA requests. We are going to let this go and not due the township for this lack of response. However, we do want to share what the OPRA response demonstrated.
Let’s rewind for a moment to the email from Ms. Martinez from January 7. (see below)
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Sue Martinez <smartinez@hamiltonnjpl.org>
To: tammy.duffy@yahoo.com <tammy.duffy@yahoo.com>
Sent: Monday, January 7, 2019 10:12:19 AM EST
Subject: re: Room rental
I apologize I was out Thursday and Friday with sick kids. I have a small room available how many people?
So she said she was unresponsive due to the fact she was out on Thursday and Friday. (Jan 3 and 4, 2109). Yet, when we OPRA’d her time card, (we only asked for records from Dec 22 2018 to Jan 8 2019. The information sent from the township clerk demonstrates that she was out sick on January 3. It actually demonstrates she punched in at 8:53am and punched out at 2:36pm. It also states she took 1.5 hours of vacation that day. January 4 she did take a sick day.
Why did Ms. Martinez tell us she was out sick on the 3rd of January (in writing) and her time card shows she was working from 8:54am to 2:36pm and took 1.5 hours of vacation that day. When we called the library that day no one knew where she was.
Why are township employees not accurately detailing their time entries? This seems to be a pattern wide spread in the township with considerable lack of oversight.
We would like someone to look up how Ms. Martinez has her time card entries for the following days, Jan 8 – Jan 11 2019. Our guts are telling us we will possibly see additional discrepancies on her time card. Also, we would like to know why her manager would allow her detailed calculated time sheet was signed off on with incorrect information in it.
This is not fair to township residents that township employees inaccurately detail their time, their managers approve it, essentially stealing from the residents.