Vice Mayor Kane Slanders

Vice Mayor George Kane casually slandered former City Manager Matthew Schwartz and former NBV employee Arleen Weintraub last Tuesday. Schwartz and Weintraub were in charge of the grants for the city. The slander occurred during his commission report when he specifically and deliberately said the grant process would be further along "if the former City Manager and the former grants administrator had not walked off with the passwords."

This immediately set off my bs alarms. I have a long career in technology and if an organization is held hostage by private passwords in this day and age, there is a profound problem with its IT management. North Bay Village does not have this problem. All information on all computers on the network is available. It's almost impossible to imagine how it would not be.

I went a little further. I called Matthew Schwartz and Arleen Weintraub on the phone to ask them about this. Both were very clear that they had provided all passwords, including on the latest technology, handwritten on Post-it™ notes to ensure that the staff at City Hall had them, including George Kane.

Arleen then explained to me how each grant was bound, filed on her book case containing hard copies of all pertinent information in alphabetic and date order. Her city computer organized its folders in exactly the same way.

The passwords for the PC on the network were available to all city management and the IT network administrator. There was and is printed hard copy of each step of the process. And finally, both are easily reachable by phone. Any questions could have been resolved by a simple phone call.

George Kane is said to be in the middle of his campaign for a post commission situation as the city's hired lobbyist and project manager, and this slandering of his predecessors looks like part of that rumored campaign. For many reasons, he would be a disaster in that position including his propensity to lie about people he does not care for.

Update on PAL - I am hearing from upset NBV parents who are angry at the abrupt withdrawal of PD support for the after school Police Activities League. What they are saying to a woman (no dads have called) is that they understand the PD needs to look at everything in bad financial times but the unilateral withdrawal of support leaves the parents without the possibility of smoothly transitioning to a citizen run organization. I understand there is an emergency meeting of the PAL Board to ask for a reasonable transition time and I hope the Chief listens carefully. It's about working with the community.

Kevin Vericker
September 16, 2010