Wednesday, July 2, 2008

I See Your True Colors Shining Through

I think that is a song a that was written about Barbara Toffler. Just a few minutes in to Mayor Feit's meeting Toffler tried to stick it to the town attorney and prosecutor by re appointing them on a two month trial. I am sure the family members of both were thrilled to have come out only to have Toffler embarrass their spouses publicly.

Thank goodness that Mayor Katz came to their rescue and derailed Toffler's plan. Katz pointed out that Toffler had ample opportunity (and did indeed utilize the time to do so) to interview and meet with the attorney and prosecutor and specifically indicated that she supports both to the Manager prior to that night. So why the sudden change of heart. Well, the "Truth" is that Toffler was showing her true colors.

This was a power play. She is a vindictive and will not let this Council proceed forward. Good luck Teaneck!!

54 comments:

Anonymous said...

ditto, ditto, ditto.
Kudos to Mayor Feit on his retort to Toffler when she spoke about his numerous "family responsibilites" and how she would gladly "help out". When Mayor Feit asked, "do you babysit"? I had to sit on my hands to keep from clapping out loud.

He just proved he was the right choice on another higher level.

Anonymous said...

Esther is horribly naive to back Toffler.

Toffler is a cancer on this town. In fact she is in reality everything that Rudy was not but was maligned to be by Cramer (her choice for town attorney-as if he did not screw us all enough in the past) et al.

Didn't you see the hands of Weinberg joined with her "sister" (Toffler) and her "daughter" (Honis)at the inauguration?

We have not even had five minutes of peace in this town.

Wake up Esther, or go back to your "mellow" whatever ____ you smoke to bring that on. (I don't use the word you employed.)

Anonymous said...

I don't think anyone has a problem that someone elected to council attended an ivy league institution, has a high paying job, or has outspoken views on topics such as development or diversity.

But, sometimes people with a high pedigree may say things or speak in tones that others take as elitist.

This perception might be false. It might be the opposite of one's intent. Perhaps even unfair. But, it is a challenge to influence people or drive change when it exists.

I think a little humility would go along way.

Instead of talking about how much one knows or how many votes one received, do something good and let others pat your back for you.

Anonymous said...

Business Week March 17, 2003:


Toffler, who admits she was seduced by the gobs of money she was making, tells of an insurer who wanted to set up an ethics office, a $50,000 to $75,000 assignment. Instead, the author says, "we took advantage of our neophyte [project director] and steadily built a dependency...devising a monthly step-by-step plan that basically said to her that she wouldn't be able to sustain her responsibilities without us...." The tab: $250,000 a month. The company's savvy CEO quashed this ripoff after a month and a half. Another client, a bank that had illegally kept funds from abandoned accounts, saw its $500,000 job double in cost as Toffler and her group "billed time on the subway, we billed time rewriting our notes."
-------------------------
Since then Toffler has claimed every corporation acts this way.

Anonymous said...

NY Times 2/23/2003:


She recalls that partners intentionally overcharged clients. When the firm ordered her to bill at a rate of $500 an hour, she writes, she thought it excessive. But pressure was intense, she writes, to ''bill our brains out.''
----------------------------

Channel 13 interview:

Ms. TOFFLER: Our piece of this particular budget was somewhere around -- stretching it -- $75,000. It wasn't that big a job. I gave him my budget. He looked at it, threw it back at me, and said, "Double it." I said, "Double it? That's it. We can't double it." "That's what you do," he said. "I want that doubled. Double it. Don't bring it back to me until it's doubled."

JONES: And?

Ms. TOFFLER: Back I came with a $150,000 [budget]. I did.

JONES: And did you say anything?

Ms. TOFFLER: I just gave it to him. And we stretched it! We added hours. We added tasks.

JONES: However, she admits that sometimes she overbilled on her own. The game, she said, was to make a client dependent on her, especially when the client was new to the ethics business.

Ms. TOFFLER: It gave us the wonderful opportunity to say, "Well, this is what you need. And you certainly are not prepared to do this on your own, so here are the very many things that we can possibly do for you. And we'll set up weekly kinds of activities for you to do."
So if this person's doing something every week, then, obviously, he has to come back to us. We have to be there. Well, suffice it to say, within a very short time, we had set up a planned program to bill this firm $250,000 a month to basically do work that their employees should've been doing. The CEO got wind of this and he basically said, "Enough, enough."

JONES: So you sort of got caught on that one.

Ms. TOFFLER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anonymous said...

Two interesting articles about Teaneck in today's Record, page #L-2. Perhaps one who is more computer literate than I can place them here. One comment in the first article states that we may be fixated too much upon race. I agree with that; our diversity is not as important as our similarites. Our families all want a safe place to live, education for our kids, clean streets and parks and lower taxes, regardless of what we may look like or to whom we pray or don't pray to. Is anyone else tired of hearing that we integrated our schools first? That was a half a century ago. Shouldn't we concentrate on now, and the future and stop resting on the fact that we were a model town in 1945?

Anonymous said...

Ms. TOFFLER: If I am given a target, and the only way I can achieve that target is by doing something that's ethically questionable, or even illegal, but my boss is unrelenting and I have got to do it -- most people are not morally courageous. And many people will say, "Look, I've got kids in school. I've got aging parents. I've got a mortgage. I've got all kinds of commitments. Who am I to be so cavalier to say, 'I'm sorry. I will not work under these conditions,' and walk out?"

Anonymous said...

Uh-oh....looks like Starbucks is cutting back. Cedar Lane's may be lost even before arrival.

Anonymous said...

Esther thinks apologies are enough to make all sins go away.

She traces Monica to Karl Rove... but is that him in drag or is it... Loretta (Rove) Weinberg?

Anonymous said...

So Feit would let Toffler watch his kids? What kind of judgment does that show?

Anonymous said...

News Hour:

BARBARA TOFFLER, Business Ethicist: The big joke is that business ethics is an oxymoron. You can't simply talk about ethics when you're talking about business. There are none.

I'll be honest with you – I stayed at Arthur Andersen probably longer than I would have, because I liked the money that I was making.

Anonymous said...

By Blaine Lilly (reviewing Toffler's confessional book)

The book ... purports to be a scathing indictment of the culture of Arthur Andersen, a respected American institution that was subverted and destroyed by arrogance and greed.... Nothing matters here but greed and taking pleasure in stepping in the other guy's face.

What's interesting here is the fact that Barbara Toffler, who clearly considers herself to be an "ethics expert", openly confesses that she was just as ruthless and greedy as everyone else at Andersen. But the reader is left wondering if she ever really quite gets it - does she understand she's just as morally culpable as the Andersen partners she eviscerates? She certainly doesn't seem to be too troubled by her own long list of questionable actions, in any case. The old joke about the definition of "chutzpah" being a person who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy because he's an orphan gets an update here: an unethical peddlar of "ethical services" who turns a quick buck by selling her story. You might feel like taking a shower after you finish this one.

Keith K said...

"Look, I've got kids in school. I've got aging parents. I've got a mortgage. I've got all kinds of commitments. Who am I to be so cavalier to say, 'I'm sorry. I will not work under these conditions,' and walk out?"
.....
does she understand she's just as morally culpable as the Andersen partners she eviscerates? She certainly doesn't seem to be too troubled by her own long list of questionable actions, in any case.


Wait until she realizes that she still has kids, still has a mortgage and still has commitments. What is she going to do, stand up for Teaneck and let her family down? If the past is any indication, at least we'll find out about it a few years after she leaves office.

Anonymous said...

So, is the unethical babysitter going to turn up at the Feit household tonight?

Anonymous said...

Teaneck Truth said:
"Just a few minutes in to Mayor Feit's meeting ...

Are you really stupid enough to believe the meeting belongs to the Mayor?

Anonymous said...

The manager, Helene, will never smile again.

Anonymous said...

2008anony-

You are another cockeyed optimist.

Only West Englewood appreciates the fabulous job the last Council led by Elie was able to accomplish.

The total lack of concern by Parker for our wasteful operations makes her a significant part of the problem.

Until we see her on board with Kevie, Elie, Gussen and Mohammed to make paring expenditures the number one priority, we should cut her no slack.

A Council member is either with the overburdened taxpayer or against her.

Anonymous said...

Only West Englewood appreciates the fabulous job the last Council led by Elie was able to accomplish.

That's the problem. Even though the Katz Team turned West Englewood into Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood, Robert "Mr. Northeast" Robinson could barely scratch out a vote in his own part of town.

Somehow living in an Orthodox neighborhood lets you see the light on how fantastic Rudy was, but no one else in Teaneck saw it that way.

Looks like the supporters of the Katz Team will be spending the next four years bitching and moaning about why their candidates lost. It was tiring when the New Beginnings crew did the same thing and Teaneck voters will only reject it a second time.

Out Of Rightfield said...

The observant jews in areas other than West Englewood got just as screwed by the last council as the blacks.
I've said it many times, it's not an issue of the orthodox and the others, it's an issue of the West Englewood orthodox and the others.

Anonymous said...

dave/karin

Stop the bs.

If you paid taxes you would be supporting the team.

Anonymous said...

Looks like the supporters of the Katz Team will be spending the next four years bitching and moaning about why their candidates lost. It was tiring when the New Beginnings crew did the same thing and Teaneck voters will only reject it a second time.

The voters didn't reject it, they bought it!

Anonymous said...

Dave

Who cares about music?

Taxes, Taxes, Taxes!!!!!

Anonymous said...

If you paid taxes you would be supporting the team.

There are at least 20,000 people who pay taxes and are registered to vote. The Katz Team couldn't find 3,000 to support the team. Maybe because taxpayers saw through the zero percent budget fraud.

The bitchers and moaners simply have no understanding of how to work in different communities to win. They could get orthodox votes, but no one else.

Putting Robinson up was an insult. The man had no business being on the ballot. It takes a real special kind of skill to run as an incumbent, spend over $50,000 and lose.

Now after being bitch slapped by Teaneck voters, all we hear from the Katz Team is more complaining about the candidates. It's time to move on.

Anonymous said...

Fraud??

Why do you keep lying?

Who spent that much money?

Lies and more lies.

The fact is Robinson lives in the Northeast and no other candidate did.

But he did not have Loretta's support, and she is the puppetmistress of teaneck.

If we had a decent publication in this town, not the joke the Suburbanite is, perhaps some people would learn to vote their own interest.

It is possible to fool a lot of people a lot of the time.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps if Team Teaneck had advertised in the Suburbanite they might have won!

Anonymous said...

The fact is Robinson lives in the Northeast and no other candidate did.

The people who know him best, his neighbors, wouldn't vote for the guy. Boss Joe pushed loyal machine employee Robinson, and Stern and Rudolph were stupid enough to go along with the idea of a Ferriero ticket. The folks in West Englewood were duped into voting for this twit, but no one else was fooled.

An ad in the suburbanite would have helped, but putting up a serious candidate would have shown that Team Katz was more than a joke.

I hope Mayor Feit can fix Elnatan "Tax Fraud" Rudolph's phony zero budget. The fake budget didn't help Rudy and it will cause damage for years if the problems he caused by his election efforts aren't fixed.

Anonymous said...

Still lying!!

Feit was Rudolph's partner in coming up with the budget and IT IS NOT FAKE.

You can add 6.5% to your bill and voluntarily send it in care of Monica and Parker.

Anonymous said...

Feit was Rudolph's partner in coming up with the budget and IT IS NOT FAKE.

A budget that moves 5 million dollars in bills from this year to next year is a fraud. Rudolph pushed this budget to give him something to run on. The voters saw it was a fake. Don't blame Feit for this phony budget.

Anonymous said...

I am not blaming him but crediting him.

Now we need some serious cutting to keep taxes down next year too.

Some sacred cows made need to be slaughtered.

The Manager needs to be made aware of the seriousness of that need in the teeth of the recession.

Anonymous said...

Tell the $chool$. They are the BIG $pender$.

Anonymous said...

Them too.

But nobody has control over the schools who gives a goldosh about spending. Maybe if we get November voting instead of the asinine April voting we might be able to get some sensible school board members. But don't hold your breath on that.

Let's at least cut the town expenditures. Send Ms. Fall the message.

Keith K said...

A budget that moves 5 million dollars in bills from this year to next year is a fraud.

Ummm, no....it's not. I had a similar situation with my morgage escrow account this year because of the re-val.

Long story short, after they got the new multiplier, we owed an additional $4k.

They asked us if we wanted to pay it all at once or in equal amounts over 12, 24, 36 or 48 months.

There is no interest for paying it off over time.

Why on Earth would I want to pay it all now, when there is no penalty for paying it off over the next 4 years?

Pushing off debts is not necessaryly bad. If there was interest involved and it would cost more in the long run, you'd have a point, but all this does is give Teaneck more money each year to use for it's residents and tax relief.

Anonymous said...

We need to merge the fire department with those of Englewood and Hackensack. That would enable the dismissal of two of the three fire chiefs.

We need to unify all the Police departments in the county. Having all these local police chiefs is an anomaly in the U.S.

The main reason NJ (and its suffering taxpayers)is in such bad shape compared to say NY or Conn is its insane 1890's dedication to tiny units of government.

Anonymous said...

check out these salaries - most are cops and firefighters...WOW!

http://php.app.com/NJpublicemployees/results.php?pageNum_Recordset1=0&totalRows_Recordset1=372&lastn=&firstn=&location=TEANECK+TOWNSHIP&fullname=%25&Submit=Search

Anonymous said...

check out these salaries - most are cops and firefighters...WOW!

With the exception of Bianci (19+), all of the individuals have over 20 or 30 years at their jobs. Are you upset that anyone in their position gets paid that much, or are you upset that THEY do?

Anonymous said...

upset that these positions pay so much! 90% are over $90K!!!!!!

and its only suburbia, NJ.

Anonymous said...

Time for attrition!!

Nobody needs to get fired.

Anonymous said...

Pushing off debts is not necessaryly bad. If there was interest involved and it would cost more in the long run, you'd have a point, but all this does is give Teaneck more money each year to use for it's residents and tax relief.

The problem is that all of these bills come due, mostly in 2009, and with intrest. Sure it wouldn't have been an election year for Rudolph, even if he was reelected, but taxpayers still have to foot the bill for all the money he pushed off from this years budget. Now you'll be repaying the escrow to cover your higher tax bill and paying even more to cover the bills pushed off from this year. Teaneck hasn't set aside a penny to pay for these bills. We will be the ones footing the double bills from Rudolph's phony budget.

Keith K said...

The problem is that all of these bills come due, mostly in 2009, and with intrest.

Please provide substantiation for these statements. What bills will become due in 2009?

What interest?

If you have proof to the contrary, I'm sure we'd love to see it. Otherwise, I'm sure you can just tell me AGAIN how wrong I am (that doesn't require any proof).

Anonymous said...

Swiggle-

You are responding to a liar, plain and simple.

Why would Feit have helped engineer the tax hold for this year TOGETHER WITH RUDOLPH knowing he would be up for election in 2010if it were nefarious in the way "Marty" keeps asserting?

Anonymous said...

Votee Park Inground Pool REOPENS!
7/7/2008 1:10:00 PM

Votee Park Inground Pool will reopen on Tuesday, July 8th at noon. Many thanks to all residents for your patience.

Please contact admin@teanecknjgov.org with any questions.

Yeshiva Dad said...

Helene Fall gets $160k??? I'm in the wrong business!

Anonymous said...

I hear she puts in long days, works hard and smiles very little.

Anonymous said...

Want a good business?
School superintendent.

Anonymous said...

Please provide substantiation for these statements. What bills will become due in 2009? What interest?

Read the budget.

Where did this money disappear to? Whose lending money interest free? Where can I get some of that free money?

The budget fairy disappeared when Elnatan "Tax Fraud" Rudolph lost the election. Now Teaneck is stuck with the bills from the phony zero budget.

Keith K said...

Anon, I asked you to [p]lease provide substantiation for these statements. What bills will become due in 2009? What interest? and you responded Read the budget.

I have and I'm guessing by your response that you wouldn't have the faintest idea where to go to find the budget.

As far as your retort of:
Where did this money disappear to? Whose lending money interest free? Where can I get some of that free money?, the simple answer is
1) The money didn't disappear, it was debt that was owed (some as a result of settlements).
2) Noone is lending money interest free, it was a payment schedule that was negotiated.
3) If you sue and settle with the Township, you too can enter into a payment plan.

If you go with option 3, may I suggest an accident to your hands so that the rest of us may be spared your pedantic whining until you have a moment to browse through the budget and come up with a thought worthy of discussion.

Anonymous said...

swiggly doesn't have a clue so he begs the question.

swiggly has everyone fooled.

clever clever swiggly

Keith K said...

I simply can't fight an argument like that.

Anonymous said...

So what happened at the first meeting Tuesday night?

Anonymous said...

?

Anonymous said...

I meant the Council meeting.

Anonymous said...

How boring to have nothing on any of the three (recently) active blogs!!

Yeshiva Dad said...

Anon 8:27,
Why don't you start an interesting discussion?

Unfortunately, now that the the elections are over & a new mayor has been chosen there isn't that much controversy around to talk about. Maybe we need to talk about something positive.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure the misogynistic Teaneck Truth can make up some "rumor" about the council meeting to create a bit of controversy.

No doubt his friend swiggly will support whatever nonsense he makes up.