Another Mystery

As the padlocked IT office at City Hall and missing videographer/IT Department head, Patrick Ricciardi, remain at the center of a mystery that's got tongues wagging all over town, GA recalls another  strange episode involving Mr. Ricciardi.

In addition to taping City Council meetings, Ricciardi used to be the BoE videographer.  Used to be. 

What happened?

He was fired by then-Interim Superintendent Peter E. Carter in December 2009. Here's the story.

Back in 2009,  the (new) Kids First majority hired an auditor to comb through the 2008 BoE budget and expenditures;  the audit results were to be presented at the November 17th, 2009 meeting.  In addition, Mr. Carter was going to present NJ ASK test score results at the same meeting.  Both were unprecedented in recent BoE history;  they were Kids First initiatives to bring transparency to the BoE and 'clean house'.

Well, guess what?  The audit turned up a heap of 'irregularities'- which is putting it nicely.

Excerpts from nj.com's Nov. 20th article, "Scathing Audit of Hoboken Board of Education Finds More Than Two Dozen Irregularities"

Auditors released a scathing audit of the Hoboken Board of Education Tuesday that cited more than two dozen irregularities, including the misuse of candy-sale funds, incorrect approval of overtime and the payment of administrators out of funds meant for instructors.

“It was just shocking,” said Board of Education trustee Maureen Sullivan.

In a random sampling, auditors found two cases in which funds raised by students through candy sales and other activities were used to reimburse teachers for stolen iPods – to the tune of $400 each.

In addition, overtime was being improperly approved by consultants, instead of employees, auditor Dieter Lerch said at Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting.

Auditors also found that stipends to several employees were either not approved by the board or did not have other necessary documentation. Sullivan said in most of those cases the work was likely being done, despite the lack of documentation, but that interim Superintendent Peter E. Carter said he would conduct a thorough investigation to make sure.

In other findings, several administrators were being paid out of funds designated for instructors, the purchases for janitorial and that office and other supplies were not put out for public bid when they should have been.

But the most egregious aspect of the report, in Sullivan’s view, was that 20 of the recommendations were also on last year’s report and were apparently not rectified.

“If an auditor tells you you’re to do these things you do them,” she said. “Nobody was minding the store.”

Get it, folks?  Before Kids First took over, the BoE coffers were a veritable grab bag of goodies for the 'old guard'.

And now, an auditor had uncovered massive 'irregularities' that were going to be presented to the public at the meeting on November 17th. To be recorded by then-videographer Patrick Ricciaridi and televised on Channel 77.  Guess what happened?

The Channel 77 broadcast aired with the audit presentation and test score presentation MISSING.

That's right.  I remember watching the whole damned thing on Channel 77, waiting for the audit and...nothing.

Here's a lettter from a Hoboken Journal reader that was posted there on December 2, 2009:

Thought I would bring to your attention, an issue of contention for some time. The BOE videos seem to have been edited.

This was a common occurrence with the last administration and prior board. Now it seems it continues. Instead of starting from the beginning and ending at the end,, it starts with the Committee Reports and ends with Closed Session. 3 major parts have been left out -The audit presentation, the test score presentation and the taping of any voting that may or may not have taken place, after closed session.

I have contacted the KF board members as well as the administration. They were shocked to hear of this as they worked diligently to present this to the public and were finally able to get the meetings aired consistently on ch. 78.

There may be many reasons for the editing to occur, but my strong hypothesis would be that someone does not want those reports presented--and it certainly was not Mr. Carter nor KF, as this was the first time scores were presented and a thorough explanation of the audit given.

Here's a graphic I did for that HJ piece:

Yep, he's back from the dead!  Or else...

Funny business at the BoE.  Here's the explanation Ricciardi offered to Carter:

Apparently, the video problems are part of a code issue although still retaining the audio portion. Unfortunately software tools from the hard disk manufacturer for the special hardware were not successful in fixing the video corruption. Another source confirmed to us via email that Patrick had conveyed concern about the video problems a couple of days after the meeting. The hard drive in the cartridge mechanism, approximately 170 GB goes back to 2007. It is used for every single city event.

The problem with that explanation is.... audio of the missing portion was found.  Only the visual part  was missing.  The videographer had turned off the 'camera' during those portions of the meeting, but not the audio component.

The conclusion:  audio was restored to the Channel 77 broadcast- the screen goes black for those portions, so you can HEAR the audit and test score presentations, you just can't SEE them. 

And Ricciardi was fired.

So, one wonders after this happened, why was he kept on staff at City Hall?  City Council taping 'irregularities' have been noticed as recently as the meeting before last, when a chunk of Mike Lenz' remarks were edited out.

And guess what?

As head of IT, of course Ricciardi would have access to City Hall's servers and email server.  Betcha Mason already has a pile of emails she's waiting to spring on Hoboken411-  her screw-loose Resolution is just cover.

That's my theory, anyway.  

How much do you want to bet it's true?