Not So Special

  When is a special meeting not so special after all?

• When the 5th member of the majority required to call the meeting- the 'deciding vote'- doesn't bother to show.

• When a federal law enforcement agency, the FBI, warns meeting attendees that any new revelations on the investigation will compromise it.

• When the City Council President's motivation appears to be pure vindictiveness; an effort to stain the resumes of 2 young men, Dan Bryan and Juan Melli.  Why? No explanation offered for the targeting of these 2 among the entire staff of City Hall.

Councilman Dave Mello tells us why he walked out:

** For Immediate Release **

Tonight, June 13, 2011, a special meeting of the Hoboken City Council was called by Council President Mason.  The notion was posed to the Council members, in a June 8th memorandum from Councilwoman Mason, that a five member majority of our City Council confirmed the call for this meeting and felt it was needed.  The five members included Councilman Russo, who did not attend this meeting.

Since only four of those five confirming members bothered to show up for the meeting, I made the decision to leave the meeting, as I never felt the meeting was warranted.  Councilwoman Marsh left the meeting at the same time.

Sources tell GA that the two Councilpersons, Mello and Marsh,  departed about midway through the meeting.

As for Peter Cunningham, he attended the Democratic Party Reorganization; his presence there required to vote (which begs the question why Mason would schedule her very, very special meeting at the same time).

And Patch explained Ravi Bhalla's blow-off this way: 

Councilman Ravi Bhalla said he would not be attending the meeting because he was not properly notified and called Mason's request for more information "fairly obnoxious."

Now Ravi, that was awfully restrained of you.  How about saying she's "batshit crazy"?  Tell us what you really think.

So... GA surmises Mason's jihad to wring blood from a stone goes on.

Since no one outside the City Council is privy to executive session discussions, no one knows exactly what went down.  But in the absence of a quorum, the result was a guaranteed big-nothing.

About those emails...

On a related note, in chit-chatting with various individuals here and there, GA found out a couple of facts which make me believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Melli's and Bryan's emails have been BREACHED.  And those on the email-jihad list, such as Roman Brice, Kurt Gardiner and GA are there BECAUSE our emails have been BREACHED.  Here's what I found out:

• City Hall uses web-based email.

• Passwords to access web-based email were assigned by Patrick Ricciardi, the former IT Department head.

Does everybody get that?   That's how EASY it would be to peruse someone else's email account.  Simply log in with their password.

Downloading the emails wouldn't even be required. Everything could be read right off the web. 

Wow.  Although digital fingerprints to the breach would be on the hard drives of the breachers.  So would giving away a City Hall employee's email account access be a leak or a breach?

The end result is the same.

Let's hope the FBI picks up the hard drives at 921 Hudson for a look inside.

To be continued.