Public Works

Investigators have found no evidence of wrongdoing at the Gloucester County Department of Public Works following a probe into allegations of overtime abuse and insurance fraud, authorities said yesterday. The investigation was begun "several weeks ago" after an employee told county officials of an overtime scheme. The Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office conducted the investigation. "The claims that they were padding overtime and overcharging an insurance company were unsubstantiated," said Ed Sholinsky, spokesman for the Prosecutor's Office.

The Haddon Heights Council has adopted a set of public works goals for 1987. The goals include improving the public works department's image by starting a public works hotline; resurfacing eight streets; sprucing up recreation facilities and other public property, and analyzing how public works employees and equipment are being used. The council on Tuesday devoted its first work session of the year almost exclusively to discussion of how to improve municipal services. Council president Edward Fitzgerald, chairman of council's public works committee, initiated the discussion on ways to improve the public works department's relations with the public.

The Haddon Heights Borough Council yesterday voted to appoint a borough police sergeant as public works superintendent, after deciding not to reappoint the man who had held the job for the last seven years. Mayor August A. Longo said the $31,000 post held by James Funkhouser, 55, since 1980 would be filled by Sgt. James Young. The replacement of Funkhouser is effective immediately, said the mayor. In an interview after the vote to dismiss Funkhouser, Longo called the former public works superintendent a "true gentleman and a very hard worker, who brought the department up to a point, but we've got to move it beyond that point.

By Jonah Goldberg It took 410 days to build the Empire State Building, and four years to erect the Golden Gate Bridge. The Pentagon took a year and a half, and the Alaska Highway just nine months. These days, it takes longer to build an overpass. For instance, planning for Boston's "Big Dig" officially began in the early 1980s with a budget of $2.6 billion, but ground wasn't broken until 1991, and the last ramp wasn't opened until 2006. The final estimated cost: $22 billion. According to the Boston Globe, it won't be paid off until 2038.

The Pemberton Township Committee, dissatisfied with the results of a county grand jury investigation of the town's public works department, has decided to reconvene its own investigation. Township officials, who estimated that up to $100,000 worth of property had been misappropriated by public works employees, said they were unhappy that the grand jury investigation had focused only on public works administrators. During a long meeting that began Friday night, the four members of the five-member committee who remained at the meeting decided early Saturday to try to determine if other employees were involved in the theft of township property.

The public works chief of Camden fired while he was helping a corruption probe of his department has filed a federal lawsuit, claiming Mayor Arnold W. Webster and other city officials punished him for being honest. Carl Bowles of Tinton Falls in Monmouth County said in the suit that city leaders violated his freedom of speech, defamed him and violated the New Jersey statute created to protect whistleblowers. Bowles' attorney, Linda B. Kenney of Red Bank, has asked the court to restore her client's back pay and award him compensatory and punitive damages.

Monroe Township police are investigating a break-in at the public works building last weekend that resulted in more than $5,000 in damage and the theft of shop equipment valued at thousands of dollars. According to police, the building on U.S. Route 322 was entered sometime between Friday night and 9 a.m. Saturday. "They just trashed everything they could," Public Works Director V. James Agnesino said. "Things they could've stolen, they just damaged. It was a vindictive thing.

The police and public works departments in Whitpain Township have joined forces to deter the dumping of household trash along public roads in the township. During the supervisors' meeting Monday night, public works director Ron Cione said random dumping of garbage bags, sofas and automobile parts on neighborhood streets had increased steadily over the last year. In addition to the smell and the mess, the debris from open bags often ends up in underground drains and causes road flooding, he said.

The Voorhees Township Committee approved a new contract with the township's 36 public works employees Monday night. Under the contract's provisions, the township's blue-collar workers will get a 3.5 percent raise retroactive to Jan. 1, 1991, and a 5 percent raise retroactive to Jan. 1 of this year, according to Charles F. Mann Jr., Voorhees Township administrator. Although the contract covers a two-year period, it will expire on Dec. 31, only 3 1/2 months after the Township Committee accepted it. The previous contract expired at the end of 1990.

West Chester Borough Council is looking to the public works department for potential budget cuts should its appeal of the gross receipts tax be rejected. Planned road and parking improvements may be shelved, and personnel decisions may be delayed, finance committee chairman Richard Fazio said Tuesday. The department's budget could be cut by as much as $100,000 for salaries and equipment to ease a $200,000 budget deficit should the appeal be rejected. Fazio was to present a list of potential budget cuts at a meeting last night.

For John Davis, it was a dream winter - over by Halloween. That would have been just after a freak Oct. 29 storm of heavy, wet snow collapsed tree limbs, ripped down power lines, and set Davis and his public-works colleagues throughout the region to worrying: Here we go again. But after back-to-back brutal winters, neither Davis nor his peers or the best minds of meteorology imagined that that storm would be the worst of the "winter" of 2011-12. "Ordinarily you spend the winter plowing or getting ready for plowing," said Davis, borough manager in Doylestown, where tight streets and well-used sidewalks make snow removal an adventure.

WASHINGTON - The White House is focusing on reelection themes such as jobs and public-works projects in President Obama's new budget blueprint while relying on familiar but never enacted tax increases on the wealthy and corporations to reduce future deficits after four years of trillion dollar-plus shortfalls. Obama's 2013 budget, set for release Monday, is the official start to an election-year budget battle with Republicans. It's unlikely to result in a genuine effort to address the $15 trillion national debt or the entrenched deficits that keep piling onto it. But it will serve as the Democrats' party-defining template on this year's election stakes.

Cinnaminson Mayor Don Brauckmann worried fleetingly that a snowless winter could turn a $50,000 sledding hill he championed last summer into a punch line. It could be like the snow drought he jokes about causing when, eight years ago, he bought his snowblower. Then, on Saturday, a few flakes tumbled from the sky, and scores of children flocked to the new 35-foot hill at Memorial Park in the Burlington County community. It did not matter that with only two inches of snow cover, the slope - created from recycled compost and discarded soil - quickly turned into a patchwork of flakes and mud. "It was a blast," Brauckmann said, conceding that he took a test drive on his trusty sled.

By Bill Bonvie The depiction of a knock-off Statue of Liberty on the U.S. Postal Service's new "forever" stamp has been called a "case of mistaken identity. " But the substitution of a Las Vegas casino's replica for the actual icon in New York Harbor couldn't be more symbolically suited to the United States of today. A century ago, that welcoming statue might well have represented the aspirations of those tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, who believed this country offered everyone a chance to strive for a decent standard of living.

Evelyn Keyser, 88, a renowned sculptor, died of heart disease Sunday, Feb. 13, at Rydal Park Retirement Community. Mrs. Keyser's mostly wood sculptures have been represented in national and regional exhibitions, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and in a one-woman show in 1984 at the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia. In 1988, Inquirer art critic Victoria Donohoe wrote: "Keyser imparts a lyrical freshness to her carved wooden figures.

Regarding former Sheriff John Green's $101,568 yearly pension and his soon-to-be-received lump-sum payment from the city DROP program of $331,744, it is long past time to say, "Enough is enough" ("Philadelphia Sheriff Green quits; successor nominated," Tuesday). We - Philadelphians, Pennsylvanians, Americans - can no longer afford to pay our government workers such large salaries, benefits, and pensions. We, the private sector, create the wealth - a fact that should never be forgotten in the coming battle over the country's long-term economic health.

A suspended Gloucester Township public works employee was convicted Thursday of charges stemming from an incident involving the caging and racial taunting of a coworker three years ago, authorities said. Township resident David T. Pomianek, 32, was found guilty of harassment, bias intimidation, and official misconduct after six hours of jury deliberations, the Camden County Prosecutor's Office said. Pomianek and coworker Michael Dorazo Jr., 30, were accused of luring Steven Brodie Jr., an African American colleague, into a caged area 17 feet off the ground, used for storing equipment in the township public works building on Erial Road.

By Jonah Goldberg It took 410 days to build the Empire State Building, and four years to erect the Golden Gate Bridge. The Pentagon took a year and a half, and the Alaska Highway just nine months. These days, it takes longer to build an overpass. For instance, planning for Boston's "Big Dig" officially began in the early 1980s with a budget of $2.6 billion, but ground wasn't broken until 1991, and the last ramp wasn't opened until 2006. The final estimated cost: $22 billion. According to the Boston Globe, it won't be paid off until 2038.

The biggest projects in Philadelphia construction are winding down, and contractors are scrambling to stay busy as high-rise proposals such as Cira South and the American Commerce Center remain stalled for lack of tenants and financing. The quarter-billion-dollar renovation of the Depression-era 30th Street Post Office has come in "on time and under budget," owner Brandywine Real Estate Trust said last week. The Internal Revenue Service is moving 5,000 workers to the block-long monument, vacating its old home at 11501 Roosevelt Blvd.

Vincent L. Buondonno, 78, of Mount Laurel, a former Camden police officer who went on to lead a local labor union representing public works and white-collar clerical employees for more than 20 years, died of lung cancer Wednesday at his home. A quick thinker, Mr. Buondonno always had an answer ready for any question or argument, his sister Rose Marie Davis said. Had it not been for a newspaper advertisement, Mr. Buondonno might have been a lawyer on the other end of labor negotiations and left no legacy as a Teamsters Local 676 leader.