I find it frustrating that although Edison is the 5th or 6th largest town in the state only real local reporting we see unfortunately revolves around bashing our police department, which at one point was  rightfully deserved, but now consists of a lot of rehashing of past misdeeds. It’s a sad situation when the weekly paper, E/M Sentinel, is the only meaningful source that regularly reports on the town.

Perhaps if the press did more reporting on Edison beyond rehashing the old news stories of Edison’s police department you would realize the folly of former Mayor Toni Ricigliano’s op-ed.

Once elected, Ricigliano proceeded to further politicize our already politicized police department and with the help of Bill Stephens proceeded to mismanage our town throughout their tenure.

I’m sure Ricigliano is a nice lady, a great mother, was probably a good school teacher but she was outright incompetent as mayor.

Now she wants us to vote for Keith Hahn, who’s only available to run for mayor on the Republican line because of his offending actions as the towns democratic chair. Is Ricigliano’s endorsement sour grapes or another example of limited vision?

Between the eight years of chaos and infighting brought to residents by our last two mayors, Choi and Ricigliano, Mayor Lankey has been a welcome relief. He’s a gentlemen, he listens and I think he’s made the town better.

Edison’s a company town. Unfortunately, lots of strange unexplainable things go on, but they’ve been going on well before the most recent administrations of Choi, Ricigliano and Lankey.

Choi was at least smart and we can thank him for at least attempting to bring new direction and  leadership into the police department and maybe change their culture. Again he was smart but ineffective because he didn’t know how to work with others.

The Ricigliano administration was in over their heads. Don’t know if it was Ricigliano, Stephens or both but somehow any police department progress ended with lots of lawsuits.

Prior to Lankey previous administrations delayed the Hartz redevelopment site for so long that to this day the development is a shadow of what we anticipated. Who knows how much that indecision cost us in lost revenues.

At least now under Lankey our streets are being paved again, streets are being swept again and ratable’s are up as a result of major commercial projects that have taken place during 4 years Lankey has been mayor.

As to candidate Hahn. Did he play Edison politics denying that committee woman the chance to keep her seat or was it a simple unintentional error? Why would Hahn pose for that picture with Donald Trump? Still can’t be positive of whether or not he’s one of the good Edison cops or one of the bad apples, but either way what would be the impact of an Edison policeman as mayor have on the police dept?

I think last time I emailed your publication was when you were touting councilwoman Shahs potential. In that correspondence I invited u to attend some of the council meetings or watch them on the internet and see what I saw – someone who was intelligent but appeared lazy rarely prepared.

We need more help to be better citizens. We’re not really getting it from the press.

Thanks for your efforts.

Regards,

Bruce Diamond
Edison NJ