Who would have thought that a retirement party for a hometown hero such as Carli Lloyd could also mean the possible political retirement of the Delran Mayor and or the Council President, but it just might. The 2.5 hour retirement party for Carli Lloyd was planned under the watchful eye of Mayor Gary Catrambone and the Recreation Advisory Committee, who when all is said and done, spent over $100,000 on the party, with a portion being offset, or not, by some questionable donations.

More questions were raised when it was learned that Delran hired a moderator of a popular FB group called Delran Residents 2.0, Wendy Mitchell, who has been censoring the Townships public pages like the old German Kaiser Himself as well as the 2.0 page of any negative comments or posts about the Town government. Mayor Camtrabone claimed that the censorship was completely compliant, but that’s not what the current court precedents nor the ACLU say.

Now more questions arise since we learned the Council President publicly claimed that the town recieved three bids for the two resolutions passed to spend $61,500 for a stage and video screens, yet in the information sent to us from the town in our OPRA requests it only shows they received 2 bids. They also did not pass resolutions for any of the other $29,000 in contracted costs for the event. See the Council Hearing below from 10-5-21 and hear a new citizen who asks questions about the transparency from Council regarding the cost of the event. It was almost like she knew I was coming to ask some of the same questions she had.

The Chairmen of the Recreation Advisory Committee, 21 year old Colin Rafferty, made a claim on FB that the contract for the stage said the balance was to be paid “post event”, but it did not say such a thing. When I pointed out to Colin that the contract did not say what he claimed, he got silent. The contract said the balance was due on 10/14/21, which was the day of the event and not “post event”, as Colin claimed. The only reason Colin is claiming that happened post event is to try and explain why the town lied about the total costs being only $37 633.88 in their responses in the original OPRA requests, when we later found out they were $90,456 plus the police and public works costs that will be well over 100k!

We now wait anxiously for the elected and selected officials, or possibly their Mothers, to answer to the public. Whether they will or not is left to be unanswered, but when Colin Rafferty was questioned about the contract language, he did not answer. No, instead of the guy in control of helping spend the tax payers money explaining himself, his Mother jumped in and wrote “This guy better back off my Son”, in an attempt to protect her baby.

Well, Mom, your baby is making big boy decisions now. If he cannot answer for himself maybe he should think of a new career, because politics is not for the faint of heart and sometimes demands tough answers to tough questions, and not from his Mom.