Mayoral Candidate Jeff Varnerin Gambles with Lies and Loses

Lies never pay, Jeff!

This year was one year that I really wanted to vote straight line republican, “red wave”, and that is what I planned to do, UNTIL Mayoral Candidate Jeff Varnerin ran political ads based on outright lies.  

Jeff Varnerin blamed Mayor Angie Devanney for the problems with the Municipal Complex and with the 1408 new apartments being built around Berkeley Heights.   This was all a lie.   In reality Mr Varnerin’s 2 running mates, Jeanne Kingsley and Manuel Couto were the ones that were in complete control of all aspects of the overpriced and badly built mess of a Municipal Building project and the over-development of our downtown.  

This is not the first time that Jeff Varnerin acted classlessly for what appears to be political reasons. On the first day that Mayor Angie took office, during a Jan 1 mostly ceremonial meeting, on literally the day that Mayor Angie was named Mayor, Jeff Varnerin shamelessly attacked Mayor Angie in front of her family and friends.

Then seemingly desperate for political power, Jeff Varnerin donated $10,000 of his own money to his campaign to win a seat that has minimal pay. ( Why so desperate Jeff?)   Then this latest action, choosing to lie about the problems that his own running mates caused, blaming Mayor Angie for what were clearly his running mates’ faults.   

Here are the details:

Jeff Varnerin’s running mate Jeanne Kingsley was the driving force of the Municipal Building project.   At the time her group of political friends had full control over the project.   This group forced the project through and disallowed the resident’s request for the most expensive project in Berkeley Heights history to be put up for a referendum.   They claimed that the residents wanted all of this development.  This group also decided to bypass the normal bidding process which allowed them to hand select the developer and the project management for the project.

Jeanne Kingsley was the ONLY elected representative that hand selected the developers and management team.   Both of these seemed to have completely fleeced the town leaving us with a broken building and lawsuits.    Manuel Couto, Jeff Varnerin’s other running mate voted for all aspects of the building.  

Jeanne Kingsley and Manuel Couto were directly asked if they thought the developers were fleecing the town and they said no.   But I guess they changed their minds when Jeff Varnerin, Jeanne Kingsley and Manuel Couto blamed Mayor Angie for the developers fleecing the town. 

This wasn’t enough,  Jeff Varnerin and his team spread the rumor that Mayor Angie, was responsible for all of the development around town.  Yet again it was Jeanne Kingsley who bragged about how apartments are the future of Berkeley Heights. Her running mate, Robert “Crooked Woody” Woodruff went as far to state that that the residents of Berkeley Heights wanted all of this redevelopment.   Again both Jeanne Kingsley and Manuel Couto voted for all of these new apartments, and to hand out tens of millions of dollars in incentives for them to be built, in the form of PILOTs ( Taxpayer subsidized tax abatements used as  incentives ) .  

Both the apartments and the municipal building were done deals prior to Mayor Angie taking office, in fact it was the major reason why she won that year. 

On Tuesday there was a referendum on Mr Varnerin’s lies.   The residents proved to have a longer memory than Mr Varnerin gave them credit for and the residents voted against Jeff’s lies by a significant amount. Mr Varnerin lost by over 13.5% .  Berkeley Heights residents voted overwhelmingly for Mayor Angie, even though others on Mr Varnerin’s Ticket did well.   This is clear proof that the residents of Berkeley Heights reject Mr Varnerin’s lies.

After this round of lies by Councilman Jeff Varnerin, Mr Varnerin should drop out of the Council and apologize to Mayor Angie and the town.

-Edmund Tom Maciejewski