Jason O'Grady's Blog

You may already be familiar with a letter that I sent to Northfield about corruption in the City’s Building Department. If you’re not, I encourage you to read the letter.

I wrote the letter because I had heard that the Building Department was conducting a covert investigation of me and my residence in an attempt to get “dirt” on me because I am running for City Council. The problem with it is that salaries of city employees is paid for by taxpayers (you and I) and is supposed to be bipartisan and neutral.

In addition to spreading lies about me being an illegal renter (which Mr. Jim Dickinson in the Building Department told me to my face) and being ineligible to run for office, Northfield employees were digging through city archives looking for building permits about my Geothermal installation in my home, which was featured in The Current.

I caught them in the act when I stopped into the Building Department one day to address the lies that were being spread about my residency status. Sitting out on the counter in the Building Department was a copy of my the Building Permit issued for the Geothermal heating system installed at my home in 1999. That’s right, an eight year old building permit for my residence happened to be sitting on the counter waiting to be picked up. What a coincidence!

When I asked Jim Dickinson who requested it, he lied to my face and said that he “didn’t know.” Um, right.

Did I mention that Jim Dickinson is the Treasurer of the Northfield Republican Club?

When the City Administrator investigated the issues brought up in my letter, Mr. Dickinson immediately “lawyered up” and had union representation at the meeting. His response? The building permit wasn’t there!

Jim Dickinson lied to the City Administrator.

I know what I saw and I saw a copy of the building permit for my residence sitting on the counter. Mr. Dickinson fears losing his taxpayer funded cushy job because of his deception, lies and his use of municipal resources for political gain. He may have been able to lie to the Administrator, but a lot of other people are aware of what he did and are starting to pay attention.

I would like to see a full investigation of the security tapes from the hallway outside the Building Department between August 22 and September 24 to see if that helps Mr. Dickinson “remember” who requested a copy of my building permit.
I have my theories about who is behind this heinous taxpayer-funded witch hunt, but you be the judge. Here’s a time line:

- A certain “green” resident of Northfield and member of the Republican Party Executive Committee gets some PR in The Press and on HGTV about his solar panels. He also calls certain radio programs every day to boast about his solar panels.

- A nice piece written about the Geothermal heating and cooling system in my house in The Current on August 22, 2007. (Geothermal is a renewable energy source and very environmentally friendly. Dare I say that it’s “green?”)

- Many Northfield residents read The Current and probably read the story about me.

- A couple of days later I hear rumblings that I am being smeared and covertly investigated by members of the Northfield Building Department that are also on the Republican Party Executive Committee.

I can’t prove who was investigating me on the taxpayers dime, but I have my suspicions… Stay tuned.

City workers should should be bipartisan and impartial, especially when our taxes are paying their salary. I’m wondering why the Building Department has so much extra time on their hands that they can conduct investigations of private citizens?

With my opponent’s recent rash of lies and slander about me and my family I’m left to wonder who’s running the ship at the Northfield Republican Club?

The Northfield Republican Club has endorsed Mr. O’Neill as their Second Ward candidate and have taken out numerous ads with the headline “Leadership for Today. Vision for Tomorrow.”

Is Mr. O’Neill’s idea of “Leadership” lying to The Current about his record, lying to The Press of Atlantic City about me, or lying to his neighbors? How many other times has he lied?

The other Northfield Republicans have been suspiciously quiet about their candidate lately…

What about the rest of the Republicans on City Council? Do they endorse Jim (Mr. Negative) O’Neill for City Council?

Guilty by association?

Next up: I’ll take a hard look at the Northfield Building Department.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on the campaign trail these past few months and I was very troubled by a few things that I heard on the street last night.

• One resident in Sutton Woods told me that Mr. O’Neill promised to “reduce their property taxes by 15 percent.”
• Others told me that he was telling everyone in Dunkin Donuts at New and Tilton Road that I run “a porn site.”

When is Mr. O’Neill going to realize that no one wants to hear his lies? His negative campaign is the worst that Northfield has ever seen and even his own party is distancing themselves from him.

Welcome new readers, please be sure to bookmark this site and come back every day.

I want to comment on Mr. O’Neill’s comments this morning on the Hurley show.

• Timeline of posts. I posted the Mission Accomplished piece because O’Neill lied to The Current saying that he’s “accomplished” making Northfield green (his words) and because he was the only candidate to bash another candidate in an article that was supposed to be about his platform and him. Poor form Mr. O’Neill, no one appreciates a negative politician.
• “I don’t want to be on his site.” Mr. O’Neill complained that he doesn’t want to be on my blog. As a public figure Mr. O’Neill doesn’t have a choice. Second, the photo I posted is his publicity photo that he submitted to the newspaper. My opponent may want to read up on my post about the First Amendment.
• Objectionable content. When it was brought to my attention that I had a picture on my blog from two years ago that someone found objectionable, I removed it immediately. What did Mr. O’Neill do? He printed out dozens of copies and brought it to a Pee Wee sports team that he coaches and handed it out. That’s right, he handed out what he considered objectionable content at a Pee Wee game.
• Positive campaign? Mr. O’Neill accuses me of running a “porn site.” (this site). As you can tell, nothing could be further from the truth. This isn’t the first time Mr. O’Neill has lied to the newspaper either.

The Republican Party of Northfield has endorsed Jim O’Neill for City Council. This is the candidate that they think will best represent them. Do you? It’s a real shame that the Northfield Republicans (many of which I am very fond of) have put their eggs in Mr. O’Neill’s basket.

Mr. O’Neill has lied to the newspaper not once but twice and is running the most negative campaign in Northfield’s history. I think that Mr. O’Neill should withdraw from the campaign before he drags the rest of the Republican ticket with him.

One thing that I find ironic is that my opponent in the upcoming election for City Council Mr. Jim O’Neill, found a picture that I posted on my blog over two years ago highly objectionable, so what did he do with it?

He took it to his pee wee game, where he is a coach (!) and he distributed it at the game. Besides the fact that this is an obvious cheap shot at discrediting me, he took what he considered to be an objectionable photo and distributed it at pee wee game with lots of young children around.

Say what you will about the picture, but would you distribute it at a pee wee game? I think that Mr. O’Neill should have used better judgment in this case. Is this the kind of person that you want representing you in City Hall? Should he be coaching your children?
Northfield is the city that I love and a city that I’m proud of. I want to be on City Council to keep Northfield great.

Welcome to my blog. I’d like to show you around a little.

A blog is defined as:

a publication of personal thoughts, experiences, and web links. It is updated frequently and is usually a mixture of what is happening in a person’s life and what is happening on the Web or in the media.

This is my personal blog, it hasn’t really been read that much–until recently I’m also a professional blogger by day, blogging daily about Macs and mobile technology for 12 years. My professional blogs are O’Grady’s PowerPage and The Apple Core. I encourage you to read them.

I am also running for City Council in the Second Ward of Northfield, NJ and President of the Democratic Party of Northfield.

Recently many lies have been spoken about me and my blog in an attempt to discredit me, but it’s all for political gain. It’s all part of my opponents bag of dirty tricks that they’re famous for.

One thing’s for sure, voters are more intelligent than that. They know how to read and they don’t like dirty politicians and dirty politics. I encourage you to read my blogs for yourself and to make up your own mind. Don’t let a desperate politician who can’t run on his own merit tell you how to vote. Read, educate yourself, and decide for yourself.

The Democratic Party is all about Northfield. We’d want to get the speeding problem under control, keep our kids safe and control spending. We love open space and we want to keep Northfield green.

Thanks for reading and come back often, things are going to heat up around here the next week or so.

In an unfortunate turn of events, my opponent in the race for Northfield’s 2nd Ward City Council seat slandered me today in the Press of Atlantic City.

The reporter, Linda Cohen, was calling candidates to get information on our background, bio and platform for a piece in the Press of A.C. about the local Northfield candidates–pretty standard stuff.

Rather than talk about himself and his record, Mr. O’Neill use the opportunity to slander me and my family name saying to the reporter “he’s got a porn site.”

Ms. Cohen latched onto Mr. O’Neill’s allegation and published the story in the newspaper under the headline “Northfield candidate accused of running ‘porn site’”

Obviously nothing could be further from the truth. Please read through my alleged “porn site” (yes, this site) and come to your own conclusions.

This appears to be a pattern of negativity for Mr. O’Neill.

When he was contacted by The Current newspaper for the usual bio and background piece, Mr. O’Neill was the only candidate to bash someone else–in a piece that was supposed to be about him!

What’s worse is that he also used that article as an opportunity to lie about his record, boasting that he’s already “accomplished” making Northfield green.

Nobody likes a negative campaign Mr. O’Neill and you took the opportunity to slander my family name in the newspaper or record.