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Thursday, December 17, 2015

Vince Foglia Resigns in Williams Township

Vince Foglia
Vince Foglia resigned from Williams Township's Board of Supervisors earlier this week, for personal reasons. It is Vince who spearheaded the drive to re-examine the out-of-control open space grants, in which a certain few have been preserving cliff land and properties that they themselves own. He helped expose abuses in what he calls the "open space industry." Under his guidance the Board rexcinded two open space grants. One of them was a tract owned by a millionaire who had no intention of developing anything.

"It has been an interesting experience," he tells me. I" never thought it would be so difficult to convince folks about the concept of the rule of law. But I should have known when early in my term someone stood up and said 'We've been doing things this way for thirty years, why are you bringing the law into it now?' I found out that he was not alone."

Foglia endured a lot of abuse from members of the Land Preservation Board, who could get pretty ugly when challenged. But he endured.

"I wish the new Board and the Williams Township staff the best," said Foglia. "No matter what you hear, I worked well with the fine Township staff, especially Jen Smethers and Rich Adams with whom I interacted most. We had a running joke that any mistake would result in someone getting fired, because that was the false narrative about me during my election campaign. I made plenty of mistakes myself and took all the jabs. We had mutual respect and some fun."

Rich Adams, incidentally, is a runner against whom I raced many years ago. He made it to Boston. I made it to the refrigerator.
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousDecember 17, 2015 at 7:36 AM

    Vince deserves a lot of credit for making it this long. He had very little support from George Washburn (aka the biggest supervisory disappointment since Bob Doerr).

    Vince exposed a lot of the baloney with the land preservation. I have no doubt they are happy he's gone. I hope that you can continue to put a spotlight on their shenanigans, Bernie.

    Let's also remember that it was Vince who discovered that the landfill was severely out of compliance. He helped put pressure on DEP to make the landfill comply with state and federal laws. These weren't pesky little violations (like odors). There were very serious violations related to air quality.

    Vince also was the one who discovered that the Landfill Business Privilege Tax was still on the books. It's too bad we didn't have Vince on the board back when all of these backroom deals with Chrin were taking place.

    Best of luck to Williams Township. No matter what side of an issue you are on (pro/anti landfill, pipeline, millionaire property preservation), it is important that our elected officials do things in an open manner. I hope that can happen even though Vince is stepping down.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousDecember 29, 2015 at 7:46 PM

    This is the best thing to happen to Williams Township! Mr.Foglia says he's for transparency when it suits him. Ask him about all the law suits that he was part of and lost that were against the township.He cost the tax payers 10's of thousands of dollars and got nothing out of it.
    His whole group is falling apart and this proves it!
    What a great day it is!!!!

    ReplyDelete

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