Opinion: Venezia’s Relationship to Board of Health Raises Concerns

by Beth Mersten Cruz

I look forward to working with and supporting either candidate's efforts to improve our town, no matter who wins.  

It's been a hard decision for me to choose a candidate though it's made this local election far more interesting than any other, as this is the first time I've been directly involved enough in town, met with the candidates, attended some council meetings and offered solutions and my help to my township

Everyone needs to make their own informed decisions, so I wanted to share the following that I just learned, as it’s been hard to gather reliable information despite following so many political posts in these groups.

Venezia's campaign treasurer, Kathy Demarino, is also the Vice President of the Board of Health  (BOH) and has been serving for two years, which means she was part of the animal shelter and Memphis debacle.  

This really surprised me because Venezia told me that if he were to perform any forensic audits that he would consider a forensic audit for the BOH and the library, as a forensic audit should only be performed where there is suspicion of a problem to warrant the costs.  

The BOH is the department that I know most about, and it was the major source of mismanagement of funds and more, related to the animal shelter, dismissal of volunteers and the Memphis fiasco.

Now, my specialty is animal shelters and rescue groups. It's the one thing I know really well, so I recognized and saw every mistake made by the BOH, and watched the town council slowly take very limited action on the issues due to strong public pressure. However, our town council still re-appointed BOH members including the head of the board Joel Elkins. Venezia told to me yesterday that he also voted to re-appoint Joel Elkins, because there were few candidates and he was the best qualified. 

Well, I did apply for the BOH, despite all my misgivings about doing so. I think Venezia was genuinely surprised and didn’t remember this. Maybe if Venezia had the chance to appoint different members to the BOH today, he would. Maybe he's learned from his mistakes and sees now things differently.       

I hope so, because he may be our next mayor. However, his choice of campaign treasurer concerns me.    

I still want to say that I really appreciate all the time Mike Venezia has given me to discuss issues and ask him questions. I hope we will work well together if he's elected.