Campaign contribution questions have now come to Royal Palm Beach. Everyone heard a lot about them in November, and now even in this little village. Contributions to political campaigns are public record, and I found that those of local candidates can easily be viewed right at Village Hall.
The record shows that Councilwoman Martha Webster has contributions with addresses outside of the village at about 80 percent, challenger David Swift has outside contributions of about 80 percent, and challenger Justin Sallenbach has outside contributions of about the same. Vice Mayor Fred Pinto gave himself $10,000. Since I do not know how such things normally go, I decided to take a look at the RPB race last year, and what I found was that Mayor Matty Mattioli had outside contributions of about 85 percent and the new Councilman Jeff Hmara had outside contributions of almost 90 percent or more.
So that says that the village is poor, cheap or uninterested in elections and the process, or believes that all those signs, T-shirts and items in your mailbox are free. I would go further and say that from what I have just learned, if anyone is planning on running a political campaign anywhere, they better be rich or have a way of convincing others to help.
Jen Weiler
Royal Palm Beach
