The results were in for the Township Committee election. Ryan and Leventhal, the Democratic encumbents, had a clear victory over the Republican challengers, Bart Albini and Bob Perez.

[The vote tally was: 4,908 for Leventhal, 4,845 for Ryan, 2,011 for Perez, and 1,940 for Albini.]

But there were no concession speeches from Albini and Perez when the two returned to Les Saisons Bed & Breakfast after watching the results come in at Town Hall. 

Said Bob Perez: "I offer no congratulations to our opponents who did not even have the repect for the people of Maplewood to campaign." Perez called Leventhal and Ryan's re-election a "knee-jerk" vote along party lines by the voters of Maplewood that would allow the Township Committee to continue to "overspend, overtax and overburden the Town and was an approbation to build possibly 200 condominium apartments. The combination will undermine the stability of the Town and erode the neighborhoods."

"We are not going to go away," continued Perez. "We are going to form a committee to make sure the Township Committee represents the interests of the citizens of Maplewood and not individual political interests."

Supporters of Albini and Perez at Les Saisons comforted themselves with the fact that, despite a Democrat to Republican voter registration rate of nearly 9 to 1, the Democratic encumbents won by a margin of 2 to 1. Maplewood Republican Club president Art Christensen demonstrated that Albini and Perez were closing the gap on Democratics by losing by a smaller margin than Christensen and running mate Mark Gardner did in 2002 [in 2002, Fred Profeta won 5,508 votes, Ian Grodman won 5,113 votes, Christensen garnered 1,708 votes and Gardner got 1,621 votes].

At this rate, joked Christensen, "we should pull even by the year 2150."

"By then," said Bob Perez, "the town will be gone."

Later, Perez reiterated, "We're not done."

"No, we're not," answered Albini. "We are not done being a thorn in the side of the Township Committee. We're going to use our website to publish the detailed municipal and board of education budgets. And it will be in Xcel so you can play with the numbers."

Albini went on to talk about the more than $4 million that the Town has bonded in 2009, and took this Patch editor through a tour of his Excel speadsheets of the municipal budget, broken down by departments. Albini demonstrated areas where he contended the budget needed to be more transparent and were he felt accounting practices needed to be improved or changed.

But back to the bonded amounts: Albini lamented, "What if the state instills another tax cap. How many more employees and services will be cut?"