Fact Checking Matt Czajkowski's Web Site

The first statement you find on Matt Czajkowski's web site is:

"It is very clear that the property tax burden has become unsustainable. Many of the very people who have contributed to making Chapel Hill a special place are now being forced to consider leaving our town, counter to our cherished goal of preserving diversity at all levels."

Being an engineer and a numbers person I wondered two things.  What was the data used to support the statement that diversity in the town was declining and, if so, what is the basis for connecting this to the property tax?

Each year the school district publishes a report that provides ethnicity data for the pupils.  Here is the data for 2001 to 2008 in percentages

                             Asian                Hispanic              Black             White

2001                       9.1                      5.9                     15.7               66.0

2002                       10.0                    6.4                      15.3              64.4

2003                       10.5                    7.5                      15.3              62.3

2004                       11.0                    8.3                      14.8              61.2

2005                       11.7                    8.7                      14.3             60.4

2006                       12.1                    9.6                      14.1             58.6

2007                       12.7                    9.7                      14.0             57.8

2008                       13.5                   10.4                     13.7             56.0

I would submit that this data is fairly indicative of the populaiton of the town and not a compelling data set to show that our town is becoming less diverse in any measurable way.  Furthermore, our mayor and town council have been very successful over the last few years in maintaining services with only modest tax increases. 

Am I missing something?

Issues: 

Comments

I'm sure Chapel Hill's voters are plenty smart enough to evaluate the significance of a dismissed lawsuit.

If you sell your house to build a new one, terrible; if you change your mind and buy it back at a loss, really terrible.  Then loosely link it to one of who knows how many corp. court cases working through the system and we see your standard of evaluation.Yep, there's smoke and it's produced by what some of you are smoking. A new low for sure, even for you Mark.  But remember Bill Strom?  Did the media perform to your standards on that?

The plain language meaning of the Order and Opinion does not seem difficult to discern.  

The extent of plaintiffs’ allegations of insider trading is that four of Pozen’s officers owned and sold stock during a three-year period and that because of their positions in the company they must have known some adverse non-public information at some unstated time during the same period. 

For those looking for the short explanation, you can stop there.  Matt C. sold some stock options during a three period as CFO for Pozen and two of Pozen's drugs were not granted FDA approval.  No need to provide any more facts than that to file a lawsuit.   Dismissal with prejudice is what happens when you make such frivolous claims, as explained in footnote 4.  

If you wanted to know what the $425,000 was from, it is also not difficult to find:

Plaintiffs allege that Defendant Czajkowski was granted 187,500 options to purchase Pozen stock during the relevant period and that he sold 25,000 shares for proceeds of $425,000. (Consol. Derivative Compl. ¶ 19.) Plaintiffs give no indication of what percentage of Czajkowski’s total ownership of Pozen stock the 25,000 shares constituted. The Amended Complaint does not specifically state what adverse non-public information Czajkowski possessed at the time of sale. Plaintiffs simply claim that “[b]ecause of his position” in the company, Czajkowski knew of adverse non-public information about the business of Pozen, as well as finances, markets and present and future business prospects, via access to internal corporate documents, conversations and connections with other corporate officers and employees, attendance at management meetings and via reports and other information provided to him in connection therewith.

Here is what the judge has to say about investors in drug companies and the NDA (new drug application) process: 

Investors in pharmaceutical companies, especially those engaged in research and development, should know that FDA approval is not easy to obtain and that there are often setbacks and rejections in the application process as well as clinical failures. Only by going through the NDA process can a drug company know specifically the concerns the FDA has concerning a particular drug application.

It seems plainly obvious that there already is a public explanation of Matt C's (non) role in the matter.  If more details are needed, go to Hillsborough and read the complaint and reply, which are also public documents. 

By the way, the link on ncbusinesscourt.net does not indicate who the judge was.  Anyone know?  

The complain alleged insider trading by Matt. The judge said the complaint had to make specific allegations about the directors. Matt was not a director. The judge found that the plaintiffs made only generalized allegations. The judge also dismissed the complaint with prejudice (meaning it can not be re-filed) because the plaintiff lawyers failed to first ask the board of directors to act, as required by Delaware law (it was a Delaware corporation). Perhaps if the lawyers had bothered to do their job we might have found out what actually went on, but as I read the judge's opinion he was no impressed with the case AND ASSUMED FOR THE PURPOSE OF HIS DECISION THAT ALL THE ALLEGATIONS WERE TRUE, which is the way a motion to dismiss is evaluated.  I have no earthly idea whether Matt did right or wrong, but the case proves nothing other than he made a lot of money.

at the support that Matt Cz is getting when you factor in that he is a relative newcomer to town, didn't vote or attend a council meeting before he ran in 2007, and comes out of the Wall St. culture that ran the country into a ditch.

In 2009,  the citizens of Chapel Hill want change here... I hope to be part of that change.

I suppose the word "change" can be used to refer to any anti-incumbent movement.  However, I think any reasoned intrepretation of the national vote in 2008 would be "change" away from the conversative policies and viewpoints.  I don't see how any of the anti-incumbent candidates in this race can attempt to identify with this anti-conversative shift.

What culture did Bill Strom come from?  Many of us who pay CH taxes realize that somebody needs to have fiscal management skills if we are going to maintain our QOL for our diverse population. Blame Wall Street all you want but at least ack. that there is plenty of blame to share.

There are some people think that Chapel Hill has been run into a ditch relative to how it used to be too.

Oh, and Carrboro too.  I don't live there, but since people in Carrboro don't hesitate to comment about Chapel Hill, I figure fair is fair. And while we're on the topic, why are Chapel Hill and Carrboro still separate entities again, other than that people with political power never give it up willingly and always use it to benefit themselves to the detriment of others?

and for that matter why are the US and Canada separate entities? We could instantly get better health care.  Why was Durham County separated from Orange County in 1878? Who was behind that?

Well, on second thought, maybe not...

Good overview? Really gotta love this kind of objective reporting where we get candidates labelled as "openly gay, unabashed liberal,"  "lone dissenter," "invisible man," and "No. 1 enemy of  the  ACLU." It's some of the best advertising available. What I don't understand about any of the mayoral discussions is the omission of the leadership factor. As I understand the function of mayor, it is more about leading the staff and council through process facilitation than in staking out policy positions. Kevin Foy has become masterful in that role over the past 8 years. But he didn't start out that way. Can any or all of the 4 mayoral candidates achieve that same level of mastery? To me it depends on their motivation and their commitment to transparent government and to listening to the entire populace, not just those who align with the mayor's beliefs.

It's also very important that the Mayor have a thorough understanding of the community, its history, important policy discussions of the last couple of decades, and key changes that have occurred over the last few decades. Obviously, there is no substitute for having been there.

Mark, thanks for posting the link to the Indy Article.  While I am happy to see that the thread I started lives on (and still when I read Matt C's website many of the statements lead me scratch my head and think "where'd that come from?"), I wonder if this link to the Indy article might better serve to start a new thread on the mayorial election?

First, Jon DeHart, welcome to the OP group.  Good to have you here. I carefully read the Kevin Wolff ad in which he asked Matt C to step down from the race.  Here's how I interpret it:  Kevin Wolff sees that the conservative vote in CH, whatever its size, will be split three ways, making it almost impossible for any of the three more conservative candidates to win, thus handing the Mayor's office to Mark Kleinschmidt.  His [Kevin's] argument that if you vote for me, you get both Matt and me for two years, is valid of course and has been used several times here in CH, though never successfully that I can remember.  I've been following CH council politics for 29 years now, and I have never seen anyone run a negative campaign with success.  "Throw the bums out" just doesn't work here.  Every time one of the three more conservative candidates complains about the current mayor and council, they hurt, not help their chances. 

What if the scenario was Kevin W as the sole "anti" candidate, facing off against Mark Kleinschmidt, Ed Harrison, and a student environmentalist for Mayor?  I'll bet you would see a lot of pressure running in the other direction  :)  It's just that KevinW  did his publicly in a paid ad that the media picked up as a news/blog story.One difference of course is whether those 3 would be dividing up a 70% pie while the current three are seen by some as dividing up a 30% pie.

However, Gerry, the current situation is as if in your hypothetical the student candidate published an ad asking Kleinschmidt to drop out.

Chapel Hill is a mostly liberal town.  Even if the conservative vote were only split one way, Mark K would have nothing to worry about if voters vote along liberal/conservative lines.  But instead, there are a lot more than just conservatives that are tired of the status quo and are going to vote against Mark K.  But with those people split three different ways it'd probably take a miracle for Mark K to lose.  Still though, he's not taking any chance since he's resorted to playing the "values" card.

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