In a borough where the gears of government grind with the unsettling rhythm of a circus calliope, a familiar performer who was rejected by voters has been handed a new, plush seat in the center ring.
Former Councilwoman-at-Large Denise Wilkerson, resoundingly rejected by voters mere months ago, has been installed as Borough Deputy Municipal Manager and Executive Director of the Roselle First Community Development Corporation, a dual role carrying a salary of $130,000.
This appointment, orchestrated by Mayor Donald Shaw, arrives as the national economy stutters and job growth slows, a contrast not lost on residents who watch their borough hall operate with a bewildering disregard for merit, continuity, or simple arithmetic.
Wilkerson was not merely defeated in the November General Election; she was unmasked.
Challenger Cynthia Johnson captured 5,052 votes to Wilkerson’s 351, a margin so vast it resembles less a political contest and more a civic indictment.
Yet, in Roselle, electoral oblivion, incompetence, and a lack of qualifications are no barrier to employment. Johnson has been iced out by the governing body.
Shaw, a Union County government employee with a past conviction for selling heroin that landed him in New York City’s Rikers Island, has gifted Wilkerson a dual-title position: Borough Deputy Municipal Manager and head of the nonprofit CDC.
It is a job Shaw himself performed without extra pay, a fact that transforms the new six-figure salary from a necessity to a question.
The question hangs in the air, thick as the smoke from a five-alarm fire. What, precisely, are the qualifications?
Wilkerson’s stated background includes leadership of a boutique public relations firm, Robert Scott, purportedly based at 285 West Side Ave. in Jersey City. A visit to that address finds not a PR suite, but the campus of New Jersey City University.
No directory lists the firm. No receptionist knows its name. It is a ghost company etched on a resume, now the foundation for a public trust.
The average annual property tax bill in Roselle was $10,223 with an effective tax rate of 3.038% as of July 2025. More than a dozen homeowners will provide the revenue to cover Wilkerson’s new job.
This is not an isolated act but part of a sustained pattern.
The borough’s upper echelons resemble a game of musical chairs played with the lights off. The Business Administrator’s office has seen a revolving door of occupants.
The current Acting Borough Administrator is Fire Chief Christopher Laba, a Republican who resides in Ocean County, miles from the community he now helps administer.
He succeeds a cast of characters that has included David Brown II, Rick Smiley, Jack Layne, Everett Falt, Shanel Robinson, and T. Missy Balmir, and others who have served as Roselle’s Borough Administrator in recent years.
The borough attorney, Mohamed Jalloh, a former county freeholder, was unceremoniously replaced by Charles R. G. Simmons, a lawyer who does not appear to be registered to vote in Union County but whose career is woven through firms tied to powerful local political figures.
Into this unstable ecosystem comes the Roselle First Community Development Corporation.
According to its most recent federal filings, it is a small organization, reporting gross receipts not greater than $50,000 per year.
Its tax forms identify a financial advisor, David Biunno, as its principal officer.
Yet, it will now pay Wilkerson, its new executive director, $130,000—a sum that appears to defy the organization’s own reported scale and previous compensation practices.
The work of the CDC has been visibly carried out by Pastor Pamela Jones of Communities in Cooperation, Inc., who runs a similar program in neighboring Linden.
One must wonder: Is this a position for community development, or is it a plum job created to give Wilkerson a soft landing after Councilwoman Cynthia Johnson defeated her by a margin of 5,052 to 351 in the General Election on November 4, 2025?
That is a soft berth constructed for a political ally after the electorate delivered a hard verdict.
The theater extends beyond personnel.
At the reorganization meeting, which former Councilwoman Sylvia Turnage described as ” the Roselle Government coup d’état,” a $9,000 contract award was approved for a business named Fourth and Locust LLC.
When Councilwoman Johnson questioned the purpose, no official could provide an answer.
Public records reveal the LLC is owned by Niyala Shaw, the mayor’s daughter, and registered at an address in Elizabeth, 726-728 Thomas Street.
Councilman Brandon Bernier seems to have broken with Shaw, voting with Johnson against the $9,000 contract awarded to the mayor’s daughter, but the other four members of the governing body supported that crooked arrangement.
This is the same property Mayor Shaw and his wife purchased for $649,000, claiming it as their principal residence on mortgage documents.
Borough law requires the mayor to be a “bona fide resident” of Roselle.
The circumstances present an unresolved puzzle: either the mayor may reside outside the borough he leads, or he may have made false statements to a financial institution.
Law enforcement has not pursued the matter.
Former Mayor Christine Dansereau, who resigned citing health struggles, once painted Wilkerson as a backstabber of Shakespearean proportions.
The dialogue in Roselle politics is seldom dull, but the plot is tiresomely consistent.
So here we stand.
A mayor with a checkered past presides over a government in perpetual flux.
A rejected councilwoman is elevated to a six-figure job for which her experience is nebulous, funded by a nonprofit whose finances suggest it cannot bear the cost.
Payments flow to the mayoral family businesses without explanation.
Through it all, the people of Roselle are expected to watch this circus and call it governance. They are asked to ignore the clowns and believe the show is for their benefit.
But a community is not an audience; it is the stakeholder.
And in Roselle, the stake is being driven deeper with every inexplicable appointment and every unexplained dollar, while the calliope plays on, loud and defiant, masking the sound of a hollowing-out.
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