MANCHESTER – A councilwoman questioned why important jobs in town were being rushed into place without proper vetting.
Councilwoman Michele Zolezi asked why several resolutions on the list for the Town Council meeting were not included on her agenda. These resolutions were to appoint important – and costly – jobs like township attorney, affordable housing attorney, Open Public Records Act attorney, public defender, two alternate public defenders, and engineering services for water and sewer and engineering services.
“All these other agenda items under ‘appointments,’ those are not on the agenda. When were they put on the agenda?” the councilwoman asked.
It was not determined who put the items on the agenda.
Township Clerk Sabina Martin confirmed those agenda items were only added that day, hours before the meeting.
“That’s a problem. It’s ridiculous. There are hundreds of pages here and although we did this the last time (January 3 reorganization meeting) and it was like a growing pain, typically the Council gets these and they review them,” Zolezi explained.
She added, “typically we get these agendas with all these items attached which you may or may not see on the (Township) website. I have the original agenda. It is completely disrespectful and unacceptable.
“We typically have an entire weekend to review this. We all work full time and although we are extremely dedicated, we all have a responsibility to the taxpayers of this town and a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers of this town for everyone to have access to review all these documents,” Councilwoman Zolezi said. “For this to come in at the last minute is unacceptable and I will make a motion that we table this to the original agenda that we were given.”
With the late notice, she couldn’t see how any of the members of council notified would have been able to properly review these appointments. “I specifically asked the clerk to please not allow what happened last time to happen because it is not fair to our professionals and it is not fair to our support staff. I don’t think this is an unfair request, I really don’t.”
“I’m not saying these aren’t good professionals, all I’m saying is that we take the proper time to look at it,” Zolezi added.
Martin apologized saying “we were scrambling trying to get all these items as quickly as we possibly could.”
“This will give us time to review it. That’s all,” Zolezi said.
Mayor Robert Arace said that “in the condensed timeline and in consideration of all the necessary professionals we need to run the town it seemed more responsible to put them into permanent placement now than to have those in temporary status as there are various projects throughout the town that require the professionals in the town by moving in the fastest way to provide those professionals.”
The mayor added that the council president and other members of council did discuss the appointments listed on the amended agenda.
Zolezi asked, “are you telling me that only certain council people were privy to this information? Because that is a problem. With all due respect we are all council people here. We are all elected officials and while I absolutely respect your position all I am simply asking for is for us all to have the proper time to review this.”
“We should all be notified,” Zolezi added and when Martin said that “this was not intentional and sometimes this is the way things go” the councilwoman responded, “this isn’t the way things go in Manchester.”
“I’m not trying to give you a hard time but please realize we represent the town and when our residents ask if we had the chance to look at it, we need to be able to agree that these are our professionals,” she added.
Zolezi made a motion for these appointments to be put off so everyone could have the time to make an educated decision. In the meantime, the people currently doing those jobs would have their contracts temporarily extended. No one agreed and the appointments stayed on the agenda. Zolezi abstained from the vote.
There were only three members of council present. Council Vice President James Vaccaro ran the meeting since Council President Roxanne Conniff was absent due to illness. There’s one spot vacant due to retirement. The third was new Councilman Joseph Hankins. Hankins and Conniff ran alongside Arace, winning a majority of the government during November’s election. Vaccaro endorsed Arace last year.
“I will be abstaining based on principal. I have not had the opportunity to look over each and every one of these so with that being said there are some professionals that in my opinion, are willfully deficient in what they provide compared to other ones that are available. If I had, had the opportunity, I would have spoken about that,” Zolezi added.
The resolutions that were added to the agenda included appointments of attorney Jean Cipriani of Rothstein, Mandell, Strohm, Halm & Cipriani as affordable housing attorney, another for Cipriani’s appointment as OPRA attorney, attorney Mathew Sage as public defender and Justin Lamb and Brian Rumpf as alternate public defenders in addition to Lauren R. Staiger as townsip attorney, Remington & Vernick Engineers for Engineering Services for sewer and water and the firm of Morgan Engineering as township engineer.
Arace’s team was endorsed by county GOP leader George Gilmore, while Zolezi and the previous mayor were not part of that team. Staiger and Cipriani used to be a members of Gilmore’s firm before he was charged with tax evasion. He had stepped away from his practice, and leading the Republicans, and also his membership of the Ocean County Board of Elections until President Trump gave him clemency. He is now back on the Board of Elections, along with Sage, who is a Democrat who ran for office in the past in Toms River. Lamb is a Toms River Councilman and Rumpf is an Assemblyman and former mayor of Little Egg Harbor.
There were also appointments that were not challenged by Zolezi. These included: Chris Kimbiz, Taylor Schandall, and Michael Sullivan to fill vacant positions of full time police officers, Joel Baldwin and Mark Rossman to fill the position of Special Law Enforcement Class 3 Officer in the township police department, Teri Giercyk, who took over as township clerk on Feb. 1, as registrar of Vital Statistics, Councilman Vaccaro as a Class III member of the Township Planning Board, Joseph J. Faccone of Samuel Klien and Company as township auditor and Brian Rudisky to the position of deputy emergency management coordinator.
