A late-night surprise resolution, appointing former Montclair town manager and GSG’s executive managing director Joseph Hartnett immediately to the position of interim town manager, has a surprise of its own.
The body of the resolution reads:
Be it resolved, by the Council of the Township of Montclair, in the County of Essex, that Joseph Hartnett be appointed to serve as Interim Township Attorney on a part time basis not to exceed 24 hours per week for a salary of $1.00 per week commencing on July 19, 2023 until further notice of the Council.
Be it further resolved, that the Acting Manager, Brian Scantlebury, shall resume his position as Deputy Manager forthwith.
The resolution indicates Hartnett will become the interim township attorney and not the interim township manager.
“This is certainly an example of a government bureaucratic problem, with the mayor, town attorney and clerk making a mistake and rushing through a midnight resolution with no discussion or input from at least three council members and the public,” said Councilor at Large Bob Russo, who says the resolution was rushed through by Mayor Spiller and Councilor at Large Peter Yacobellis.
“Hiring the firm to do a study and search is one thing, but to immediately demote the acting manager and appoint the head of the consulting firm is an insult to Mr. Scantlebury, the rest of the council who had no input and the good residents of Montclair, who were already asleep,” adds Russo.
“I view this as a serious issue. Resolutions are written for a reason. Given how this transpired, I’m not at all surprised by what happened,” said Deputy Mayor Bill Hurlock.
“While I’m not a municipal attorney, I will say that I’m not concerned,” said Yacobellis Thursday. “All seven governing body members, as evidenced by their comments, knew exactly what they were voting on. I believe it to be an immaterial typo which can be fixed.”
A last minute resolution
Yacobellis, when asked who prepared the Hartnett resolution, said it was done quickly, between six and seven p.m., and that it was prepared by the town’s attorneys with language provided by Spiller and Yacobellis. Yacobellis said the clerk provided copies of the resolution to him and Spiller. Yacobellis said he did not know if it was prepared by acting township attorney Paul Burr or assistant township attorney Gina DeVito.
Yacobellis said he had the resolution face down on the dais during the meeting and did not look at it until the very end of the meeting.
During the meeting, Yacobellis moves and introduces the resolution, but only reads the heading. Spiller, speaking after the council came out of executive session, also reads the heading and states the resolution had already been moved and seconded. Russo then reads from the resolution, mentioning the terms of Hartnett making $1 a week and working for one week, and states his opposition. No one appears to notice the error.
“This is just another example of exactly what I said when this was presented at the last meeting,” said Fourth Ward Councilor David Cummings. “What you do in the dark comes out in the light.”
Cummings said he called acting township attorney Paul Burr about the resolution and asked what transpired.
“Peter sent the email to the attorneys with the language,” said Cummings of his conversation with Burr. “Paul asked him [Peter] if he told Brian. Peter said, ‘no.'”
“The attorneys cut and pasted the language Peter sent and formatted it,” added Cummings, who said he had questions about how this would be handled, and whether there would be the need for a special meeting.
“The spoken word at the council meeting was absolutely clear as to the intent of the Council in taking its vote regarding the interim manager appointment, which the recording will affirm,” said Third Ward Councilor Lori Price Abrams.
“Having just heard about this, I have not been able to speak to anyone in the law department at the Township. But I will say I am personally embarrassed and take full responsibility, on my part, for not picking up on this error,” said Second Ward Councilor Robin Schlager.
Hartnett started working at Montclair’s municipal office Wednesday, where he held an emergency department head meeting.
On Thursday, when asked about the mistake on the resolution, Hartnett said: “The Township Attorney’s office is handling that and will have someone get back to you.”
Katya Wowk, Montclair communications director, sent this response Thursday afternoon from DeVito:
“On July 18, 2023, during the Township Council Meeting, Councilman Peter Yacobellis made an oral motion offering a resolution for the appointment of Joseph Hartnett for the position of Interim Township Manager. The motion was seconded and then debated. The resolution was put to a vote and was passed. The official, conforming, written resolution has not yet been posted to the website.
Any written resolution that is circulating as of this writing is not official.
Another vote is not required.”
Some 40 minutes later, DeVito, through Wowk, said she had received new information and would be providing another response.
At 4 p.m. Thursday, DeVito, through Wowk, added this: “We stand by our statement, simply adding that any circulating document does not properly reflect what occurred in the meeting and an official, published, certified resolution will be posted soon.”
At 4:08 p.m. Thursday, Yacobellis shared emails showing his communication on Tuesday to Burr and DeVito. Also copied on these emails were Spiller and Schlager.
In an email at 5:40 p.m. Tuesday, with the subject line “Interim Manager Resolution”, Yacobellis writes: “Gina or Paul, can you please craft a simple Ordinance naming Joseph Hartnett to the position of Interim Manager, until further notice, at a salary of $1 per year?”
In a second email at 5:51 p.m., with the subject line “Re: Interim Manager Resolution,” Yacobellis writes to the same group again, stating: “Specifically, please name Joe Hartnett interim manager on a part time basis for up to 24 hours per week and a salary of $1.00 per week.”
Yacobellis said he then had a conference call where he discussed the resolution with DeVito and Burr around 6:40 p.m.
Yacobellis’ emails contrasts with what Cummings said Burr told him, that the “attorneys cut and pasted the language that Peter sent and formatted it.”
Has karma ever been more swiftly and brutally delivered? Setting aside the question of whether it was a good idea to bring in Hartnett and his firm, the midnight legislating this council has been engaging in is a grotesque mockery of proper government, and the councilors and employees who engineered and facilitated it richly deserve this little humiliation.
Many established organizations & institutions live by the decision-making mantra, “speed kills”. My experience with consultants is they like change. They are paid to be change agents. There is always collateral damage with change.
Councilor Yacobellis has established himself as this Council’s argument for this mantra and has the qualities & temperament of a natural-born consultant. The regular frequency of his legislative agenda introduced that had to be withdrawn, rewritten/reintroduced or put on his “we can always modify it in the future” list is impressive. He calls it being responsive to his constituents & something we have lacked before him
NO ONE is surprised. These people couldn’t run a lemonade stand properly.
Thank you Ms. Schlager for at least having the decency for apologizing and taking responsibility. Sad that your colleague Ms. Abrams felt the need to do exactly the opposite and make an excuse that doesn’t fly. Who doesn’t read something so important? I’ll tell you who – people who try to pull a fast one on their fellow colleagues. People that have an agenda they want to sneak in. People that don’t believe in transparency and want to pull a fast one on their community. What a darn shame.
And some people don’t believe in Karma?
This is how these four roll. Seriously, they need to be dumped. We need Russo to run for mayor. They treated our interim manager really poorly. Shameful. I can’t get over how they treat people. A huge amount of self entitlement.
‘Attorney’ Burr is giving me indigestion. He is like a cartoon character, I swear. He can’t even correctly write a two paragraph resolution?? What the hell! Not only he somehow got hired with zero years of experience in local law, he appears to have learned zero in those long, painful 18 months. I don’t know him personally so I can’t tell whether he is good guy or bad, but he is a godawful town attorney.
For someone like that to try to step in Karasick’s shoes is kinda comical. However, he is obviously driving this sorry clown cart of a Council closer and closer to the cliff…
A number of good government activists here have tried to out this Council very early on for what seemed to some like just insider process failures, overly technical legislative violations, or even letting things implode on important but still hard to follow policies and deliverables.
At the time, these Council critiques sometimes appeared too technical, like over Lackawanna at the start, or not well grounded in something obvious, for those who do not follow local government closely. Today however, now you can see much of these same process manipulations, their poor behaviors and official non-transparency — yet imploding much clearer in plain sight, happening right before your eyes.
Maybe this contract process will get our local Attorney General’s and NJ DCA’s attention. This is assuming the DCA still exists.
The Township issues RFQ-23-Q01. Two bidders respond.
The Township indicates, via their June resolution R-23-154, the intention to select Hartnett’s GSG Llc. The resolution is tabled of questions what services are being contracted for.
The contract vendor approval subsequently comes back Tuesday under a new resolution, R-23-184. There is material significant added language. There is no contract amount indicated on either version, nor any not-to-exceed (NSR) language.
R-23-184 wasn’t on the original published agenda of Jul 14. It was added to the Jul 17 PM revised agenda…with the CFO’s same Certificate of Funds (CoF) attached to R-23-154 now attached to R-23-184. The CoF indicates the funds are for mgmt/professional srvcs.
The funding sources are the Dedicated Reserves ($5K each) from our 3 utilities with the remaining $10K from the Current Fund.
The Council knows all this Monday. Then 4 members decide Tuesday to hire Mr Hartnett as a part-time employee, not to exceed 24 hrs/week for $1. I have no idea what the communication trail was among these 4 members.
[As a funny aside, they may have violated Wage & Hour laws paying an hourly employee $1 for up to a 24 hr work week. I wonder if they put a cap on the length of his shift?]
I’m not a lawyer. I do live in New Jersey. So this could all be technically legal, from the bid specs through to awarding the contract and then hiring the principle as an employees for $1. It could be not-so-legal, but we do live in NJ. But, there is a pattern here about how Montclair handles contracts. I wonder when will Trenton go on record and say this stuff is all on the up & up. Tells us this is a case of smoke, but no fire. Yes, maybe odorous, but nothing to see here.
There is no way we are moving elections to November. Our local elections deserve their own special May time slot. It will be another spectacle.
@ Jonathan Moon
There’s an unspoken ‘rule’ among attorneys to not criticize one another’s performance.
Mr. Burr is an exception that makes me set the ‘rule’ aside. Extreme circumstances call for extreme measures. Your assessment is that Paul Burr is unqualified for the position of Township Attorney. Sadly, agree with you.
Subpar performance aside, the fact that the Township Attorney participated in this wretched scheme is the testament to his character. Exploration of which I will not undertake at this time so as to avoid spike in my blood pressure.
I was mistaken there was not a Not To Exceed amount in the resolution. There was, on page 2. For $50,000, in this budget year.
Of course the CFO only certified $25,000 towards the appropriation. But, the resolution title clearly states this contract is for a year. Maybe she will insert in the 2024 Temporary Budget.
I’m sure in May it will get approved in the 2024 Full Budget. I highly doubt the CFO will be here then.
Ye of little faith.
She will outlast all of them. She is a warrior.
We don’t need a warrior CFO. We need a CFO that stops this Council from making the 11 Pine St deal in 2021.
$72MM! Seventy-two million for 11 Pine. And a heated swimming pool. Bought by your favorite folks at Cigna Health. Yeah, that Cigna health. Yes, that Rx Cigna health, too.
In return we got 8 ea 2-BR AH units and 9ea 1-BR AH units. And we pulled in just $345K in PILOT. Anyone that can do property tax math should get a big huh? when they see this $72MM is appraised at $18MM (and the tax-exempt land is leased to us from NJT!Land which they carved up a neighborhood.)
While taxpayers went without their pools lat year. And we are focused on whether Glen Ridge is paying us the right 5-figure rent number for water pumping?
I keep telling you folks to look at the PILOT financial agreements, but you can’t be bothered. Look at the 65 Church St PILOT agreement signed a month or so before 11 Pine. Or don’t look. It is just money.
This Council jumps up to buy a contiguous lot to a Township parcel, without a plan, without a financial pro forma – just a concept. For $1.3MM. Done. Because it is for redevelopment.
We get the same offer last week – same contiguous property scenario, lot size, price, etc..
Even better, we already have the funds set aside.
Nope. Nada.
This is after we laud Dan Gill and quote him on doing the right thing and money is not an excuse. His earlier version of what Nike Corp says now, “Own it, do it, done”.
But, this was about homelessness. Homelessness scares the crap out of everyone in Montclair, including the Defund The Police people. It scared the Jackson administration. It probably scared the Fried administration if they weren’t so busy scaring us.
So I ask you, do we really need a warrior CFO? Maybe we need some different constituents.
This article is not about the CFO nor about PILOTs. It’s about an ugly typo in a resolution prepared by inept town attorney. I do not understand why it is so difficult for you to stay on topic.
In a way, it’s comical – this guy drafted a resolution which, on the face of it, gives his job (to which he so desperately clings) to another guy. Hilarious!
@Darnell,
I respectfully disagree. I have been on topic for more than a year. I said the better part of a year ago the Council had to go. I said their 3 direct reports should be gone within a year. Now we are reduced to making a mountain out of a typo. Reread Liz’s reporting. Closely. Forget the typo for now. Really read it because she was taking you on a little ride of context – events, sequences, who handled what – or not.
This Council chose multiple times – after considerable discussion – to retain the Township attorneys and now through the end of the year. Typos don’t make people inept. You are suggesting a fact pattern of carelessness or incompetence. The same pattern you imply is visible to both the Council and the public.
The blame is on this Council (and us, their constituents – a.k.a. their superiors). The attorney’s are direct reports of the Council and the Council has clearly stood by them several times this year alone. The parents are banging on, blissfully ignorant of how RD Financial Agreements are structured here. They never bothered to read them, ask for expert advice. No, they just want the money. Just blatant, simple greed. And they think the LP Financial Plan will be any different from 65 Church Street’s Financial Agreement. No, they don’t care. They just want at least 57% of the PILOT. Yup, these are our parents.
OK, remember when I told you the Township hadn’t updated their online run code for over a year? Well, they just did. At least through April. And you know what is on there? Bingo. The 65 Church St Financial Agreement. Look under Legislation.
This is our Council. That you want to laugh at typos, go ahead. Keep it manageable. I get it. I will parse my posts going forward to fit within “the topic”.
Darnell, of course you’re right. Frank is all over the place. But I get his frustration. There are just too many wrong moves, too much gross incompetence and selfishness, and so much contempt for the public that PY can introduce a bombshell and then say “no comment”, the third ward council member play the tool and pontificate how reasonable it all is, and the Mayor smugly flaunt the rules, the law, and the public’s rights.
The so-called typo may be poetic justice, as someone wrote, and requires a do-over, regardless of what Attorney Yacobellis or the home team says, but it’s the least of the law-breaking. The closed session was plainly unlawful ab initio (from the beginning) since the resolution excluding the public was defective and deficient, also invalidating the subsequent vote. Moreover, the likelihood that non-exempt discussions took place in that session is probably 100%. Upon return from their secret conclave, the smoke was dirty and the new manager anointed, except that not only the resolution itself, but the actions purported to be taken, were extremely dubious, legally speaking.
I would like to briefly address a few of Frank’s concerns. The 11 Pine PILOT dates back to 2008, if I remember correctly. It is a horrible deal for the Township, and has gotten worse as the property values increased. Nevertheless, there is nothing that the CFO can do about it, either in 2021 or now. The law allows the owner to transfer the PILOT without municipal interference, so it’s a “done deal.” And, BTW, it isn’t that we need a “warrior” CFO (though I agree with Calvin that we have one). We just need a CFO that stands by the rules, resists bullying and politics, knows what she’s doing, and puts the Township above any other interest. That’s what we’ve got now, so I hope she doesn’t leave.
Regarding the purchase of the PNC Bank, it wasn’t a stupid idea. We did have medium-term plans to upgrade or build a new municipal complex, and the PNC lot added substantially to the viability of the 205 Claremont property. The thought was that if the lot wasn’t needed later, the Township could sell it and at the very least recoup the expense. Meanwhile, the property is used for parking and could have other uses. If your reference to last week is to the real estate purchases authorized by the ordinances, I can’t comment since I don’t know the details. I do know that the last time the Township bought two lots for affordable housing, in 2007 (?) on New Street (for about $280,000), nothing happened and the lots are still sitting empty and unused today. But if you want to have extended discussions of these subjects, let’s save it for another thread.
Ira,
I was in favor of the PNC property purchase. I’ll assume you didn’t read the 2021 amended agreement for 11 Pine. I’ll assume the Council didn’t involve the CFO on the 65 Church St agreement because it has a similar flaw. And won’t be asked her input on Lackawanna’s. And I’ll just drop 34 Union because most have no idea what the particulars are…because it involves the homeless.
We can pick it back up later this year.
f. rubacky:
Clearly, Darnell was pointing to exasperating and alarming pattern of Burr’s cluelessness/carelessness. We all make typos (in fact, I see a pretty ugly one in your post above). Who cares. What is important is that we have competent, honest people in key positions.
1. Manager
2. Attorney
3. Clerk
The jury is out on Mr. Hartnett, I suppose. Will he shaft the black firefighters during pendency of their lawsuit in the Superior Court?
However, the verdict is in on Attorney and Clerk. While they both continue to enjoy protection of the overreaching, autocratic Mayor, it is abundantly clear that people of Montclair have had it with Burr and Nieves.