Crossed wires

Looking to enhance security, municipal and education officials began discussing the hiring of Class 3 special police officers for the Middlesex Borough school district last year. 

Class 3’s are former full-time police officers hired to provide security at schools. They have the same powers and duties as full-time officers, but are employed part-time to assist municipal police departments.

The Middlesex Police Department would hire and train the Class 3 officers. The Board of Education would pay them. According to officials, the ground rules would be agreed upon in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the borough and school district that has yet to be signed.

As questions have been asked publicly about the months of delay, town and school district representatives engaged in a bit of finger-pointing during the past week.

The dueling explanations began during the school board’s Tuesday, May 20 meeting. Greene Avenue resident Laura Thomasey urged the board to act as quickly as possible, possibly by next month, to approve an MOU.

That kicked-off a back-and-forth that stretched across a week and two public meetings.

Board President Danielle Parenti strongly disputed that the reason for the delay rested with school officials.

“I don’t know who told you that it was with the school,” Parenti replied, “but it was, for a substantial amount of time, with the town. They were having their attorney look at it, to resend it to our attorney, which they did with no changes. They had it for quite a while.” 

‘So, this is not on us,’ Parenti said pointedly. The board president wasn’t done.

School officials, she said, had asked Mayor Jack Mikolajczyk “quite a few times” for a meeting, but he was “too busy” to comply. Parenti suggested that if Thomasey was in contact with municipal officials, that might help facilitate a meeting.

“They don’t want to hear us,” Parenti added. After hearing the board president’s take, Thomasey noted that it conflicted with what she’d learned from municipal officials, and that it was not clear who was holding up the matter.

Parenti continued, saying she’d seen emails and responses saying the mayor was too busy to meet. The MOU was with municipal officials “for quite a while,” she said.

Board Attorney Ari Schneider attributed the delay to the typical process of negotiating an agreement. Both sides, he said, had spent substantial time going back and forth with language changes.

“It takes time, It always does,” Schneider said. “Both sides have waited a substantial amount of time. I’m not going to cast blame on the (borough) or vice versa.”

‘We do want this expedited,” Parenti told Thomasey. “I know myself, this is something we’ve been pushing for a number of years. I agree with you that we need to get this moving, but I don’t think it’s fair to come up here and just put all the blame on us. As Ari kind-of explained, it’s a two-way thing.”

At the council’s May 27 session, Mikolajczyk noted there had been a “big brouhaha” at the board meeting a week earlier. “There’s a lot of disinformation out there,” the mayor said. “It’s well-documented. We’ve been going back and forth on this for quite a while.”

Since May 12, attorneys for the board and council have been in touch on the matter. Schneider addressed questions the borough had, according to Mikolajczyk.

The need for further discussion, the mayor said, was spurred by the board’s desire that three Class 3 officers be hired, as opposed to five.

“What three? Why three? How is that going to work?” are the resulting issues, according to Mikolajczyk, and Police Chief Matt Geist had questions that he wanted answered.

The matter is “still sitting there,” the mayor said, because there’s been no response from school officials.

Mikolajczyk said he did not answer an email, but conversed via text with Superintendent Dr. Roberta Freeman. The mayor read from several texts sent earlier in May, between himself and the superintendent.

At one point, Freeman asked for a meeting the following day. The mayor said he couldn’t accommodate due to work commitments. The mayor then texted, proposing a meeting during the week after Memorial Day.

“To date, I have not received a response,” Mikolajczyk said. “There’s been an open dialogue. We’re not ignoring it and we have nothing to hide. Frankly, we’re trying to get this done.”

When the delay reached March, municipal officials realized there was insufficient time to hire, train, equip and have Class 3 officers in place on Sept. 1. “Now, we’re talking maybe one or two by the end of the year,” the mayor said.

Parenti “went off pretty hard,” Mikolajczyk concluded. “But I think, basically, she was only working with the information she had to work with.”

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