Not so fast…

There is rarely disagreement when the Middlesex Borough Council votes on ordinances and resolutions. Personnel decisions, in particular, are typically hashed out in advance of the night they are formally approved.

A series of proposed staff hires, however, were unceremoniously torpedoed by the council majority during the governing body’s Tuesday, June 17 session. The reason was a lack of details provided to the council in advance.

It was not clear how the alleged information breakdown occurred.

The hirings were up for approval in the form of four resolutions. An intended roll call vote was set to begin on the agenda’s 21 resolutions collectively. Then, Councilman Kevin Dotey asked for the four to be pulled for separate consideration.

Dotey revealed he’d not received details of the intended hirings prior to the meeting. His concerns, he emphasized, were related to the “process,” as opposed to the individuals who were the intended hires.

After several minutes of commentary, the majority of the council sided with Dotey. Five council members rejected the four resolutions. They were defeated in a series of 5-1 votes, with only Council President Michael Conahan supporting their passage.

Dotey said “before we vote on this, it would have been nice to know” about the proposed hirings. He then continued with his critique.

“I have no problem with the people,” Dotey said. “It’s the process. Not even knowing until I walked in here. I got jumped when I came in here, for God’s sakes. That’s my problem, not the people and the jobs.”

“None of us sitting here, six of us, knew that we were going to vote on this. You can almost tell where my vote is going to be,” Dotey said before the roll call.

“I know we need people, but I don’t like the process,” he added. “Not even being acknowledged that – here’s what we’re doing. Everybody else can do what they want. I’m saying my piece.”

“As far as the clerk…” Mayor Jack Mikolajczyk attempted to interject. But Dotey again began commenting.

“Listen, I got two different stories on that,” Dotey replied. “We’re not going to go into that in public. That’s all I’m going to say about it. I’ll talk to you about it afterwards.“

Mikolajczyk asked if others wanted to comment. Some did.

“I share the same concerns that Councilman Dotey has,” said Councilman Jeremiah Carnes.

Dotey jumped in. “We used to be told when we were looking for people,” he said.

Councilman Joseph DeScenza agreed, saying he was unaware of the timing of possible vacancies. 

“We’re trying to work on the process, but we’ll get there,” said Mikolajczyk, who appeared unfazed by the council’s comments.

“Just let us know, we don’t do all the hiring,” said Dotey.

MIkolajczyk said a way to better inform the council of pending personnel moves might be to notify the chairs of the governing body’s respective committees.

After the resolutions were defeated, the mayor said “we’ll get the information out” and likely hold a special meeting to approve the rejected hirings. The council typically schedules meetings only once in each of the summer months. The governing body’s next scheduled session is Tuesday, July 15.

The rejected resolutions proposed the following moves:

• Hiring of Lauren Frisoli as an administrative assistant in the borough clerk’s office.
• Hiring of Karl McAteer as part-time fire subcode inspector.
• Reinstatement of Robert Vandenberg as substitute electrical subcode inspector.
• Hiring of Jeffrey Burke as substitute plumbing inspector.

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