Montclair Town Council appointed Michael Lapolla as the new interim town manager at a special council meeting Tuesday. Lapolla will start as interim town manager on August 14. The search for a full time town manager is expected to last four months, according to exiting interim manger Joseph Hartnett, who Lapolla will replace.
Hartnett was hired as town manager for $1 a week at the July 18 council meeting. Before Hartnett was appointed, Brian Scantlebury served as Montclair’s acting town manager for eight months. Lapolla will make $10,000 a month, as a temporary employee without benefits, according to a resolution given to council members before the vote.
Lapolla was approved by a count of 4 to 0, but not before two councilors read into the record their protest of the resolution.
Deputy Mayor Bill Hurlock was absent but Councilor-at-Large Bob Russo and Fourth Ward Councilor David Cummings were present at the start of the meeting and made statements protesting the resolution to appoint Lapolla, before walking out of the meeting.
Lapolla served as the county manager of Union County from 1996 to 2002. Lapolla was recommended by Government Strategy Group (GSG), a consulting firm run by Hartnett.
“We hired him [Hartnett] as an interim manager and also gave his company a contract. That to me is a conflict of interest,” said Cummings, adding that it’s unethical that Hartnett as interim manager was supervising the paid service of his own company.
Cummings requested an investigation, adding that he also had an issue with a current township employee who also works for GSG.
“I really don’t understand how Mr. Gary Obszarny can be a managing director for GSG and also serve the township, running two or three of our utilities.”
Cummings said it was not lost on him the timing of this, given that “Mr. Scantlebury was looking into bringing in an outside firm to investigate the fire department. And I had questions about the validity of the promotion exam.”
Cummings also said that when he asked “this council to give Mr. Morgan the opportunity to present and defend his report, no one said yes,” speaking of the report made by the township’s affirmative action officer into the fire department’s promotional exam.
Cummings said he would not stay for the meeting and walked out.
Hartnett later responded to Cummings’ statement.
“I have a conflict of interest,” Hartnett said. “I had already informed Township Attorney [Paul Burr] that I felt I had a conflict of interest while I’m serving as interim manager, dealing with anything of the business of [GSG], the firm that I’m associated with.”
Russo also read a statement, calling for the council to be more transparent and to consider more candidates.
“It’s predetermined. Councilor Yacobellis and Councilor Price Abrams seem to have pre-knowledge of all of these consulting firm and law firm appointments,” Russo said. “I’ve never had input or discussions with these new hires as promised. I don’t have a problem with the individual. But I have a problem with the process.”
Russo left the meeting as well, leaving the mayor and three councilors on the dais.
Yacobellis was critical of Cummings and Russo for leaving early.
“What we have been doing is completely legitimate and completely legal,” Yacobellis said. “You may not like the outcome, but you cannot say that it’s not legitimate. You should not abdicate your responsibility and leave the council chamber and leave your responsibility in terms of representing your constituents. I think it is very shameful that they decided to walk out of the room.”
The small group of Montclair residents who were in attendance at Tuesday’s special meeting overwhelmingly agreed with Cummings and Russo.
Former Second Ward Councilor Jessica de Koninck, who served with Scantlebury when he was a council member, said the town council should have kept Scantlebury as acting manager.
“Brian is a class act,” de Koninck said. “He is so well regarded in the community. He’s the highest professional, excellent. It was a pleasure to serve with him. He did not get a Rice Notice. That looks bad. It looks unfair to somebody who served this town so diligently. It looks like if you’re a Black man, you’re not treated the same way. There’s a kind of tone deafness that’s bothering me.”
Mariana Campos Horta feared that Lapolla would fall into the same pitfalls as former town manager Tim Stafford.
“[I expect] the new manager will look like Mr. Stafford,” Campos Horta said. “The kind of guy who was bad at school and yet, he kept failing upwards because he knows how to talk to people. He’s maybe on a first name basis with some political bosses in New Jersey. A legitimate son of dirty Jersey.”
Joann Katzban lamented the unprecedented level of turnover in the town manager position.
“We are going to have an endless chain of interim managers like we had an endless chain of school superintendents,” Katzban said. “I consider it critical for the next town manager to have a true ability to lead the town in an incredibly crucial period. We’re so divided, and so adversarial. I just hate to see what has happened in this town.”
Mayor Sean Spiller, Yacobellis, Second Ward Councilor Robin Schalger, and Third Ward Councilor Lori Price Abrams, who all voted for Joseph Hartnett at the July 18 meeting, again voted together for Lapolla Tuesday.
At the end of the meeting, Hartnett confirmed that Obszarny worked for GSG, but described him as a freelancer, adding that Obszarny does freelance work for other entities as well. Obszarny has not replied to requests for comment about his being listed as a managing director for GSG.
“Peter’s comments about us not staying is absurd,” said Cummings after the meeting in a statement. “This is from someone who in the last Executive Session held discussions and when we came out they had a Resolution to appoint Hartnett. Why would anyone think they were really going to debate. At some point, residents are going to figure out who he is.”
The town council’s next meeting will be on Tuesday, Aug 15 at 7:00pm in the Montclair Municipal Building.
Sean is smart to put Peter out in front of this and be the face. Peter is superb at communicating. He stumbles badly at spinning things. Well, actually, he has had success with spinning the hayseeds.
I have coined a new term to define Mr.Obszarny’s contributions – a consultant. Working as an independent contractor. The title – Managing Director – signals his high value to GSG and the level of expertise the client will pay for. I think I will copyright the term.
FYI, Mr.Obszarny, as the Township’s Director of Utilities, has responsibilities for water, sewer & parking utilities which comprise 20% of our annual budget.
The Township is paying GSG for 3 tasks: 1) as a supervisory role, 2) for Interim Mgr placement and 3) the search, screening and proffer of Executive Managerial candidates.
Merging the two, does this mean GSG doesn’t need to spend any Task #1 time supervising our utility operations or not? I don’t know. On one hand, our interim Township Manager says Obszarny is only at a freelancer level when not working for Montclair.
Clearly GSG operates at a much higher & more sophisticated level. I dunno the answer. Do we need to look at parking deck operations? Nah.
What is there left to say? The Foul Four have prevailed. It’s Nineteen Eighty-Four all over again on a small town scale. I hope that that Arc of the Moral Universe won’t take much longer before it starts bending in this little neck of woods we call Montclair.
Ten more months. Even if GSG sticks us with another political hack as a ‘permanent’ Town Manager, there’s no such thing as permanent manager. Statute provides for clean removal process. That said, who knows, maybe we’ll actually get lucky and get a competent, non-political CEO out of this. Not to see the glass as half-full, but anyone will be better than Stafford.
I am mostly concerned about the fire promotions. As many have noted before, this whole maneuver was done to finally ram them through and to prevent any REAL investigation of MFD.
Public: “Joe Hartnett shouldn’t be hired because his services are not needed, the process is unlawful, and he has a conflict.”
Hartnett: ” I do not know what was the reason why they wanted me here, I do have a conflict, and I said that to the Township Attorney.”
Interim Township Attorney Burr: Crickets
Assistant Township Attorney De Vito: Crickets
Mayor Spiller: Crickets
Clerk Nieves: Crickets
Frank is right that Spiller was smart to put Yacobellis out in front – that way he keeps his own hands look a little cleaner. I wonder what Sean dangled in front of PY to get him to do the dirty work. Surely something enticing.
As as kid (50 years ago this summer), when watching the Watergate Hearings on TV, my father in all of his infinite wisdom told me, “never trust a politician”. On the day of Nixon’s resignation, less than a year later, he revealed what he really meant: “Do your due diligence, you just might get who you vote for.”
A lesson well learned, both municipally and federally.
Frank,
I will give you a term to define our Utility Director Gary Obszarny’s relationship with the Township’s new vendor: “TRUTHINESS” (copyrights of Steven Colbert).
Hartnett lied. Either he lied to us yesterday on the dais by saying that Gary Obszarny is a freelancer, or he lied to Howell and Perth Amboy where he submitte proposals stating that Gary Obszarny was his firm’s “Executive Director”. Liar! I’m pasting the links below. (You may have to copy/paste in your browser. Not sure how this works – not great with technology.)
https://www.twp.howell.nj.us/DocumentCenter/View/5713/GOVERNMENT-STRATETY-GROUP
https://cdnsm5-hosted.civiclive.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_1120492/File/Announcements/2021/Perth%20Amboy%/20Report_GSG_082821.pdf
Mr. Colbert, it can’t get any more local.
Second link doesn’t seem to be working. Here’s one that should work:
https://cdnsm5-hosted.civiclive.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_11204924/File/Announcements/2021/Perth%20Amboy%20Report_GSG_082821.pdf
When I visit friends and family in Morris County I see pristine parks, schools, and other facilities. In general everyone is happy with their mayors, town councils, town manager, and the school systems. The towns seem very well run and the taxes are half of Montclair’s. I know the comparison is a bit apples and oranges but the difference shouldn’t be as great as it is. My question is why doesn’t Montclair try to hire a town manager, town attorney, and school administrators from successful towns? Sounds like a pretty simple solution and in the long run a lot less costly.
The Foul Four strike again. Oh so tired of these lectures by PY, as he grabs the mike, in order to get himself more exposure, and to tell us he is the true one in town. The only ones that came out looking decent here were Cummings and Russo.
Red Bank. 2018.
Red Bank resolution 18-15
Red Bank resolution 18-21
Hi Elke – I don’t think I saw you before.
The fire promotions are done, law and justice be damned.
Joe Hartnett delivered to Sean + Peter.
As an aside, did you guys notice how the two women on this Council are irrelevant? They don’t have to be irrelevant, they chose so.
Look at the CFO – she is relevant. Not only she effectively guards public money, she stands up for herself and she doesn’t seek any ‘help/protection’ from Seans and Peters of this world. She is a confident professional who cannot be bought. Apparently, she can’t be broken either.
Hats off to you, Ms. Rao. Keep fighting the good fight.
@flipside – If you were already drawing a nice salary in a stable town with zero drama, why would you leave that to come here?
flipside,
I’m all for poaching good professionals. I’m not kidding. Or doing Shared Services Agreements when feasible (I mean real ones, not like the one with Glen Ridge fantastically screwed up by the trio of geniuses, Herrmann, Stafford, and Spiller). If it were up to me, I would poach/share Michael Parlavecchio from Bloomfield as Twp Attorney and Matt Cavallo from Wycoff as Twp Manager. Or Matt Watkins who really is the gold standard as far as muni-managers go. Solid guys.
I don’t have any good candidates for school administrators, but common sense would be to go for someone with business degree and a track record of fixing some other problematic district.
Meanwhile, let’s sit and watch as interim town Attorney Burr is pretending to be a real lawyer, as interim Manager Hartnett is screwing our black firefighters, and as muni-Clerk is doing… nothing.
Darnell,
The CFO isn’t as innocent as you think! She’s been sued by a former minority employee for hostile work environment and racism. It was settled out of court and dismissed with prejudice. You didn’t hear about it because it was female v female, it doesn’t fit the agenda! Miss allocation of funds from the fire dept. LEA even the state got involved. Her game is smoke and mirrors!
Getitstraight:
May I borrow your copy of the misogynist’s playbook?
Darnell,
Just OPRA it! I’m sure the copies are around town hall. Matter of fact, if you go on the judicial website, you can look it up for yourself.Sorry not sorry
If I OPRA it, ti will take years, or I won’t get it at all. Save us time and just tell us what your point is.
Njgator and Jmoon,
Just my opinion and gut feeling but the reason we don’t poach/hire competent people is because competent people won’t play the game. They would want to come in and take a flamethrower to this place. There is no way the people currently pulling the strings would cede that kind of power to people whose only agenda is doing the right thing.
Flipside–I too marvel at the stability of suburbs which are just as nice, just as liberal, and just as desirable as Montclair, with all and often more of our much balleyooed amenities. Many of those suburbs have “home-grown” elected officials interested in simple good government, not social engineering and certainly not self-promotion. I have come to believe our problems cannot be solved: we have too powerful and constant a pipeline of carpetbaggers coming from New York with all the commensurate egos, insecurities, and grandstanding. And I don’t mean just the local officials; I mean all of the voters who encourage them. The payoff for the town for this kind of “talent” coming here is no longer quality schools, good government and responsive bureaucracy, but divisiveness, inefficiencies and corruption. But what are you going to do? Tell them to stay across the river? If we were smart, we’d send them all to Morris County.
Flipside is correct. It is all about finding those who are wiling to “play the game”. If not willing you have no ticket to enter, or if found out afterwards, pushed out like Rao.