CAPE MAY – In March, former City Manager Jerry Inderwies Jr. filed suit against the City of Cape May, Deputy Mayor Stacy Sheehan, City Manager Michael Voll, and Fair Share Housing Center Executive Director Adam Gordon.
According to a letter from city special counsel Andrew Brown, Superior Court Judge James Pickering has dismissed the case against Sheehan and Voll with prejudice for failure to file a required tort claim notice. The litigation against the city itself had already been dropped.
A “with prejudice” dismissal means that Inderwies is not able to refile his claim.
The Fair Share Housing Center, an affordable housing advocacy organization given special standing by the courts, has filed for dismissal of the litigation against it, but that filing has yet to be acted on, according to a Center spokesperson.
The suit grew out of a series of bonus payments given to Inderwies and five other city employees at the tail end of Inderwies’ tenure as city manager. The funds used came from an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that the city maintained could only be tapped with City Council approval.
Inderwies did not dispute the use of the funds. He argued that state law and city rules allowed the use of funds as payment for administrative support of the affordable housing process.
At the city’s request, the state Department of Community Affairs reviewed the transactions, found a violation of the city’s court-confirmed spending plan for the trust fund, and then declared it had no jurisdiction to go further.
Next, the city requested that the County Prosecutor’s Office review the matter. After almost four months, the prosecutor’s office declared no criminal charges would be forthcoming.
Since then, the city has engaged in its own behind-the-scenes efforts to resolve the matter and pay back the housing trust fund.
Inderwies claimed that news media stories in which city officials were quoted as sources damaged his reputation and undermined his opportunity to run for elective office.
The underlying issue of the use of over $100,000 in Affordable Housing Trust Fund monies still lingers. The end of Inderwies’ suit against city officials removes a burden from the city, but it does not assure any resolution concerning the use of affordable housing funds. That process continues.
The city has promised the Fair Share Housing Center that it will restore the funds to the trust account. If the city does so without recovering the funds from the city employees who received the bonus checks, it will require the use of taxpayer monies to cover the 2020 payments.
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