Split Votes Continue as Cape May Reorganizes

CAPE MAY – Reorganization meetings are generally ones dedicated to having individuals take the oath of office, followed by a long list of routine resolutions setting up annual accounts, establishing temporary budgets, reappointing contract professionals, dividing oversight and liaison responsibilities among governing body members, and completion of housekeeping chores, like setting holidays and announcing meeting schedules.
It is a time when elected officials thank their families for putting up with the inconvenience of public life, municipal works for their tireless service and citizen volunteers for their commitment and unreimbursed labor.
Everything occurred at Cape May City Council’s reorganization Jan. 7, but so did an ongoing division on the council.
The meeting began with two nominations for the role of deputy mayor. Council member Stacy Sheehan proposed Council member Zack Mullock, and Council member Shaine Meier advocated continuing Patricia Hendricks in her current role as deputy mayor. The vote was 3 to 2, preserving Hendricks in her role.
Sheehan and Mullock opposed the reappointment of Attorney Frank Corrado as city solicitor. The same 3-to-2 vote confirmed Corrado in that role for another year.
The meeting was City Manager Neil Young’s last, with his contract ending, and his announced desire to step down and return to the role of chief financial officer. The next order of business was a move to appoint Young as interim city manager because hopes that a new appointee could be hired in time for an early January transition did not materialize.  The council has held closed meetings on the position, but no candidate has been selected.
After split votes for deputy mayor and city solicitor, Young’s extension was unanimous, but the divide on the council reappeared in the next item of business – an appointment of Hendricks as council’s member on the Planning Board.
Appointments have been the source of controversy on the council for months, with Mullock and Sheehan saying that they are often not consulted or informed of appointments directly made by the mayor, or those that require council approval. Mullock makes the case that the three-person voting bloc on the council can confirm any appointment, so his and Sheehan’s votes are seldom seen as necessary.
In remarks made later in the meeting, Hendricks said that two words for 2020 should be “due diligence,” “placing the burden for knowing what is going on” squarely on the shoulders of each member of the council.
Once again, movement along the agenda fell prey to public disagreement among the members of the council when the agenda called for reappointment of the city’s engineering firm, Mott MacDonald.
Mullock stated that the city has spent $2.6 million in the last two years with Mott MacDonald. He argued that more city contracts should be bid out rather than automatically handed over to the preapproved city engineering firm.
He said he was voting against the reappointment to get the council to discuss the issues and entertain more competition. Mott MacDonald was reappointed 3 to 2.
Later in the meeting, Corrado explained that a city ordinance allows for as much competition as the council wishes to entertain concerning city engineering contracts. Mullock and Sheehan proposed a professional services agreement with an alternative municipal engineer, Remington and Vernick Engineers. For the first time in one year on the council, a resolution put forward by Mullock and Sheehan passed on a split 3-to-2 vote, when Meier supported it.
A resolution appointing members to various boards and commissions was contested, with Mullock and Sheehan claiming they could not support the appointments because they had not been consulted on them.
In the end, all 42 resolutions passed, a number on split votes, and the city’s business moved forward.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.