Stone Harbor Council President Addresses Administrator’s Firing

STONE HARBOR – At Stone Harbor Borough Council’s Feb. 21 meeting, Council President Frank Dallahan read a letter into the record. 
The letter was a response to a borough resident who expressed concern over the manner in which the borough’s administrator, Robert Smith, was dismissed from his position at a Feb. 9 special meeting.
Dallahan said that the council gave no reasons for Smith’s dismissal because the council acted in accordance with state law meant to protect the confidentiality of personnel decisions. 
The process was not meant to ignore the public interest in such an action, Dallahan said, but rather to conform to protections put in place for the benefit of the employee.
Dallahan said that Smith had received a “Rice notice,” a notice that a public body is going to discuss an individual’s employment in an upcoming meeting. 
One exception to the state’s open public meeting requirements is the discussion of personnel matters affecting specific individuals. These discussions are held in closed session. The public agenda for the special meeting included such a private session of the council on matters of personnel. The private session never occurred.
Dallahan added that an individual employee has the right to request that the discussion of their employment be done in public. It is an employee’s decision, not one made by the council. Smith, Dallahan said, did not request a public hearing.
Council never went into closed session to discuss the employment action. Instead, Dallahan noted, the council chose to move directly to a motion to remove the administrator immediately.
Stone Harbor has had its share of problems of late. A long-standing pump station project at 93rd Street was abandoned after the expected costs rose above $11 million. A normal general permit for beach work expired, with the borough only seeing it coming after a coastal consultant was hired. 
A public access plan has been stuck at the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) apparently for years without approval. The plan, now redone and resubmitted, sits without DEP approval, and is now standing in the way of a variety of needed beach projects. A CRS level score that was set to lose significant points had a known expiration date.
The public is left to wonder how many of these issues were left at the administrator’s feet by the borough’s governing body when it took the action it did Feb. 9.