WEST WILDWOOD — Was it a sick-out to avoid the public’s questions about a proposed budget or was it a case of Friday the 13th bad luck for Mayor Chuck Frederick and Commissioner Gerry McNamara who both called out sick minutes before the meeting along with no-show appearances by the borough’s solicitor and auditor?
Approximately 40 residents came to Borough Hall April 13 expecting to witness and debate the introduction of the borough’s 2012 budget. Instead they heard Municipal Clerk Richard Carter announce because two members of the three-member government had called out sick, a quorum could not be reached and the meeting was cancelled.
Commissioner Scott Golden sat alone in his seat on the dais while Carter made the announcement.
Carter told the assemblage a future date for introduction of the budget remained unknown.
“I don’t set them (meetings),” Carter told the Herald in a phone interview after the meeting’s cancellation. “I just schedule them.”
While the meat of the meeting was to introduce the 2012 budget, also on the agenda was the approval to pay bills.
“Without an action meeting, you don’t pay bills,” said Carter. Even without the passage of the 2012 budget during the still-to-be-held April meeting, money to pay bills is available under the temporary budget passed by resolution in March. Those monies will be available until June, said Carter.
“The authorization is there through the emergency appropriations to pay the equivalent of last year’s budgeted items up through June,” said Carter.
Residents who came to the meeting prepared to address items in the budget were not amused with the meeting’s cancellation.
“It must be highly contagious,” commented Ron Golden about the malady that made a quorum kaput.
“I think they’re suffering from amnesia,” said Elaine Szymkowiak.
“I was not aware they were not going to be here,” said Scott Golden. “I was prepared to come.”
McNamara told this newspaper he was not feeling well and called City Administrator Chris Riding at 8:30 a.m. to let him know he would not be attending the meeting scheduled for 9 a.m.
“I thought they’d have a quorum,” said McNamara. “I was not feeling well and I didn’t know that the mayor would not be there.”
According to McNamara he intends to be in touch with the mayor. “We have to have a meeting and pass the bills,” he said.
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