STONE HARBOR – Joseph Clark, currently the town manager for Howell Township in Monmouth County, has been appointed by the Borough Council as the borough’s new administrator.
The council, at its meeting June 17, also approved a $150,000 settlement agreement and general release with former administrator Robert Smith, who sued the borough after he was fired in February 2023.
Clark, who previously was Howell’s township attorney, will begin work in his new post on Monday, July 21. His appointment will relieve borough Chief Financial Officer Cynthia Lindsay of the added duties of interim administrator, which she assumed after the departure of the previous administrator, Manny Parada.
Clark, who practiced as a private attorney in several firms from 1996 to 2017, is a graduate of Rutgers Law School. In 2017 he began a five-year stint as Howell’s full-time, in-house attorney. He moved to the position of township manager in 2022, a position he held for almost three years.
Howell is the largest municipality in Monmouth County by land, comprising 61 square miles. It has a population of 53,537, according to the 2020 census.
Following the retirement of Jill Goucher, who served as Stone Harbor’s borough administrator from 2011 to 2020, borough officials had differences with the next two individuals in that role.
Smith, who succeeded Goucher, was followed by Manny Parada, who had served as the borough’s director of public works. Parada was fired by the council in December 2024. This left Lindsay to do the job while waiting for the council to appoint a new administrator.
Taking over the position of administrator after his predecessor was removed will not be a new experience for Clark. He became Howell’s interim township manager in May 2022 following the dismissal of Brian Geoghegan by the governing body, which charged he abused paid time off. Clark was promoted to permanent town manager in Howell that December.
Several social media posts credit Clark with raising the morale of township employees in Howell after the departure of Geoghegan.
With Clark’s appointment, Stone Harbor finds itself with an entirely new group of administrative leaders. Lindsay, hired as CFO in April 2024, is the longest-serving of the new trio. She replaced James Craft, who retired. New Borough Clerk Jeanne Parkinson succeeded Emily Dillon, who left for another position in May.
Smith, after his firing, filed a $1.2 million tort claim against the borough that he later turned into a Superior Court lawsuit in which he claimed he was removed from his position because he tried to get two members of the Zoning Board of Adjustment to file required financial disclosure forms that were months past due.
One of those Zoning Board members was the husband of a sitting council member, leading Smith to claim his dismissal was retaliation for his actions regarding the disclosures.
Smith had a trial date in September 2025; the settlement ends the litigation. The resolution approving the settlement says the borough does not admit to any liability in connection with the lawsuit.
The suit came at a particularly difficult time for the borough. After Smith’s dismissal, then-Borough Clerk Kimberley Stevenson quit, filing an $800,000 tort claim in which she said, among other things, that she was subject to sexual harassment by Parada while he was administrator. She turned her tort claim into a lawsuit in June 2024.
In August 2024 borough employee Megan Brown also filed litigation against the borough, claiming sexual harassment by Parada. There has been no public action taken by the council with respect to the litigation initiated by Stevenson and Brown.
Contact the reporter, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com.
