Township CFO John Barrett smiles as council president Kevin Meara holds a press conference Nov. 28, 2012. At the time, Barrett was business administrator, and Meara was acting mayor. (Staff photo by Rob Anthes.)
Hamilton mayor Kelly Yaede stood up and told a visitor to follow her.
She marched out of her office, up a set of stairs and through a side door leading into the township inspections department. Those in the office smiled as she walked past. One of them said, “Hello, Mayor,” and Yaede paused to smile back before purposefully continuing her stride to the center of the office. She waited until all eyes were on her, then began to address the inspections workers.
“We have a reporter here,” Yaede said, before asking the employees to speak openly to the stranger in their midst.
She turned around and, leaving the visitor behind, returned to her office. The employees began to laugh nervously. Their new boss had bet her future on their anonymous approval. It was a risky move.
The end of November had brought a flurry of activity, a boiling point after months of corruption scandal heat slowly simmered the township. There was the Nov. 20 guilty verdict on extortion charges against mayor John Bencivengo, Bencivengo’s resignation the next day, an action-packed, 9-day mayoral term for council president Kevin Meara and the eventual dubbing of Yaede as mayor at a heated Nov. 30 council meeting. After half a year of sensing something was about to happen, township employees and residents saw it boil over suddenly, spectacularly.
So, the employees were asked, how had life in the municipal building changed since that stretch?
“It’s very calm,” one woman said. “There’s no drama. There’s no not knowing.”
The township had started to calm in mid-December, and it was a welcome respite from the frenzied period that saw Hamilton have four different mayors, two changes of business administrator and the termination of the recreation department head.
By Dec. 17, Yaede had been in office for almost three weeks, and she had begun to forge the course for her administration. She brought back business administrator John Ricci, who Meara had let go Nov. 26. She set her priorities for the next year: keep the tax rate stable, look at improvements for infrastructure and services and, above all, “to instill confidence in the government.” And, on Dec. 18, council appointed businesswoman Ileana Schirmer to fill the vacant council seat left when Yaede became mayor. Yaede and Schirmer will hold their offices until the end of the year, at least.
The sense of peace the workers felt was uncertainty disappearing. They had a complete government and a new leader, someone who promised to help them forget about the drama and trauma of 2012.
“For personal political gain, there will be individuals who will want to keep the wound from John Bencivengo’s actions open, and not let this township heal,” Yaede said. “I find that to be an insult to the residents of Hamilton Township. As the leader of this town, my job is to move us forward, and that’s exactly what I plan to do.”
But there will need to be plenty of reconstruction in the months after the fallout from the Bencivengo trial, not just in repairing the trust between the government and its employees and constituents. The scandal, the trial and their aftermath also took its toll on the Republican Party, particularly the relationship between Meara and councilmen Dave Kenny and Dennis Pone. Meara also took shots at Yaede for openly discussing, in spring 2012, her interest in the then-occupied mayor’s office. Yaede, in turn, said that Meara followed a “personal agenda to enact hasty decisions” during his time as acting mayor.
The feud seems to have started Nov. 26 with Meara firing Ricci, although Meara said it began five days earlier, when he took over the mayor’s office and “the ink was still wet on the paper.” Meara said he spoke with Kenny the afternoon of Nov. 21, and that Kenny was trying to bully him into not changing anything.
“I had the confidence of the council,” Meara said Nov. 27. “They put me in this spot as president. What has changed since a law made me mayor? What has changed for Dave Kenny other than maybe I’m not doing what Dave wants me to do? That was never part of my oath of office. My oath of office never said, ‘I swear allegiance to Dave Kenny.’ If Dave Kenny can point out anything that I’ve done wrong, anything outside the powers [of the mayor], well, then point it out. But you just can’t call me ‘happenstance.’ That just shows there is something missing in your core. He’s got to deal with that, not me.”
With that, Meara did the opposite of what he said the establishment wanted him to do. In his only full week as mayor, he called three press conferences, fired a business administrator, announced his intention to launch a forensic audit of the township, named retired police officer and former mayoral candidate Anthony Recine the township’s public safety director and called for the township to hire more police officers.
“For me, if I have 30 days [as mayor], and I’m sitting here playing Xbox, how would [township employees] feel about that?” Meara said Nov. 27. “Given that I have the full powers and duties of the mayor, I don’t think it’s acceptable to the residents of the Hamilton Township that I don’t begin to steer the ship in another course.”
All that steering was all for naught, though, as Yaede reversed most of Meara’s actions when she became mayor.
She rehired Ricci, let Recine go and appointed herself public safety director. She said she wants to take a more global look at public safety, and won’t focus on Meara’s calls for more police officers. And, Yaede and several members of council have said they welcome any audit, but are reluctant to pay for it with township money.
Meara predicted such a response during his week as mayor, pondering aloud what the cost of not doing an audit would be.
“We’re all aware there’s a cloud over Hamilton Township, and we know it’s not going to go away immediately,” Meara said Nov. 28. “The few days that I’ve been mayor, we’ve begun discussions on efforts we can take to start removing that cloud and restore the public trust.”
During Meara’s Nov. 28 press conference, former councilman Vinnie Capodanno stepped forward to offer his support to Meara and township CFO John Barrett, who served as business administrator during Ricci’s brief termination. He also took aim at Kenny and the likelihood that council would select Yaede to be mayor.
“Kelly Yaede, I guess, is going to be put in by happenstance, and she’s not permanent,” Capodanno said Nov. 28. “She was not elected by the people of this town [as mayor].”
Sure enough, council voted, 4-0, Nov. 30 to elevate Yaede to the mayorship, less than 24 hours after the municipal Republican committee had selected Yaede, councilman Ed Gore and former freeholder candidate David Maher as its three candidates for the position.
The meeting was much more contentious than the unanimous decision would convey. More than half of the meeting’s attendees stormed out during proceedings, including Meara, opening up plenty of seats at the once-standing-room-only gathering.
Before Meara exited, the council president said he had attended a Republican caucus about the potential for a mayoral vacancy Nov. 15, which he felt disqualified him from voting. He left the room stonefaced in the middle of the public comment portion, while Kenny and Capodanno argued about whether council properly informed the public of the current council meeting.
As council vice president, Yaede assumed control of the meeting in Meara’s absence, meaning she ran and voted in the proceedings that gave her the mayor’s office. Among Yaede’s decisions as head of the meeting was to cut off the public comment portion to get to the vote sooner.
Councilman Gore explained that council had to vote at that moment or else he would be late to a high school football game he was refereeing that evening. Gore’s refereeing duties were also cited as the reason the meeting was called for 2 p.m. Township council usually meets at 6:30 p.m.
When the motion for a vote was called, most of the residents stood up and left the room, frustrated. All that remained were four council members, a handful of residents and reporters and dozens of Yaede family members and supporters. At one point, former mayor Jack Rafferty walked into the front of the council chamber just as his name was mentioned during a question from a resident. Council gave him a standing ovation and let him give a brief speech. Rafferty promptly left the room after speaking.
Yaede was later sworn in as mayor, and delivered a speech she had prepared.
After the meeting, Pone pushed aside the meeting’s tension as the machinations of council’s political opposition. He said most people, including Yaede’s family, knew that Yaede should—and would—be mayor by the end of the meeting.
“This is, really, the person who should be mayor now,” Pone said. “She’s a dedicated public servant … It’s her time. I think her family was aware enough that it was a pretty good shot.”
In the days after the meeting, Yaede started plotting the course of her administration. She vowed a “new day” in Hamilton, removed a door from her office, invited township residents and employees to visit her and made rounds at the municipal building. She said she answered phones at the township’s HamStat call center, and even followed up on 20 service requests to ensure residents received the type of service they expected.
She shrugged off the rifts created by the Bencivengo trial. She’s doing her job, she said, and she is sure the members of council will work together.
“Everyone has a job to do,” Yaede said. “This governing body knows they have to do so. Hopefully, everything will resolve itself.”
In the meatime, she hopes her actions—and really, just the fact that she’s mayor—will assure the people in the township.
“To be the first female mayor, I think that indicates that times indeed are changing,” Yaede said. “The old boy network in Hamilton is gone. It is a new day.”
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