Now that the West Windsor Township Council has effectively terminated former animal control officer Bettina Roed’s position, her lawyer is seeking a new vote.
Trenton-based attorney Walter Bliss has filed a lawsuit to meet the 45-day statute of limitations as a precautionary measure to protect his client, he told the Township Council at its meeting on April 25.
To protect the township against one portion of the lawsuit, however, Councilman Charles Morgan has asked the council to take another vote on Monday, May 9.
The resolution would reaffirm the council’s position on the matter, this time with Morgan physically attending the meeting.
In a letter to the council on April 11, Bliss alleges that the 3-2 vote the council took on an agreement with East Windsor for animal control services, which effectively terminated Roed’s position, violated the Open Public Meetings Act and is invalid.
Among the reasons Bliss lists for the violation is that Morgan has said that he had difficulty hearing the proceedings because he attended the meeting via telephone. Bliss also alleges that the agreement with East Windsor does not provide for all of the animal control services required by state law.
He also alleges that the council cited a “personnel matter” as a reason to go into closed session, even though there was no personnel issue. Bliss asked the council to revoke or take a new vote on the resolution, which it approved on March 7.
Bliss said the Open Public Meetings Act requires every municipality to hold public comment, but that the public comment is meaningless “if appropriate means have not been provided to ensure that the public is heard by all members of the governing body participating in the related vote.”
“It is compelling in this regard that at a subsequent council meeting, Councilman Morgan stated that if he had known at the March 7 meeting what he learned later, he would have voted differently,” Bliss wrote.
However, Morgan said that when he saw the lawsuit raised an issue with his absence from the meeting when he voted, he decided to call on the council to take a re-vote.
“I have made it clear that I was concerned about what I was hearing from the public after the vote,” specifically with regard to the claims Roed’s supporters were making about Plainsboro’s reasons for dropping out of the agreement, Morgan said. Her supporters were alleging that Plainsboro objected to the high cost of veterinary services.
“When I investigated it thoroughly, I found that those statements by the supporters of Ms. Roed were wrong,” said Morgan. “In the contract with Plainsboro under the shared services agreement, it said that West Windsor would take animals to the veterinary services of Plainsboro’s choice, so their representations turned out not to be true.”
After doing that research, Morgan said he determined there was “no basis for changing my vote.”
“I felt that there may have been an expectation on the part of Ms. Roed and her attorney that it would be 3-2 against the agreement (if a new vote had been taken), and that would not be the case,” Morgan added.
So Morgan drafted a new resolution, which he expects to be a 5-0 vote. “Voting for that resolution is really not voting on the shared services agreement,” he said. “What it is doing is voting to protect the township against litigation. It’s a very simple thing, and it has nothing to do with the wisdom behind terminating Ms. Roed. We cannot renegotiate the contract for a shared services agreement.”
The lawsuit also alleges that the vote was illegal because Morgan was attending the meeting via telephone, and that the vote really would have been 2-2, which would mean it failed. However, “all that would do is kill a shared services agreement with East Windsor,” said Morgan. “Ms. Roed has been terminated. People are saying that if we had turned down that shared services agreement, we would have changed our minds on terminating Ms. Roed. I personally don’t believe that’s true. We would have found another shared services agreement.”
Bliss’s second argument in the lawsuit was that the decision was made behind closed doors in executive session. Morgan said there was a personnel discussion in executive session, but no decisions were made. “Council members were reacting to what we heard from the administration” about the issue, but no decision was made, he said. “So I think the whole lawsuit fails.”
In his April 11 letter to council, Bliss touches on the “personnel matter,” saying that although state law allows exclusion of public discussion on “contract negotiation,” council members said during the meeting that they were withholding their comments in front of the public because it was a personnel matter. “However, nothing in the communications between the administration and Ms. Roed has suggested this is a ‘personnel’ matter,” and there was no reason for council members to withhold their comments, he said.
Bliss also alleges that the agreement only covers services requested by West Windsor when the “immediate need arises.” But “on its face, the terms of the agreement need never be invoked,” Bliss wrote.
Township Attorney Michael Herbert said township officials “don’t think there was any violation of any obligation that the township council had.”
Morgan said Bliss attended the April 25 meeting and told the council he was running out of time under the 45-day limitation imposed by the court to bring lawsuits. “I’m assuming the 45 days is from the date they issued the termination notice of Ms. Roed,” Morgan said, adding that Bliss told the council he filed the lawsuit because he had to and that he would prefer not to have a lawsuit. He would rather sit down and talk, Morgan recalled.
“My answer was the discussion should be with the mayor because the council has no power here,” he said. “Council can only bless what the [administration] wants to do.”
Bliss sent the letter to the council and filed the lawsuit after the council told Roed’s supporters — who crowded four council meetings through March and April — on April 4 that it was sticking behind its March 7 shared services agreement.
