Remnants of the West Windsor council conflict over selecting the township’s redevelopment attorney seemed to resurface again on August 4 when it came time for council to reappoint one of the redevelopment attorney candidates as the township’s bond counsel.##M:[more]##
Prior to the meeting, Council President Charles Morgan had removed the reappointment of the McManimon & Scotland law firm as bond counsel from the agenda, but under the urging of the mayor and Councilwoman Linda Geevers, it was placed back on for the meeting.
The council narrowly voted 3-2, with Morgan and Councilman Will Anklowitz voting against the measure, to reappoint Ed McManimon, who has served as the township’s bond counsel for more than a decade.
McManimon’s law firm was one of five that were interviewed over the winter for the position of redevelopment attorney. Conflict arose when council did not agree with the mayor’s recommendations for the position, which included McManimon, and the council has yet to revisit the issue. The issue first resurfaced in July during a presentation on tax increment financing, as a way to fund improvements like a parking garage, in the redevelopment area, when Councilwoman Linda Geevers questioned McManimon over whether he thought holding the position as bond counsel would conflict with potentially serving also as the township’s redevelopment attorney.
Anklowitz had emphatically stated then that he felt it was a conflict of interest, and hinted toward that in explaining his vote against reappointing McManimon.
Anklowitz said after the meeting that he had not voted to reappoint McManimon the year before either. “Ed McManimon’s firm is one of the firms that is looking to do some additional work for the township,” he said. “I feel if we want to keep them as a viable option, then we need to decide all those issues. If they’re not in the running for any additional work, then I’m not worried about it. The people who are helping you borrow shouldn’t be helping you do the spending. It’s a conflict of interest.”
Anklowitz said he was not criticizing the work the law firm does for the township. When asked whether he felt McManimon would have instead been better suited as the redevelopment attorney and not the bond counsel, he responded that “I think that’s a debate we still need to have at the council.”
Morgan, on the other hand, said his issue with reinstating McManimon had more to do with the timing of the proposal coming to the council for approval.
“It’s very unfortunate when an important contract comes to us at a time when we’re put in a position of having to say yes,” Morgan said. He explained that McManimon’s contract had expired five weeks before the mayor brought the reappointment to the council, precluding the possibility for any discussion on the issue. He called the move “pretty obnoxious.”
He said the last time the council sent out a request for proposals for the position was in 2003, and that the council has simply reappointed McManimon as bond counsel every year without contemplating whether his firm’s appointment was the best option for the township.
Morgan said the mayor should have brought the issue to council in May or June so it could have discussed its options before having to rush into a decision. “It’s presented to us in a way that we have no choice but to pass it. Otherwise, we’ll bring the process of government to a halt. It’s just very unfortunate.”
Morgan said, however, that the question is not over whether McManimon is good at his job. “The question is fairness to council without a gun being held to our heads.”
“We wanted to have a discussion without having to be forced to choose,” Morgan added. “After half a decade, there are real questions around why it was so important to move at that meeting.”
Like Anklowitz, Morgan did say that if McManimon had a conflict of interest, he does not feel he can serve both roles, but the fact that there is a potential conflict of interest is a reason why more discussion was needed.
Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh says the appointment was urgent because “we have a few big projects going on. We need the bond counsel to come up with the bonds.”
He also lauded McManimon’s work for the township so far, and said that the township has a triple A bond rating as a result of McManimon’s help, and that Chief Financial Officer Joanne Louth had said she was also happy with McManimon’s work. “If it’s not broken, why fix it?” the mayor asked.
“He has been doing a great job helping this town move in the right direction in terms of the long-term financing, planning, and issuance of the municipal bonds,” Hsueh added.
Hsueh also denied Morgan’s accusations that he tried to push the appointment forward at the last minute, leaving no time for discussion. Hsueh says he appointments like McManimon’s are so routine every year, that he was not expecting any problems from council in approving them. “Nobody ever questions all of this,” he says. “It was done that way before.”
Further, “he was doing such a good job as a bond counsel, and he didn’t ask for an hourly rate increase. That was the reason, to me, why I thought it was a routine matter,” Hsueh added.
Hsueh also referenced the dates of McManimon’s reappointments by council over the last five years, during which Morgan was on council. In 2004, the council approved his reappointment on August 2. In 2005, the council approved the reappointment on July 18. In 2006, it was approved on August 14, and in 2007, it was approved as late as August 20. “There’s nothing on my part to do anything different,” Hsueh said. “This year we couldn’t do it earlier because we had a few controversial issues, and council always has a long agenda.”
Councilwoman Linda Geevers, who voted in favor of reappointing McManimon, said she feels that “political hardballs should not interfere with votes on key contracts.”
“Decisions should be made based on the merits of each recommendation from the administration,” she added. “McManimon & Scotland is a leading firm in the state and in the nation for public finance. Ed McManimon has done an excellent job of being our bond counsel for many years. In addition, his firm is also bond counsel for the Parking Authority and the WW-P school district, which also has a triple A bond rating.
Further, she said, “Simply put, Mr. McManimon is the best in his area of expertise. I did not want to put the township in any type of financial disadvantage by not having pushed forward with a separate vote on the contract. The business office needs to have immediate access to our bond counsel.”
COAH Resolutions. In other business, the council passed a resolution on August 4 identical to one passed by the township’s affordable housing committee that comments on the state Council on Affordable Housing’s new third-round regulations.
The resolution states that the revisions “make municipal satisfaction of the affordable housing obligation even more onerous by increasing the fair share obligations while further restricting the mechanisms to satisfy them, particularly the cap on the bonus credit, and by leaving in place the system which makes inclusionary zoning a useless compliance technique.”
Specifically, council stated in the resolution that COAH should eliminate the bonus cap because it “punishes municipalities that have done just what COAH wanted by providing more family rental units and fewer for sale and age-restricted units and eliminates the incentive for doing so in the future because no bonus credits accrue from them, given the number of bonuses they have already accrued.”
In addition, the council also suggested that COAH’s failure to permit the exclusion of third round inclusionary developments from the residential growth share calculation eliminates inclusionary development as an effective compliance mechanism. “Because the third round site market units increase the growth share, all of the on-site affordable units must be used to satisfy the additional growth share obligation created by the development itself, and therefore cannot be used for other purposes,” the resolution states.
For example, in a 100-unit development with 20 percent set aside for affordable housing, the 80 market-rate units will generate an additional growth share of 20, and that will only satisfy the growth share obligation created by the new development, and will not be used to help offset the township’s other obligations.
Township officials are estimating that in West Windsor’s case, with excess second-round credits and planned third round projects, there would be a deficit of 100 to 200 units that the township would have to construct itself because that inclusionary technique could not be used to satisfy the obligation. According to West Windsor’s calculations, building 200 units could cost township taxpayers around $28.7 million, and building 100 units could cost $14.35 million.
Therefore, the resolution also states that COAH must specifically revise the regulations to clearly state that municipalities should not be required to use their own money to construct the affordable units.
Councilman Will Anklowitz said the “township has taken a clear position with affordable housing,” and that “we want to fulfill our obligations, but they have to make it so we can be able to understand what it is. And it has to be realistic.” He said the new regulations are so complicated, “it’s difficult to fathom.”
Similarly, the township’s planning board also passed a resolution last month addressing some of the same concerns. The public comment period on the newly adopted resolutions expires Friday, August 15.
Reimbursement. In other council news, Council President Charles Morgan and Councilwoman Linda Geevers will be meeting in the coming weeks with Business Administrator Chris Marion to come up with a reimbursement policy to help put an end to the controversy that has lingered for months now.
The end of this past council year was marked by controversy over council’s proposed salary increase and reimbursement issue. Council members, with the exception of Linda Geevers, had proposed a 50 percent increase in their salaries to $7,”500, a measure that drew crowds of residents opposed to the idea to council meetings. Council members said the raise was simply to offset the costs associated with carrying out the everyday functions of their jobs. The measure was ultimately vetoed by Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh. In response, council proposed a flat monthly reimbursement policy, similar to the mayor’s, which also drew public ire before the whole issue was dropped by council. That resolution would have instituted a flat reimbursement system similar to the mayor’s flat $250 mileage allowance each month that would cover all of a council member’s expenses.
The reimbursement issue came up again during the August 4 meeting, when Morgan presented his own drafts for reimbursement policies, but it was ultimately decided that he and Geevers would meet with Marion to work on the issue.
