Why Doesn’t Tabernacle’s Government Speak?
Tabernacle Township has become notorious for non-communication. Questions from the public go unanswered. The Committee rarely addresses public comments. Committee members rarely ask questions about the items on their agenda. They rarely discuss the public business that they vote on; and, when they do discuss it, they don’t go very deep.
It’s not that they’re avoiding controversial issues. They avoid the simple issues, too. Here are three recent examples.
1. A few months ago, work was being done along Chatsworth Road between Carranza Road and Route 206. My husband asked the committee what was going on. They wouldn’t answer. He asked again at the next meeting. They didn’t answer then either. It turns out that gas lines were being installed. Why was that such a secret?
2. In June, the committee was asked about equipment that was being stored in the old TRS building and whether any emergency equipment or personnel housed in the Emergency Services Building was being moved to the new municipal building. They didn’t answer. The same questions were repeated at two other committee meetings. These weren’t answered either. The same questions were then asked through two emails. By late August, Clerk Maryalice Brown got around to answering the questions.
Why did this ordinary question take three months to answer?
3. At the last meeting, I asked about plans to train the new Deputy Clerk Deirdre Amato. I figured that she would need training because her resume didn’t show any experience or coursework related to the deputy clerk’s position. Silence.
It turns out that in a July 31, 2023 Executive Session meeting (closed to the public), Clerk Brown told the committee that Ms. Amato completed two Clerk’s courses.
When the information about her coursework became public in the July minutes, it became clear, again, that they don’t want to say anything.
Most organizations try to emphasize the qualifications of their new employees. They jump at the chance to assure stakeholders that they hired a skilled candidate.
Tabernacle committee members and staff don’t think that way. They seem to think that government works best when the committee and staff say as little as possible, even if it’s in everyone’s best interests to be transparent. That’s small thinking. It also makes them look uninformed and uninterested.
So Why Don’t Tabernacle Committee Members Speak In Public?
I presume that they discuss all issues among themselves privately. Probably in back rooms or in private telephone chains. How else could they understand enough to vote on agenda items without any public discussion?
Private discussions about public business violate the Open Public Meetings Act. With few exceptions, public business must be done in public.
We know that some committee members bamboozled other members into thinking that they’re not allowed to speak with the public because Tabernacle has a Public Information Officer (PIO). That idea is utter nonsense. But committee member Sprague and Mayor Moore said it was so.
The facts are that the documents that create Tabernacle’s PIO don’t set any limits on speech. They don’t even define the PIO’s duties. They are so empty of standards and guidelines that Tabernacle relies on the State’s Office of Emergency Management Field Guide.
The State guidelines say that PIO’s are spokespeople in “major emergencies” and “disasters.” That’s exactly what you’d expect. Neither the guidelines nor Tabernacle’s PIO resolution say anything preventing elected officials from speaking with their constituents.
What is the Administrator And Clerk Maryalice Brown doing?
Sometimes, when a committee jumps off the deep end, the municipal clerk has enough independence to steer the ship of state back on course.
Usually, this happens if the clerk is tenured, which is earned after 10 years of public service. In theory, a tenured clerk can do the right thing without fear of being fired by the committee. Administrator and Clerk Maryalice Brown is a tenured municipal clerk with over 20 years of experience.
One of the clerk’s duties is to be the liaison to the public on behalf of the committee. In this role, Maryalice Brown should have answered all of those easy questions that the committee wouldn’t answer.
Despite her tenure and her duties as liaison, she hasn’t shown any independence or interest in transparency. Perhaps, she aligns with the committee because it compensates her so richly.
Why Is Public Information So Hard to Get?
I recently sent Maryalice Brown an OPRA request for her Woodland Township titles and salary information. She sent me a copy of the salary resolution; but she redacted it to exclude the information about all other Woodland Township employees. When I asked her why she redacted the information, she said that I didn’t ask for anybody else’s information, so she blacked it out.
That’s silly, wasteful and illegal. The resolution is a public record that’s available to everyone in its entirety. As a tenured Registered Municipal Clerk she should know that she can’t redact the bits and pieces of a public document even if the specifics weren’t asked for. This has been settled law since 2014 (American Civil Liberties Union of N.J. v. N.J. Div. of Criminal Justice, 435 N.J. Super. 533 (App. Div. 2014).
Just as Tabernacle’s committee wastes everyone’s time by making people ask the same question over and over and over, Clerk Brown wasted everybody’s time by not immediately providing the entire resolution. She wasted her time doing the illegal redaction. She wasted my time by causing me to send a second email. She wasted more of her time explaining her illegal redactions. After all of that, she sent me the link to the unreacted resolution. If only she had done that in the first place, government would have been simple and straightforward.
The Shared Service Agreement For Administrator And Clerk Services Is A Bad Deal For Tabernacle Residents
Through a Shared Services Agreement, Tabernacle Township pays Woodland Township $132,000 for Maryalice Brown to be our full-time Administrator and Municipal Clerk. Woodland then pays her a salary of $169,717.99 to be the full-time Administrator and Clerk for both townships.
How one person can effectively perform four full-time jobs is problematic enough. Yet, in addition, she also works five additional jobs for Woodland Township: Deputy Tax Collector, Technical Assistant, Recycling Coordinator, Board of Health Secretary and Land Use Secretary.
Given the high demands of the Administrators’ and Clerks’ jobs, it’s easy to understand why New Jersey’s Reference Guide to Joint Service Delivery doesn’t recognize the administrator and clerk positions as “commonly shared municipal services” in the Personnel and Staff Sharing category (p.34-35).
Aside from the extraordinary workload, the other problem is that the Shared Services Agreement is an awful deal for Tabernacle. Tabernacle pays almost 80% of the cost for the shared administrator and clerk, ($132,000/ $169,717.99 = 0.78). But Tabernacle isn’t getting the hours that it’s paying for.
It’s obvious that Woodland gets the largest share of Maryalice Brown’s hours and attention. Woodland adopted its budget on time; while Tabernacle’s budget was four months late. Her minutes for Woodland’s committee meetings are far more thorough than her minutes for the Tabernacle committee meetings.
Do you remember when Clerk Maryalice Brown explained that she didn’t notice the contractor using the Tabernacle Fire Station parking lot for his storage yard this past Spring and Summer because she doesn’t drive around there? That’s the problem. She doesn’t spend enough time in Tabernacle to see what’s going on. And when the unauthorized use was happening literally right in front of her she wasn’t thinking enough about Tabernacle to recognize it.
While she was absent and absent minded, the Fire Chief, who reports directly to her, made a handshake decision to let the contractor use the Fire Station parking lot for an unspecified “donation.” The Clerk or Committee has yet to report if they received any donation or payment.
The Shared Services Agreement tries to justify this arrangement by saying that it “…may result in tax relief and enhanced services for its residents.” That reads like the committee’s admission that the arrangement may not result in tax relief or enhanced services; and they just don’t know.
I haven’t seen the tax relief. It’s clear that Tabernacle services are degraded, not enhanced. Tabernacle taxpayers are getting the very short end of a very expensive stick.
Payday And Pension Boost
With paydays and pensions like this, it’s not surprising that Maryalice Brown follows the Tabernacle committee, even when she could easily provide residents with the ordinary, uncontroversial information they ask for.
It’s also a humongous pension booster for her. New Jersey bases its pension payments on the employee’s three highest years of earnings. Coincidentally, the Shared Services Agreement is a three-year agreement.
