LITTLE SILVER – Personnel matters drew some scrutiny at the Feb. 25 Little Silver Borough Council meeting.
The Borough Council announced the hiring of a new director of the Department of Public Works/Recycling (DPW) to replace retiring DPW Superintendent John Clark.
The Personnel Committee, which Councilman Robert C. Neff chairs, appointed James Gannon to the position of director of DPW.
“I’m looking forward to doing the best for the borough,” said Gannon at the meeting.
A
ccording to Borough
Administrator Michael Biehl, Gannon had worked for the borough for 15 months and had previous experience working for Oceanport’s Department of Public Works for one year prior to his appointment.
“It was a difficult decision, but I think we’ve come up with a good candidate in Mr. Gannon. He has managerial and supervisor experience, owning his own landscaping and construction business. He worked for a time for the Ocean Township Department of Public Works,” said Neff.
The council also introduced an ordinance amending an ordinance for salaries of certain officers and employees of the borough of Little Silver to include Gannon’s salary of $63,500 annually.
The borough will still be paying Clark’s salary, which is $82,160, until Jan. 1, 2009, when his retirement becomes official.
Currently, Clark is on terminal leave, and the borough needed someone to take over his responsibilities immediately, according to Biehl.
“There’s a name change in the position from superintendent to director, and there’s no change in the job description; that’s just a formality, so we don’t have two superintendents on the payroll at the same time,” said Neff.
Mayor Suzanne Castleman said that the title change was just a matter of semantics and that the borough can’t have two people on the payroll for the same job.
Gannon, an employee of the department for 15 months, had beat out several other borough employees for the job.
“You passed up a seven-year employee, a 17-year employee and a 22-year employee,” said the wife of one of the longtime DPW employees, Cathy Hubbard, Woodbine Avenue.
Hubbard said Councilman Rick De-
Noia told her husband and the other men that the department
was going in a new
direction.
Neff said because it
was a personnel matter,
he was not able to go
into greater detail about
the decision.
“All I can say is that it was a very difficult decision to make. It’s a personnel matter and I can’t get into great detail about what happened,” said Neff, adding, “The committee came to that recommendation after reading dozens of résumés from inside and outside of the borough. We conducted two rounds of interviews. We are very pleased that all of the final candidates for that position were within the borough of Little Silver.”
Another personnel matter included the retirement of the borough’s recreation director, John R. Hird.
Hird was first appointed as recreation director in 1975 and had worked as a staff member of the Recreation Committee for four years prior to his appointment, according to a resolution the council approved at the meeting.
The resolution stated, “The sincere thanks and grateful appreciation of the residents and the official family [are] extended to John R. Hird for his services to the borough.”
The resolution will be presented to Hird at the next Little Silver Council meeting March 3 at 8 p.m.
Councilman Jonathan Bitman and the Recreation Committee are currently accepting résumés for Hird’s replacement.