By Sean Ruppert, Staff Writer; Vic Monaco, Managing Editor
At least three members of the Hightstown Borough Council were none too pleased to learn Monday that a feasibility study was begun in the summer on the consolidation of the borough and East Windsor, and a presentation had been placed on the agenda at the last minute.
”This is propaganda at the moment,” Councilman Dave Schneider, an opponent of consolidation, said at Monday night’s council meeting. He later added, “I’m bothered by the fact that I didn’t get a chance to look it over for accuracy or inaccuracy.”
Councilwoman Isabel McGinty argued unsuccessfully that the presentation of the late agenda item would represent a violation of the state’s Open Public Meetings Act.
”I’m at a loss as to how this is on our agenda tonight,” she said.
Councilman Larry Quattrone decried the fact that residents had been given no notice.
”The public shouldn’t have to find out from the newspaper,” he said, while later adding that he has no problem with GHEWIP commissioning the study or keeping it secret.
”I think the world of GHEWIP,” he said. “I don’t care what they do, but everything should be on that agenda by Wednesday so if you want to do some research, you have time to do it”
But council members Walter Sikorski, Jeff Bond and Mike Theokas voted in favor of hearing the presentation, and Mayor Bob Patten broke the tie with another yes vote.
Mayor Patten said the item was added to the agenda late because he was not notified the report was completed until earlier in the day Monday.
He told Ms. McGinty it was wrong to portray the issue as a secretive one.
”We do things in an open manner. We’re very famous for that,” he said. “You newcomers might not know that.”
Ms. McGinty said Tuesday that she is not upset with the report, but the manner in which it was created and brought to the council.
”It’s the nondisclosure of it,” she said.
Ms. McGinty said at the meeting that the way the report was being presented “set back informed discussion of this topic.” But Mr. Theokas, another first-year council member and a proponent of consolidation, said he “couldn’t disagree more.”
Mr. Theokas said, “I think we took a step forward.”
Gene O’Connor, a GHEWIP member who chaired the committee charged with commissioning the report, said the group had told Mayor Patten and East Windsor Mayor Janice Mironov of the report, and the mayors had allowed municipal employees to share information that was needed for the report.
Mr. O’Connor said GHEWIP had asked both mayors to keep the report confidential.
”We felt that we wanted to maintain confidentiality because we did not want the study to be debated in the newspaper,” Mr. O’Connor said. “We felt that we needed the time to fully develop the study and develop the issues that the study addresses.”
Mayor Patten, Council President Sikorski and Mayor Mironov acknowledged they were aware of the study beforehand, and all said they honored GHEWIP’s request to keep the matter confidential.
”I’m not sure that was the right choice,” Councilman Schneider said Thursday.
”It’s not what I expected from Bob,” added Councilman Quattrone.
Mr. O’Conner said members of the East Windsor Township Council were made aware of the study at the end of last week. Mayor Mironov said other members of the East Windsor council received the report at the latest along with their regular meeting items in advance of their Tuesday meeting.
A decidedly more mellow scene played out at the East Windsor Township Council meeting Tuesday when Mr. O’Connor and members of the consulting firm presented the report. Mayor Mironov thanked them at the conclusion of their statements and told them she and the council would have questions in the future. The men left, and no comments or questions were made by any other members of the council.
The study was carried out by Government Management Advisors, of East Brunswick. Mr. O’Connor said he chaired a three-person GHEWIP committee formed in April, tasked with commissioning the report. The other members were Hightstown insurance agent Charles “Cappy Stults” and Bill Gilmore.
Mr. Gilmore is the chairman of the Hightstown Economic Development Committee, and Mr. O’Connor was a member, too, until he resigned late last year.
Reagen Burkholder, one of the consultants who worked on the report, was the East Windsor township manager from 1978 through 1985.
Ms. McGinty was critical of the fact that Mr. O’Connor and Mr. Gilmore, as members of the EDC, a government board, did not disclose the study last year.
”They had a duty to expose this,” she said.
She added that their dual membership “muddies up the water.”
In a letter to the editor this week, she wrote, “What’s with the overlapping membership in the Economic Development Committee and GHEWIP, and doesn’t the appearance of conflict matter? Doesn’t it needlessly undercut at the outset the credibility of a project so vital to Hightstown’s and East Windsor’s necessarily interconnected futures?”
Minutes of the Economic Development Committee’s April 2 meeting, the same month that GHEWIP formed its committee on the consolidation report, state Mr. Gilmore responded to former Councilman Ryan’s Rosenberg request that the EDC discuss consolidation by saying, “the EDC should only discuss this question if asked by council to do so!!!”
Mr. Rosenberg said Wednesday that he “had no idea” the report had been commissioned.
Mr. Gilmore said Wednesday that GHEWIP, as a private entity, had the right to request confidentiality. He said the matter was never discussed at an EDC meeting, and he and Mr. O’Connor did not have to report the study through the EDC.
Despite Councilman Rosenberg’s request, Mr. O’Connor said the EDC would have discussed the matter but was never asked to by the council to do so.
”I’m not even sure that it would be within the purview of the EDC,” Mr. O’Connor added.

