By Joanne Degnan, Staff Writer
ROBBINSVILLE — Mayor Dave Fried says the town’s financial involvement in the sale of Mercer Mobile Homes to the affordable housing nonprofit, Allies Inc., is on hold despite a councilman’s decision to step down from Allies’ board of directors in an effort to end the controversy over his ties to the organization.
”We’re still going to have to meet with DCA next week to figure out how to move forward from here,” Mayor Fried said Tuesday, referring to the state Department of Community Affairs, which oversees expenditures of affordable housing funds. “Everything is still on hold right now.”
Councilman David Boyne, who is running for re-election May 10, stepped down from the nonprofit’s board of directors Tuesday afternoon. He accused Mayor Fried of making an 11th hour political attack against him in order to help the mayor’s endorsed candidate in the race, Ron Witt.
Mayor Fried disputed this.
”We have a councilman that sits on the board of directors, and our township attorney has ruled that’s a conflict,” Mayor Fried said in an interview prior to posting an announcement on the township website Monday, saying the Mercer Mobile Homes deal was on hold. “This is information that should have been disclosed to us by him and by Allies.”
Allies Inc., of Hamilton, recently signed a $5.5 million contract with Mercer Mobile Homes to purchase the trailer park off Route 130 for low-income housing in a deal that depends on a $2.1 million contribution from Robbinsville’s affordable housing trust fund.
Mayor Fried announced the agreement in an April 18 press release, and Township Administrator Tim McGough said at the time the contract between the nonprofit and the mobile home park’s owner, Larry Kaufman, had been signed several weeks prior, but he did not have the exact date. Mr. McGough said the closing was expected to take place within three months.
Mr. Boyne, an accountant and CFO of a national transportation company, said he joined Allies’ board of directors March 30, which he said was after the nonprofit had made its decision to buy the mobile home park, whose residents have been in a legal battle with their landlord over rent control and sewer repairs.
”I didn’t vote on the purchase, and I didn’t know about the township’s (financial) involvement in it either until I read about it in the newspaper,” Mr. Boyne said referring to stories published after the mayor’s April 18 announcement.
The negotiations with Allies and the mobile home park have been handled thus far by the administration, not the council, and the proposal for the expenditure of the $2.1 million from the COAH trust fund to help finance the deal has not yet been brought to the council, Mr. Boyne said.
Attempts to learn from Allies the specific date Allies’ board of directors approved the Mercer Mobile Homes contract were unsuccessful as Allies’ director of public affairs, Don Tretola, did not return messages Monday and Tuesday.
Mr. Boyne mentioned, apparently for the first time publicly, he was on Allies’ board of directors during the April 30 council meeting.
Betty Alfano, a resident of the mobile home park, asked council members and administration officials present how Allies would calculate water bills for the park’s residents since they did not have individual water meters on their trailers.
”It’s not something that we would know,” Mr. McGough, the township administrator, told Ms. Alfano during the meeting. “The township’s role in this whole process was to try to bring together the park and a private entity that would purchase the park. Once they close, I would suspect (Allies) would be looking to sit down with residents and talk to them. I don’t know what they are planning to do.”
At this point, Mr. Boyne said, “Betty, I’m on the board of directors for that corporation, and I’ll talk to them and find out for you.”
Ms. Alfano offered her thanks, and the meeting continued without incident.
Township Attorney Mark Roselli said Monday that when he heard Mr. Boyne make that statement about his relationship with Allies, he was stunned. Mr. Roselli said he later raised concerns about a possible ethics violation to Mayor Fried, who was not present at the meeting and had ended his participation in the proceedings via conference call prior to Mr. Boyne’s statement.
Mr. Roselli said state ethics laws say an elected official or government employee cannot “undertake any employment service, whether compensated or not, which might reasonably be expected to prejudice his independence of judgment in the exercise of his official duties.”
”I’m always very conservative about assessing things like this when you’re dealing with the public trust, and it’s the appearance of impropriety that is the issue,” Mr. Roselli said. “I’m not casting any aspersions on Mr. Boyne or Allies, but it doesn’t pass the appearance-of-impropriety test.”
For example, people could raise questions as to whether Mr. Boyne, as a member of the board of directors who is giving counsel to Allies, also might be giving the organization inside information he is privy to as a council member, Mr. Roselli said.
Questions also could be raised as to whether Mr. Boyne’s position at Allies prejudices his ability to make impartial decision on matters before the council involving either Allies or the mobile home park, he said.
Mr. Roselli said that, in his opinion, Mr. Boyne had to either resign from the council or the board of directors of Allies.
Mr. Boyne said a private attorney advised him he was not in conflict as long as he recused himself from council votes involving either Allies or Mercer Mobile Homes. He said he decided to step down from the board of directors Tuesday afternoon in order to end the controversy.
”I’m doing this to protect them,” Mr. Boyne said, referring to Allies. “Had the administration given me the common courtesy of picking up the phone and calling me and discussing this intelligently, this would have never happened.”
Mr. Boyne said even though his resignation from Allies makes the point moot, he still would seek an advisory legal opinion from the state Local Finance Board on the controversy because he did not think Mr. Roselli was correct.
Mayor Fried expressed frustration with the situation, which he said could have been avoided if Mr. Boyne had checked with the township attorney before accepting the position on the board of directors.
”If he hadn’t made that random comment at the council meeting, we actually could have closed this deal, and it all would have blown up in our faces,” Mayor Fried said. “This is not the first time something like this has happened involving Mr. Boyne.”
The mayor said Mr. Boyne had to be told to recuse himself on matters involving defeated school budgets in prior years because of his wife’s position as a school board member.
More recently, Mayor Fried said, the township attorney told Mr. Boyne to recuse himself from the vote on the controversial Sharbell housing conversion application before the Planning Board because Mr. Boyne made a public statement that revealed how he would vote before testimony was complete.
Mr. Boyne said Mr. Roselli and the mayor were incorrect in saying school board matters were a conflict for him. Mr. Boyne produced a Jan. 31 advisory opinion from state Local Finance Board Chairman Thomas Neff, stating state ethics laws did not prohibit Mr. Boyne from participating or voting on matters involving a failed school budget just because his wife is a school board member.
Mr. Boyne said he sought the advisory opinion in case this year’s school budget failed, and Mr. Roselli told him to recuse himself from council deliberations on the school budget as he has done in past years.
As for the Sharbell application, Mr. Boyne followed the advice of the township attorney and planning board attorney by not attending any further Planning Board meetings in which the Sharbell application was either discussed or voted upon. The Planning Board ultimately rejected the application April 20, and Sharbell has publicly announced its intention to sue over the decision.
Mr. Boyne said the mayor’s statements were election-eve maneuvering.
”The mayor is doing this for political reasons,” Mr. Boyne said.
Councilman Rich Levesque, who is running on the same slate as Mr. Boyne in next week’s election, agreed.
”This is strictly a political attack by the mayor,” Mr. Levesque said. “For the administration to be playing politics with 147 affordable housing units is about the lowest form of politics that I have ever seen.”
Both Mr. Boyne and Mr. Levesque asked why, if the mayor and township attorney were worried about the appearance of impropriety, they did not question whether it was appropriate for Mr. Witt to have voted on the Sharbell conversion application since he is an executive at a Cranbury-based construction management and general contracting firm that has had a prior business dealing with Sharbell.
Mr. Witt said Tuesday that he had informed Planning Board Attorney Jerry Dasti that his company, Sweetwater Construction Corp., had done commercial construction work for Sharbell about 10 years ago on an office building in Town Center, but he had not had any dealings with Sharbell since that time. Mr. Witt said Mr. Dasti advised him he still could hear the application.
Mr. Witt, who ultimately voted no on the Sharbell application, declined to make any further response to the other candidates’ statements about the issue.
”I have always taken the high road in this campaign and not issued any negative pieces, and I’m not going to start now,” Mr. Witt said Tuesday. “But the focus should be on what you can do that benefits Robbinsville and its residents, not in trying to tear other people down.”

