MANVILLE: Drinking incident fires up council meeting

By Mary Ellen Day, Special Writer
   Residents continued to voice opinions at Monday’s Borough Council meeting regarding drinking on school grounds by a borough department head during a May charity softball tournament.
   The May 19 event, sponsored by the Manville Recreation and Municipal Alliance at Manville High School, was intended to raise money to help put air conditioners in the schools. Eight teams participated, including staff teams of the school district and recreation department.
   The issue was first addressed publicly at the Aug. 13 meeting Borough Council meeting and back and forth in letters to the newspaper since then.
   Through the work of a citizen watchdog, John Paff, a Franklin Township (Somerset) resident who is chairman of Open Government Advocacy Project at New Jersey Libertarian Party, police investigative reports were requested and released. The reports identify Recreation Department Administrator Richard Armstrong as an apparent violator of the school policy.
   Police Lt. John Crater’s report said he spoke to Sherri Lynn, who is a Borough Councilwoman, on May 21. Ms. Lynn, who played in the tournament, told him she had “heard rumors” of drinking prior to the championship game that day. The report says she saw Mr. Armstrong “passed out in a chair with a beer in his hand,” but that Ms. Lynn didn’t know who brought the beer to the school.
   Ms. Lynn said she called the mayor after the game to report the incident, according to the report.
      According to the report, Mr. Armstrong admitted to Lt. Crater that he knew alcohol was forbidden from school grounds, and said he had been drinking. The report said the application that Mr. Armstrong signed to permit the tournament “clearly states” alcoholic beverages are not permitted on school property.
      Mayor Angelo Corradino doesn’t dispute the facts, but says the matter was investigated internally, and Mr. Armstrong was suspended a week without pay, he said. Mr. Armstrong was also told there could be no more incidents of this type, or it could lead to Mr. Armstrong’s removal from the job, the mayor said last week.
“”“”“”On Monday night, Rudy Nowak was the first resident to question the Mayor and Council once again as to what action has been taken.”
   ”It appears that the crime was much more significant than any of us realized,” he said. “The drinking happened at a public event and what is significant is that the recreation director was so drunk that he passed out.”
   Mr. Nowak and the mayor sparred over whether the mayor had said the incident “was under investigation” or handled internally and disposed of, as the mayor claims.
   Mayor Corradino told Mr. Nowak, “You were told it was addressed and handled. I did not say it was under investigation.”
   Mr. Nowak called the incident “an absolute disgrace. There were pictures put on the Internet to make matters worse, spread all over. To give that person five days off is totally insufficient and I think that person should be fired or he should be asked to resign,” he said.
   He also asked that Mr. Armstrong’s assistant be removed as a borough employee “because she was never really hired,” he said. “Only the mayor and council can hire and I don’t know who hired her. Mr. Armstrong no longer had the authority to hire so that has to be settled.”
   Mr. Nowak demanded Council President Lynn’s resignation at the end of the meeting. “She has out and out lied and I am really sad about that,” he said.
   At that point, the mayor cut him off.
   ”First of all, if you have proof that she lied, I suggest that you go to the prosecutor’s office,” said the mayor. “If you are making accusations, you have no proof for them.”
   Mr. Nowak could not continue because the mayor kept saying, “This is done. This is done. This is done.”
   Mr. Nowak wanted to make it clear that the information he had was of public record, to which the mayor replied, “You’re right.”
   Mr. Nowak again asked for Ms. Lynn’s resignation. According to Mr. Nowak, Ms. Lynn has stated that she arrived after the incident was over and “yet she was the one who discovered the recreation director stone drunk with a beer in his hand passed out. Instead of calling, maybe the man was sick or maybe he had a heart attack. Instead of calling the police, she called you,” he said to the mayor.
Mr. Nowak suggested Ms. Lynn should have pressed charges against violators. “Yet nothing was done. That’s a disgrace,” he said. “There is a dereliction of her duties. To make matters worse it is quite obvious from this memo and from the police report it wasn’t reported to the police. I think this is disgraceful.”
  ”Clean up this mess, mayor,” said Mr. Nowak.
   Resident Bob Kaminski said the incident should be put to rest and for everyone to move on.
   ”There was this issue for the past couple of years with alcoholism on the board and the other party did not do anything about it. So let’s get over it. There are more important things in this town.
   ”The man was suspended. To me that’s enough as a resident and apparently to everyone, too. He was called on the rug. ’Let’s get over this and get going with the cleanup that we need to do.”
   Dean Shepard, who also had a copy of the police report and questioned Ms. Lynn’s actions, said it was “a shame to see how many people clapped for the law being ignored. By the way, you may think it’s over when it is not necessary over just because everybody up there says it’s over.”
   Mr. Paff is on the lookout, and accepts inquiries, about government agencies that try to suppress information the public has a right to have.
   ”Usually whenever it appears there is an attempt to suppress information, I think it’s pretty important to know the truth,” said Mr. Paff.
   Mr. Paff said his only interest was to make information public, not to take a side.
   ”The public has the right to know whether people in charge have handled a matter appropriately,” he said.
      He wouldn’t say if anyone called him to ask him to request the document, citing his need to make people feel they can approach him without being recognized, if they wish.
      The police produced the report in an “amazingly timely” manner with no questions asked, he said.
      The report is linked from his web site, http://njopengovt.blogspot.com/.