During these days I spend toiling in my garden and in my basement working on repairing my foundation walls, it provides me an opportunity to think ahead – beyond the debauchery of how I will spend the money from a winning Powerball ticket I am destined to purchase some day.
Come 2016, there will be a West Easton Council that, I would venture to say, will be unlike any governing body that has overseen borough business in recent years. Every councilperson will have been elected, with no appointees seated, and the mindset of the majority will be a change from the old guard.
Barring an unforseen upset in the general election by a write-in candidate who previously served for an extended time, there will be three inexperienced councilpersons, a council seat that will likely remain empty during meetings, and a Mayoral change, if what I’ve been told comes to pass.
The empty council seat will be the one held by Mr. Louis Niko, who nobody expects to return, as he resides in a nursing home. His seat can not be filled unless he resigns and requesting that of him would be viewed by many as unsympathetic to his current health condition.
Mr. Niko has devoted many years serving the residents of West Easton as a councilman and currently holds the position of Council Vice President. But, expect his seat to remain unused until it becomes available in the 2017 election and a new councilperson is seated in 2018.
That leaves three councilmen with at least some knowledge of borough requirements and government requlations, but the council may be as contentious as it is currently. The most experienced, currently on council and safe in their positions until up for re-election in 2017, are Councilmen Tom Nodoline and Dan DePaul, who nobody would describe as, “fishing buddies.”
The third, Councilman Ron Nixon, has had previous council experience in Wilson Borough and will have two years on West Easton’s Council.
Mayor Gerald Gross, who has hinted publicly that his role as Mayor may end sooner than people think, could resign his position at the beginning of next year.
I have held back on what he has said to me in our brief chats following a couple of council meetings and random meetings on the street. I’m not totally convinced he will be resigning as Mayor next year.
He has become – I will describe it as, “disappointed” – with the infighting on the council, while a particular resident who took a fight to an often crude personal level, had been a major distraction during the last few years.
That “disappointment” was evident as he walked out of the last council meeting without a word, when it took seemingly forever and frivolous comments to pass a motion to move forward on a casino grant that would offset the cost of scheduled roadwork in the borough. A grant that could save taxpayers $50,000.
I didn’t find fault in his leaving the meeting early. I would have left at that point myself, but I’m the self-appointed cameraman and the meeting hadn’t been adjourned. If I fired myself for walking out, I’d be firing my only employee.
Should Mayor Gross indeed resign, that will leave a council with half its attending members inexperienced and the need to appoint a person to the position of Interum Mayor until the next election.
My belief is that Mayor Gross will stick it out for the last two years of his term. He may see the necessity to leave more council meetings early during those last two years, but I believe a few councilmen would benefit from his knowledge and guidance during that time.
And we still don’t have a part-time Borough Manager.
If that position isn’t filled before the beginning of next year then it will make an already difficult situation, even more so. Council President Kelly Gross has been performing that function far longer than she should have been and under her leadership the reigning councils during that time did not promote any trainee to fulfill the role.
Kelly did do the job for free and saved the borough money by doing so, but also did not have to answer to anyone, but herself.
No discussion of the part-time Borough Manager was discussed at this last council meeting, to follow up on the previous meeting about filling the position, so there appears to be no urgency. I can only hope there is.
When the 2016 Council begins there will definitely be work ahead, as well as a steep learning curve. It would be made easier if the current council finds a part-time Borough Manager before then.
A potential candidate for the Borough Manager position might be outgoing Council President Kelly Gross, but I personally don’t see it as a viable option for a number of reasons. Some of which are associated with her qualifications to perform the job, but most, her hubris.
Very few people who have been in charge are able to take a position in which they must answer to those who once answered to them. Considering the possible make-up of the 2016 Council, the employer/employee relationship would be toxic from the beginning. She has also made it known that once her term ends, she is “done.”
Gross stated she has some things she wants to get accomplished before her term ends, but whether or not she assists in the upcoming Council transition is only known by her.
The 2016 Council will have to hit the ground running and come up to speed in short order. As Mayor Gross has warned, it will require more than just sitting at a meeting once a month.
He is right. It will be more than just addressing past policies regarding the borough’s transparency, who attends conferences, allotted time for public comments, and other items that need to be reviewed.
After the Council reorganization takes place in 2016, at which time a new Council President, Vice President, and Committee Chairpersons are voted on, there will be that pesky problem of running the borough, while meeting the guidelines and requirements from the Federal and State governments.
Infrastructure. Equipment. Police coverage. The mil rate. Budgets. Planned projects already proposed. These are some of the many items that the new Council will have to familiarize themselves with and address. All of which will mean a lot of time outside council meetings, hitting the books and understanding the rules.
Not that the task is insurmountable. It will just require a lot of time and work, which the winners in November had better be prepared to devote a significant amount of effort.
They will have only two years before the next hurdle arrives.
The 2017 elections will see a new Mayor voted in and, if Councilman Tom Nodoline meant what he told me about his intention not to run again, at least two additional new councilpersons. One in his seat and another in Mr. Niko’s. There will also be two additional Council seats up for re-election.
Mayor Gross stated, “God, bless them,” when he talked about the incoming council members and what they face.
Of course, he may have only been following Winston Churchill’s advice, regarding the art of diplomacy.
Disclaimer: On January 4, 2016, the owner of WestEastonPA.com began serving on the West Easton Council following an election. Postings and all content found on this website are the opinions of Matthew A. Dees and may not necessarily represent the opinion of the governing body for The Borough of West Easton.
