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Extended severance given to borough administrator
(by Kevin Glynn - June 04, 2008)
The Woodcliff Lake Council voted 5-1 on Monday, June 2 to increase the length of Administrator Ed Sandve’s severance pay through the end of the year should he be fired without cause. State statute requires administrators to be given three months severance.
The “enhancement,” as it is being characterized by Mayor Joseph LaPaglia, was granted by the council at the request of Sandve at a prior meeting in closed session. The extended severance, which will give the administrator, who is in the fourth year of a five-year contract, increased job security, was requested due to the reappearance of long-time administrator Jack Doyle, who worked for the borough for 24 years prior to his resignation in 2002 in the midst of a dispute with members of the governing body.
Doyle has been hired by the borough on a contractual basis to seek grant money for the acquisition of the Hathaway property adjacent to the Old Mill Complex.
The timing of Sandve’s request, and the council’s decision, is no coincidence.
“When the previous administrator is brought in to do work there has to be a little concern,” Sandve said in a phone interview on Tuesday.
Despite public assurances by the mayor and council that no one wants to replace the current administrator with Doyle, Sandve says just the opposite is true. When asked if anyone on the council has expressed an interest in bringing Doyle back, Sandve said, “There have been comments that have come back to me [from council people] that have indicated that.”
Councilman Robert Rosenblatt, who made the motion to extend the severance, said he told the council he wanted to do this for the administrator a month ago. “Ed has done an excellent job,” he said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “He’s been here for four years, and he has no security. He [only] has three months severance in his contract.”
Rosenblatt called Sandve the best administrator he’s ever worked with. “He’s the first borough administrator that I’ve worked with that treats everybody equally,” he said, adding that politics do not enter into Sandve’s actions.
Rosenblatt said he previously asked everyone if they had any intention of removing Sandve from his post this year prior to making the motion in public session. “If nobody has any intention of removing him and it’s not costing the borough any money, all it does is make him feel good and secure in a job that everybody said they weren’t going to remove him from anyway. Everybody wants security in his job. Everybody wants to know that they’re secure… In reality, what I gave him was nothing. Just peace of mind. Just security.”
The extended severance also comes on the heels of a whistle blower complaint filed by former borough employee Carol Valentino, who claims Sandve fired her after she complained that several other employees were falsifying their timecards.
Rosenblatt and Sandve said the lawsuit, and other undisclosed personnel problems in borough hall, have nothing to do with the extended severance. “I’m taking steps to resolve issues that are going on at borough hall,” Sandve said. “It has nothing to do with my contract.”
LaPaglia and Councilman John Glaser, who voted against the extension, said the issue should have been addressed in committee before a decision was made.
For LaPaglia, the whistleblower complaint and other issues should have been considered. In a phone interview, LaPaglia said, “To ask the town to extend and enhance the severance portion of that contract, the timing in my mind was terrible. And I think the judgement of the council – the best I can say is that they voted with their emotions instead of their common sense. Until we know the judgement of that lawsuit, why we would vote to extend the length of his severance is mind boggling… There are a number of things going on in town hall that also make the enhancement of his severance package very untimely. There have been other issues with other employees at borough hall that are still unresolved,” he said, declining to comment further because they could become legal issues.
LaPaglia was part of the committee that hired Sandve after he was first elected mayor. “I’m not looking to do a hatchet job on this guy. I hired the guy. Until he is either absolved on the lawsuit and on some of these other matters, to enhance his severance is outrageous.”
He added, “As far as I’m concerned, he’s a nice guy, but that’s not the way I want to conduct borough business… I think the residents of
Woodcliff
Lake were done a disservice last night.”
Sandve’s contract expires at the end of 2009. Rosenblatt said the council could not extend the severance into next year because it can not obligate a future mayor and council to do so, but added that he hoped a committee would meet and make a decision on what to do in 2009.
For Rosenblatt, the decision was simple. “He’s just great at what he does.”
Kevin Glynn’s e-mail address is glynn@northjersey.com.
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