MANAGER BROWN IGNORES APPLICATIONS
Council Member Astor Asks: “What’s the point in 'playing nice' if you still get steam rolled?”
For the better part of a year, Tara Astor has worked to publicize and speed-up a glacially slow appointment process for Mount Holly’s many committees and boards. She has spoken at Council meetings about the positions that remain vacant despite the wealth of great candidates who have applied to fill those slots. But month after month, Mayor Bank’s claims the appointments should not proceed for various reasons.
So last night, with council member Lew Brown once again missing, Astor teamed up with council member Kim Burkus to “walk on” nominations for candidate after candidate who she feels have not been given a fair chance to serve. The parliamentary “walk on” rule for these nominations allows a motion to be made and seconded, which then forces a vote by Council. And in each of these instances, her nominations were rejected by Rich DiFolco and Chris Banks.
Here is a list of the positions she tried to fill:
· 2 alternates for the Planning Board
· 4 positions on the Environmental Committee
· 1 position on the MUA
· 4 individuals for Recreation Committee
Astor said that while it’s the Manager who selects the Recreation Committee, she still suggested that residents who had made applications should be appointed. During the public comment period of the meeting, resident Pierre Ford vented his frustration at Council for its failure to even acknowledge his requests to be appointed to any of the township committees.
“I try to help this community by showing up. I’ve provided three applications now to serve on Committees but didn’t get a single interview. Why should I continue to show up when I’m not given an opportunity to participate? Now I hear that individuals who got picked didn’t even put in applications. That’s totally wrong.” Pierre Ford.
Over the last number of months, Ms. Astor had hoped that behind the scenes work to promote an environment of cooperation could promote a more harmonious relationship between the Astor/Burkus minority and the Brown/Banks/DiFolco majority. But as 2025 gave way to the new year, Astor came to the conclusion that these efforts were not producing the kind of reciprocal effort she hoped for on the issue of appointments.
That’s why last night featured a full court parliamentary press on any issue that the Astor/Burkus team either found objectionable or wanted more discussion. This resulted in a number of resolutions being “pulled” from the “consent agenda” so that they would have to be discussed at length until the council members felt their questions were answered.
For example, on Resolution 2026-40: “Resolution Renewing the Support of Local Cannabis Licensee Prolific Growhouse”, their two “No” votes stopped the resolution in its tracks. This prompted Deputy Mayor DiFolco to say “Before we move on, lets take a moment to have a conversation.”
And it was only then that both Astor and Burkus [along with the assembled residents] learned that the cannabis vendor was about $100,000 behind in their payments to the Township and that a payment plan had been worked out to put them back on track by May of this year. We also learned that if they failed to make payments, the “support” resolution could be revoked. And with that new information, Astor/Burkus agreed to re-vote the resolution, which passed with a 3-1 vote.
Finally, Council member Astor “walked on” a motion to allow Council member Burkus to be appointed to the Recreation Committee as a “Council liaison”. Deputy Mayor DiFolco voted for it, but the appointment was clearly not to the liking of Mayor Banks who took an inordinate amount of time to finally register his “Yes” vote.
Reached after the meeting for comment about these more aggressive parliamentary maneuvers, Astor said “What’s the point in ‘playing nice’ if you still get steam rolled?”
