By VASHTI HARRIS
Staff Writer
SOUTH RIVER–The council has chosen to fire Borough Administrator Frederick Carr after delivering a 4-2 vote along party lines.
The decision to terminate Carr occurred on March 27 during both the council’s semi-monthly business and regular meeting.
“[Carr] was given a notice prior to the council meeting in regards to his termination. He had an option on whether the decision would be private or public, and he chose private. During the business portion of the council meeting, we went into closed session to discuss the fire prevention ordinance and Carr’s position. He was terminated during that night’s business meeting; however, it had to be done twice, because the action was taken at [the] business meeting and to be properly done it had to be done at the regular meeting, so we voted on firing Carr twice at the business and regular meeting,” Republican Mayor John Krenzel said.
Once the official vote was made – with Republicans John Sapata and James Gurchensky voting against the measure – Carr left the municipal courtroom and received a standing ovation from residents, Carr said the morning after, without providing further details of his departure.
“We have been looking into the financial aspects and how much the borough spends on the administration department. We spend about a quarter of a million dollars on the administration department alone and a lot of towns spend a lot less. The question came down to, do we really need a full-time borough administrator? Financially, we are looking at every aspect to save the borough money,” Council President Shawn Haussermann, a Democrat, said.
Carr had been South River’s borough administrator since 2012.
The mayor voiced his displeasure of the move.
“This was wrong, plain and simple. He did a great job as the borough administrator. There were never any problems with him and nobody ever complained about him. The official reason given was that the Democrats are looking at the structure of the government. This decision is putting the cart before the horse. You don’t fire someone and then reorganize the government; you reorganize, then terminate people. Now that Carr has been terminated all of his work will be dumped onto the CFO and the CFO can’t do both jobs,” Krenzel said.
“Currently we are looking into all of our options and we just have to decide if we are going to hire a part-time borough administrator or not. We have been looking at our options and trying to make the best decision for the borough,” Haussermann said.
To view the council meetings, visit www.southrivernj.org/SR-TV.html.
Contact Vashti Harris at vharris@newspapermediagroup.com.
