BRADLEY BEACH — The Bradley Beach Borough Council held a special meeting on April 29 to fill the role of chief financial officer (CFO) and qualified purchasing agent (QPA), quickly filling the vacancy that was opened last week when the former CFO resigned.
Last week, John Barrett resigned from the CFO post in an email shared with over 15 borough employees, in a dispute stemming from calculations for retro-pay in a recently negotiated union contract.
“We had significant disagreement in terms of the processing of our union’s retro checks. We reached an impasse in our ability to work together, to reconcile differences that myself, this firm (PM Consultants) had identified. Rather than work through them further, he felt it was his need to resign and I willingly accepted that resignation,” Mayor Al Gubitosi said, explaining the strife between the two parties.
The council unanimously awarded a contract to Jeanette M. Larrison of Government Education Solutions LLC, as a temporary CFO for the remainder of the year at a total cost not to exceed $120,000.
“We’ve been through a pretty tumultuous week or so…Where our last CFO resigned somewhat unexpectedly, I will describe it as strong differences of opinion and we had to mobilize pretty quickly to find another CFO resource and I could not be happier to have found the person we are going to vote for,” Gubitosi said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Larrison attended Tuesday’s meeting and provided some brief background into her work experience after introducing herself to the council and meeting attendees.
“I’ve been in municipal government for 20 years. I’ve done all facets. I have multiple licenses: CFO, purchasing agent, municipal clerk’s license. I’ve also been an instructor for Rutgers for government tax collection. I have my tax collection license, too. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up so I just went for everything,” Larrison said.
Members of the council commended Gubitosi for swiftly finding a qualified candidate to fill the role of CFO during the busy budget season before voting to award the contract to Larrison.
Council President Jane DeNoble said, “I want to thank you for all of your hard work because I know there was a little bit of a question for what was being submitted for our Local 152, and Al was correct in his numbers and Jeanette has verified that as well.”
Councilman Paul Nowicki commended the mayor for seeking a third-party verification in regards to differing calculations and added, “I trust the mayor, but we needed to verify. I think you took the right actions very professionally to ensure that we were doing the right thing for our employees and for the borough.”
Gubitosi said he heeded advice from the borough attorney and sought a second professional opinion for the retro pay calculations, although he was confident in his initial instinct.
Gubitosi revealed that when Barrett resigned from the CFO role, the role of QPA also fell under the umbrella of Barrett’s firm PM Consultants, freeing up the QPA position as well. On Larrison’s recommendation, the council authorized a professional contract to the Canning Group LLC and appointed Sean P. Canning to the role of QPA for the remainder of the year at a cost not to exceed $10,000.
The council also passed two resolutions accepting resignation of PM Consultants for both CFO and QPA services at the special meeting on April 29.
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