The controversy over the contract of town engineer Jim Helb continued to boil at Monday night’s Verona Town Council meeting.
The Council had voted three to two in December to extend the contract, which could pay Helb $130,000 a year for the next three years as an independent consultant. Council member Kevin Ryan had attempted to challenge the contract then, saying the body should have sought public bids for the position to explore cost-saving alternatives. In voting against the extension, Ryan noted that, in addition to Helb, Verona has a $70,000 part-time engineering employee, putting Verona’s total annual engineering costs at roughly $200,000. Ryan said that Cedar Grove spends $108,000 on one municipal engineer.
But on Monday night, Council member Bob Manley, who had voted for the extension, challenged those numbers. Though the matter of Helb’s contract was not on the night’s agenda, Manley used the time given to him for his Council updates to introduce statistics on Cedar Grove’s costs that he said were compiled by Helb. According to those numbers, Cedar Grove’s total costs were $222,000 a year, compared to $206,000 for Verona.
Ryan noted that the statistics from Helb had been given to all Council member late Friday and that he had not had time to check them out. “You assume that these numbers are factual,” Ryan said to Manley, adding that he preferred to “trust, but verify.”
What followed was a tense exchange between Manley and Ryan, as they attempted to sort out what was included in each set of figures. Finally Council member Michael Nochimson, who had also voted against the extension, said that “without verifying the numbers, we can’t have a dialogue.” Nochimson also said that he would have preferred for that dialogue to occur in the presence of Helb, who was not at Monday’s meeting. Nochimson did note that he thought spending for both Verona and Cedar Grove on engineering was higher than it should be.
All seemed well until the public comments part of the meeting, when Alex Roman, who lives at 2 Amy Court, noted that a bill before the New Jersey state Senate (S1517) would mandate that all state, county, municipal and school district contracts for professional services would have to be subject to competitive bidding. He suggested that it would be good for Verona to follow that practice. “You can’t control your costs unless you compare them,” Roman said. The suggestion drew a sharp rebuke from Town Manager Joe Martin, who has maintained that Helb’s current status is a cost-saving move. Helb, a long-time municipal employee, retired two years ago and was hired back as an independent consultant without benefits.
