Resident Calls For Bipartisan Collaboration In Mendham Township

MENDHAM, NJ — Members of the Mendham Township Committee made a promise to all residents at the start of the year that they would provide full bipartisan cooperation despite the political tensions left over from the November election.

However, according to certain residents, the committee has not effectively kept its word, allowing for party lines to affect certain votes and choices in the community.

At last week's committee meeting, resident Martin Slayne spoke before the committee expressing his frustration with the inherent partisanship within the local government. Slayne opened up his comment by asking the committee to publicly denounce the legal challenge of ex-deputy mayor Tom Baio against committee member Lauren Spirig.

"Mr. Baio's refusal to accept the election results has embarrassed the community in local, national and international press... It's unacceptable that our three Republican Mendham Township Committee members are saying nothing," Slayne said.

The lawsuit, which will go to court before Judge Stuart Minkowitz in February, was filed on the grounds that illegal votes were received during the November election, and that the votes received were sufficient to change the end result.

Baio's contention in his lawsuit was that 19 voters should be disqualified because they did not adhere to the Mendham Township residency requirements. Many of the challenges involve adult children of Mendham Township residents who, despite allegedly no longer living at their parents' addresses, continue to vote at those addresses.

"Mendham Township residents voted into office two new committee members... The inauguration event on Jan. 6 was very nice, we saw two new members sworn in, messages of bipartisan aspirations for the community were clearly welcomed by the audience. But later that evening many attendees voiced strong disapproval when the new mayor and deputy mayor were elected in a self-fulfilling partisan way," Slayne said.

At the Jan. 6 reorganization meeting, the township committee appointed Nick Monaghan as mayor and Sarah Neibart as deputy mayor for 2023. Spirig chose fellow Democrat Amalia Duarte for both positions, but both were defeated in the committee by a 3-2 vote, with Republicans Monaghan, Neibart and Moreen voting against Duarte.

According to Slayne, the audience felt as though this represented a "you vote for me, I'll vote for you" mentality, which goes against the promised bipartisan action.

"True bipartisan action should have seen Amalia Duarte voted into a well-deserved term as mayor or deputy mayor in the spirit of community and rotation of these rolls, yet politics prevailed," Slayne said.

Later in the meeting, Deputy Mayor Neibart expressed her displeasure with partisanship in the committee following another 3-2 vote.

The split vote was for adopting a resolution calling for support of the Senate Republicans' proposal to create a special committee to investigate the massive increases in public employee health benefit costs.

"It is just upsetting that this is going to be party lines, regardless of how you feel about the governor, what is going on, everyone should be pissed off about. This is like the single issue of our time, that transcends taxpayers, unions, employees and advocate groups. We should all be together on this... I just feel like because we are not standing together because of political circumstances, that's why we are not making headway," Neibart said.

"We have to try and stop the 3–2 votes," committee member Tracey Moreen said.