Point Beach Councilman Lurie Says He'll Skip Meeting with Business Owners

Point Pleasant Beach Council President Tim Lurie says he'll skip a meeting with business owners Tuesday night, so the mayor can have the closed committee meeting that he wants.

"I still want to attend, I would love to attend," said Lurie. "But I don't want the mayor saying he's not able to do what he wants because of me. And I want what's best for the town."

Mayor Vincent Barrella said on Friday afternoon, "I appreciate the gesture, but now we have an advertised council meeting, so a majority of council would have to vote to go along with that."

Here's how it all started: Last Tuesday night, Barrella invited Councilmen Sean Hennessy and Michael Corbally to attend a meeting next Tuesday night with boardwalk and other local business owners to discuss what police and many residents are describing as the most loud, obnoxious, crime-ridden series of summer weekends in Point Beach in the last couple of decades.

Then Council President Tim Lurie said he wanted to be at the meeting too.

That turned the private committee meeting into a regular council meeting that had to be advertised and open to the public.

That's because when a majority of the members of a local governing body meet, the state Open Public Meetings Act (also known as "the Sunshine Law") mandates that those meetings be advertised in a local newspaper and open to the public.

And that, Barrella said to both the Tuesday night meeting-goers and to business owners, in a letter the following day, is a meeting that will not accomplish what he wants.

He said the presence of residents and the media will have "a chilling effect" on what he had envisioned as a productive, brainstorming session where business owners and elected officials feel free to speak their mind.

"When people know they might be quoted in the newspaper," the mayor told a reporter, "it changes things."

By Thursday afternoon, Lurie had re-considered and decided he would forego the meeting, which was scheduled at 7 p.m.

However, that meeting follows a council meeting, included in the same advertised public notice, that was scheduled at 6:30 p.m. so council can discuss whether to fund an emergency appropriation to hire more special, or seasonal, police officers.

So in order for the second meeting to be a closed, committee meeting, a majority of the council members would have to vote to adjourn the first meeting, leaving the mayor and two council members to meet privately with business owners.

"It's out of his (Lurie's) hands now," Barrella said. "Council has to vote to adjourn, which I hope they do."

"I would still love to go, I think I can add insight to these issues," Lurie said. "But I'll leave after the first meeting if that's what he (Barrella) wants, even though I feel I have the right to stay because I'm on a tourism committee. I think the tourism committee should be handling this."

Lurie, who is challenging the mayor's re-election bid, also refuted the mayor's assertion from last Tuesday night that Lurie has a conflict of interest in meeting with boardwalk and other business owners because he had represented Jenkinson's in a zoning board matter a few years ago.

"I collected historial photographs to show that the inlet bar was there before the zoning ordinance was adopted," Lurie said. "I only did a small component of the testimony for the application."

Barrella said he thinks the most he can hope for out of next Tuesday's meeting is that business owners walk out of the meeting with a better understanding of the scope of the problems and that a foundation has been laid to develop solutions.

"I still plan to have another committee meeting after that," Barrella said. "We're not going to have a solution after one meeting. And I don't know what the solution is."