Resolution unresolved at emergency council meeting

Harbor Patrolmen appointed, contract renewal tabled

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The Glen Cove City Council convened an emergency meeting on the evening of Jan. 30 to appoint a handful of new members to the Harbor Patrol. The emergency meeting — for which little more than a day of notice was given — was necessary to expedite the appointments, several officials said, or else the soon-to-be patrolmen would have been barred from attending 3-months of Peace Officer’s Academy training, beginning on Feb. 5.

According to Deputy Harbor Patrol Chief Dino Graziosi, the trainings happen infrequently. “It comes up whenever they have enough people to do it.”

Chief John Testa added that usually, the academy tells the Harbor Patrol that a deadline is looming long before rushed measures become necessary. He said that this time, “They just notified me the other day. If they’re not sworn in as members,” he said of the new appointees, “they can’t go.”

The Harbor Patrol appointments were one of two items originally on the agenda. The other — a resolution introduced by Mayor Tim Tenke to renew a contract for “special investigative and code enforcement services” — became the source of some confusion. Acting on a motion made by Tenke, the council voted unanimously to table the resolution, bringing the emergency meeting to an end after just four minutes.

Tenke later said that he moved to table the resolution because the contract was “not really an emergency. This,” he added, gesturing to the uniformed Harbor Patrol appointees, “was an emergency.”

When asked why he had initially put the resolution on the agenda, he said, “It was really a thing of convenience because we’re all together, but it’s not necessary at this point.”

Councilwoman Pamela Panzenbeck said that the contract wasn’t anything new. “It’s a program we had from before,” she said, “something we urged the new mayor to continue, and he’s decided to continue it.” Panzenbeck added, “It could have been renewed in January but he decided to wait.”

The Herald Gazette reached out to the mayor’s office to inquire what had changed since January, but given that this story developed the evening before we went to press, they were unable to respond in time.

Panzenbeck said that part of her decision to vote for tabling the resolution had to do with timing. The meeting was scheduled for 7 p.m., and according to the councilwoman “We didn’t get [the contract] until 4:30 today, so we didn’t have a chance to really think about it.”

Councilwoman Marcia Silverman had been vocal about the meeting on Facebook earlier that day. She posted from her official account, “In the name of transparency, I’d like you to know that I was informed at 5 p.m. today” of the emergency meeting 26 hours later. The post continued, “It is not clear what the “emergency” is, but we are having a council meeting and I urge all to attend.”

Other similar unofficial public notices made the rounds on the social media site, including a post on the Glen Cove chapter of Indivisible, a left-leaning civic organization, and several on the “Glen Cove Neighbors” page. One such post, from former city council candidate Phillip Pidot, applauded Silverman “for alerting us to this last-minute meeting, or most of us wouldn’t have even noticed it.”

Pidot also expressed incredulity over the resolution on the code enforcement contract, “to reappoint a code enforcement consultant we just fired,” as he put it.

The consultant, a firm called CPG Consulting — founded in 2013, and run by a former Glen Cove Police detective who retired in 2012 — has been under contract with the city since at least 2014, according to city records available online.

Last year, the city paid the firm a little over $47,000 to “assist the city’s code enforcement division with investigative support for its housing litigation and prosecution.” The pay agreement had been $65 an hour, according to the 2016-2017 contract, with a set maximum of 80 hours per month.

Had the resolution placed on the agenda for Tuesday’s emergency meeting passed, the city would pay CPG Consulting at the same hourly rate. It also would have set in place a minimum of 40 hours per month. While past resolutions to approve the contract have included maximum hours, this appears to be the first time that a minimum hour threshold is on the table.