Mayor Tolley, have you asked where the $50K Mr. Button claimed he was promised went to, or, like the rest of us, have you simply written this statement off knowing that Jamie Button was lying through his teeth? It is no wonder that the township committee feels it needs more representation on the West Morris board; the representative that we currently have is awful. The videos of board meetings show a very angry and ineffective individual sitting in the Mendham Township board seat.

Domino, quick point of clarification on something I might not have made clear. The Committee wants more representation on the meeting with the mayors. And they want more board of ed participation in the process. There was no talk of replacing seated board members. I am going to edit the story in a bit to see if I can make that clearer.

Thanks so much for taking the time to post and for reading!

Russ: Thanks for your comment. So the Mendham Township Committee needs more than just their mayor to meet with the other 4 mayors? Why would they feel entitled to that? Is their opinion more valuable or important? Their board representative, Jamie Button, is a Harvard graduate (in case he hasn't reminded you lately). Isn't that enough? Sounds to me like they would like to micromanage and manipulate the process in order to get the result they want.

At the DOE meeting, I believe, the Mayors said the study would go through ALL scenarios that are available for the district, not just one. So not sure what Mayor Tolley is concerned about. If you want openness ALL possible changes should be reviewed. Yes, it would make sense that the school boards should be involved, asthey would be the ones voting on ANY change first. However, getting the facts of various scenarios should be first and foremost, thus the need for the Study.

Does any one know where the PowerPoint presentation can be found from the DOE meeting, was trying to find it? Thanks.

Domino: I guess Mendham hasn't changed their stand since last summer. They want to bring in their own lawyers. see patch article http://longvalley.patch.com/articles/mayors-mendham-twp-stalling-education-process

Claire, we need to differentiate Mendham Borough from Mendham Township. It is the Township that seems to be the cause of all of the angst here. Maybe the Township Committee needs to collectively resign from CBS before they can move forward.

Hey guys,

I wanted to let you know that we were told the full powerpoint was being "cleaned up" and not available for release yet.

And again, just to clarify no one said anything about lawyers last night. They want more representation at the meetings with the mayors and they want more involvement from the school boards.

This is a complex issue and I want to make sure I am getting you guys the right information as clean as possible.

And as always, thanks for reading and for posting.

No no, I understand what you mean. Yes, there was an attorney brought to a previous meeting by the previous mayor of Mendham Township. That was not what they were talking about last night. I just don't want to confuse people further if that was what they were getting out of the story.

:-)

They have a fair idea of what they would like to see happen, so I suppose we will see what happens when they all next get together.

As for the presentation: From what I was told it was mostly formatting and style stuff to make it look a little cleaner and make it more accessible.

We also have video of the entire presentation I am working like crazy to get on the site, but its so long we are having technical difficulties with it. Hopefully I can iron them out in the next day or so!

So, just to add some clarity from the meeting last night; I was at the meeting, and my understanding is that Mayor Tolley wants to meet with the other mayors so that he can report back to the Mendham Township Committee about the specific areas that will be studied. This makes perfect sense since he was not in the meetings when the other 4 mayors decided to move ahead with the study, and therefore had no input to the decision. If Mendham Township is supposed to be an equal partner in the study, then our representatives should also have a say in the focus of the study.

Keep in mind that Mendham Township operates a committee form of government, so the mayor is not able to commit to a study unilaterally, he needs the support of a majority of the Township Committee.

So I think that the title of the article is inflammatory, they are not "not committing", they want to get caught up with the rest of the mayors. At least, that's what I heard. Russ, you were there, did you hear the same thing?

Hey John. Nice recap. No, I wouldn't categorize it all quite the same way you did. The verbiage the mayor used was he would not commit any funds until certain other conditions were met. Considering the DOE presentation ended with all of the mayors reiterating that they had gotten the approval of their councils to fund the study, the direct appeal was for Mayor Tolley to do the same.

That is not what happened. Mayor Tolley said he would not commit funds until certain other conditions were met.

Now certainly a headline that states, "Mendham Township Will Not Commit Funds For Feasibility Study Until They See What That Study Entails, Have increased Representation at the Meetings and Involve All the School Boards" would be unwieldy.

hahahahahahahahaha

I am being facetious here, but truthfully there are limits to what a headline can hold.

So the long and the short of it: Mendham Township won't commit the funds. Read further to find out why.

I don't know about the angle of needing to be caught up. That very well may be true.I am not sure how much the mayors kept Mayor Tolley in the loop.

Just to further clarify all the previous clarifications, Mayor Short (who is also a mayor in a municipality with Township Committee form of government) made it clear in his end of meeting summary that Boards of Education from all the affected towns have to be brought into the process of how to move foward. I am almost sure that another Mayor made the same point. Perhaps Mayor Tolley can post a list of his requirements for participating in a study. Perhaps there are some alternatives for the district that he will not consider under any circumstance or specific pre conditions for participating in the discussions. Right now I think we are all trying to understand what we think his township wants without hearing directly from him. No disrespect to the media, but sometimes they cannot provide the fullest presentation of all the points an individual is trying to make.

One of the nice perks of now having heard Mr. Tobin speak is that when I read his posts I can hear the dulcet tones and smooth bass tinged baritone. I swear he could order eggs with gravitas.

Of course I happen to have a very unappealing voice, which is why I write. Excellent points by all.

News is a discussion and I enjoy participating in it with you.

Oh jeez. This is a Floating fat man township