In looking at the agenda for Monday's February 10th Council meeting, it appeared to be very straightforward. However, the drama began as soon as the approval of meeting minutes began.

The meeting minutes for the last three meetings were finally brought for approval, after much delay. Included were the minutes from the November 25th meeting, in which the Mayor called to hire Traci Dillingham as the full time Borough Administrator and it failed to receive four votes.

Taking a quick step back, at the November 12th Council meeting, Traci Dillingham was voted on to become permanent Borough Administrator. However, the vote tally was 3 Yes, 2 No, and 1 Abstain. At the time of that meeting, it was implied the vote passed. However, at the next meeting, it was clarified that 4 votes were needed, and the vote had to be conducted again, which then failed.

During the November 25th meeting, Ms. Dillingham went on an extended rant where she called out Borough employees, residents, and used inappropriate language.

Councilwoman Camacho asked that the three sets of minutes be approved separately. As she made that request, she stated:

"Uh yes, I understand that minutes do not to be verbatim, but they should cover all the topics that are discussed at meetings, and not edited to remove uncomfortable dialog. Two of these minute packages, which took 3 months to do, these minutes have been edited, and I'm wondering if the audio recording was tampered with as well."

There was a 7 second pause. The Mayor then deferred to the Borough Attorney to explain information about meeting minutes and Roberts Rules.

"I'm certainly not aware of any tampering with any audio recording," stated Borough Attorney Maciag.

Attorney Maciag explained that the summarization of meeting minutes should cover what was done, not what was said, and minutes are supposed to be a general summary of what was done, not a summary of what was said. And that audio transcripts are available to those who want to review them.

Further, Attorney Maciag went on to state "And when sometimes when tempers get strong up here, it's all the more reason not to restate things in the minutes that were said up here, but certainly if somebody wants to go to the transcript, that it is certainly available, and I can't imagine there's any reason why the audio trans would've been tampered with at all,"

"And these minutes, due to some potential pending litigation, were reviewed by both the Borough Attorney and the Labor Attorney before they were published to accept those kind of concerns."

Councilwoman Camacho had no further comment, and the minutes proceeded to a vote, where she voted not to approve two of the three.

We can agree with Councilwoman Camacho that the meeting minutes appear to be heavily redacted regarding the content of comments made during the meeting. We are working to report this information to residents in the near future, to keep residents informed about what was happening.

The rest of the meeting proceeded. During committee reports, Councilwoman Camacho used her time to reiterate:

"As you all know, the Borough is severely understaffed, and as a result, not running efficiently. There are things not getting done, bills not being paid, and supplies that are not being ordered,"

"We have a few hard working qualified people here that are not being treated respectfully. With that being said, some of them are seeking employment elsewhere. So, we are in jeopardy of losing some these people and staff. As I've said repeatedly, we are going backwards."

It seems the Councilwoman has concerns that she continues to bring forth in these meetings in what appears to be angry ranting. This has become a regular occurrence, and as we have stated before, it is not the place and time to share those concerns. She should be discussing this internally with Council and the Mayor to address these concerns.