The self-appointed Cherry Hill/Merchantville merger study commission held their first meeting at the Merchantville Community Center on December 6th. Outgoing Cherry Hill mayor Bernie Platt’s five-member panel includes himself, Roger Dennis, Tom Yarnall, Seth Klukoff and Natalie Barney. A Merchantville petition group chose Kathy Birmingham, Rosemari Hicks, Richard James, Anthony Perno and George Wilkinson. The panel was sworn in by Cherry Hill lawyer Don Levenson. The panel then elected Roger Dennis, who was out of town and not in attendance, chairman. Merchantville’s panel members and this meeting process have not been sanctioned by Merchantville’s Borough government.
On September 27, 2010, Merchantville’s Borough Council passed a resolution to form a Study Commission with Cherry Hill. Borough Council appointees to the commission were submitted to Mayor Platt . On November 4, 2010 municipal representatives from both towns met with DCA Commissioner, Lori Griffa who requested letters of intent in order to hold their place on this application. After that meeting Merchantville’s Mayor North met that obligation but Mayor Platt chose to stall the joint municipal application process. He accomplished this by withholding submission of his appointees and letter of intent, thereby allowing the original DCA submission deadline to expire. This maneuver enabled Mayor Platt to sidestep Merchantville’s governing body and their submitted appointees in order to form a more merger-friendly hybrid panel with the petition group.
The legal public notice of this panel’s first meeting on 12/6/11 was advertised by the Township of Cherry Hill on 12/3/11 in the Courier Post and Vineland Daily Journal. No legal public notice of the meeting was advertised by the Merchantville petition group. Three weeks prior to this first meeting, on 11/18/11, the Cherry Hill Town Council advertised for a RFP for a merger study consultant. Cherry Hill readvertised the RFP with an addendum/clarification on 12/8/11. About 10 individuals attended.
The vice chairman took public comments and questions but gave no answers. At the meeting, the stated intention of the group is to push to get this on the ballot by August 2012 for a vote by both communities in November 2012.
The meeting videos were posted on youtube by Greg Lavadera who initiated the Merchantville petition to merge with Cherry Hill. He characterizes his blog as “an independent source for news and information about the Consolidation Study between Merchantville & Cherry Hill.”
The videos can be viewed below.
