Nov 18, 2016 5 min read

The lawyer for a Cecil Township woman is threatening to file a second lawsuit under the state open-meetings law after a township supervisor said colleagues met without inviting her to discuss plans to move the township’s former jail into the township park.

In a five-page letter dated Thursday and addressed to township solicitor Christopher Voltz, attorney Jesse White – who represents Jennifer Andreis Moninger in an ongoing lawsuit against three supervisors over the removal of a memorial stone depicting her father, Gary Andreis Sr., from the township park – cited comments by Supervisor Cindy Fisher made during a Nov. 7 meeting. Fisher said she happened to be at the park with her daughter Nov. 4 and saw colleagues discussing plans to relocate the jail there. She said she had not been invited to participate.

White accused the supervisors of holding an “illegal meeting,” saying he and his client plan to file a second lawsuit under the state Sunshine Act if the three members of the board of supervisors who are defendants in the existing lawsuit – Chairman Thomas Casciola, Eric Sivavec and Eliabeth Cowden – “are still unwilling to settle this matter” by 5 p.m. Nov. 26.

The Sunshine Act requires when a quorum of members of a governing body – three of the township’s five supervisors in Cecil’s case – meets to deliberate or take official action, that meeting must be advertised ahead of time and open to the public.

Cowden and Casciola confirmed they, Sivavec and township manager Don Gennuso were at the park that day.

“We just wanted to pin down the exact location because they’re hoping to move it before the end of this month,” said Cowden, president of the Cecil Township Historical Society. She said she didn’t even get out of the car while she was there.

Casciola said the historical society “asked me if I’d come up there and give them my opinion,” Casciola said.

Gennuso came over from his office in the nearby township building, as did Sivavec, who happened to be at the township building, too, Cowden and Casciola said.

Donald Fuchs, founder of Weavertown Environmental Group – now owned by Illinois-based Univar Inc. – is bankrolling the move of the jail, according to minutes of a Nov. 3, 2015, supervisors meeting, when supervisors approved a “motion and a second to approve for Weavertown Environmental Group to construct a temporary building over the old jail to prepare for transport to the Cecil park” in a 5-0 vote.

Those minutes contain the only reference to the old jail in any previous meeting minutes.

Cowden said members of the township historical society, including Cowden, officials from the township parks and recreation and public works department and Casciola met last year – she wasn’t sure of the exact date – and agreed on the new location.

Asked whether that decision should have been put to a public discussion and vote, Casciola said, “Why would you vote on that?” He added, “To me, that’s administrative. If we get a new set of swings, you don’t have to vote on where to put it in the park.”

He pointed out the jail is already on township property near the Cecil Italian Club.

Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel with the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, said the way the location was decided “certainly raises some compliance issues” under the Sunshine Act.

“Typically, administrative action is the implementation of a policy that has already been deliberated and approved at a public meeting,” she said.

She also said the donation for the project “will become public money” and the decision concerns public property – matters that should be discussed and decided openly.

“There shouldn’t be any question about what’s going on,” Melewsky said.

The current lawsuit by Moninger against the township centers on the July removal of her father’s memorial stone. In the letter from this week, White said the stone was between two projects of the historical society – a pavilion commemorating township coal miners that’s currently under construction and the planned location for the former jail. He said the historical society “had a plan for how they wanted the entrance to Cecil Park to look, with the Miner’s Pavilion on the left and the old jail to the right,” and the group pressured supervisors to remove the stone.

Casciola said the relocation of the jail wasn’t related to the removal of the stone.

“They could have coexisted,” he said.

Voltz and attorney Kenneth Scholtz, who represent the three supervisors in Moninger’s lawsuit, wrote in a motion filed Nov. 3 opposing Moninger’s request for an injunction that hasn’t shown the supervisors deliberated on having the stone taken out of the park. They also argued its removal “was an administrative action” performed because the stone that was installed didn’t match the memorial officials authorized and “did not fit with the other memorials set forth in the park.” The memorial had previously been endorsed by the township parks board and approved by the supervisors.

Officials haven’t developed a plan for how the township will pay for restorations to the old jail once it’s been moved.

The Nov. 3, 2015, meeting minutes say “Supervisor Cowden noted Mr. Don Fuchs will carry the liability and moving will be at his expense but he is not responsible for damage to the building which will be restored with LSA monies once it is relocated to the park.”

“LSA” refers to the Local Share Account program, which in Washington County redistributes a portion of revenue from Meadows Casino to assist in economic development, job training, community improvement and public interest projects.

Casciola, however, said no application for LSA funds has been made in regard to restoring the 110-year-old building. He conceded there was no concrete plan for how to pay for the restoration, but speculated another philanthropist could step up to help the township if LSA funds won’t pay for it.

“We’ll play it by ear,” he said.