There are 13 people serving on 4 Pottsville municipality boards of directors whose terms either have an incorrect ending date or whose terms have already expired.
That’s the opinion of City Solicitor Ed Brennan, who on Monday suggested to council members that they vote to make corrections to those term dates and then vote to appoint people to the four seats of board members whose terms, after they’d been date-corrected, had already expired.
Council members however, at the urging of Mayor-elect Tom Smith, voted to table any actions on term corrections and board appointments until January, when Smith and his two Republican councilmates, Jonathan Marsh and Scott Price, take office.
Incorrect Board Dates
Brennan said he’d researched the term dates for members of the Greater Pottsville Area Sewer Authority, the Pottsville Redevelopment Authority, the Pottsville Parking Authority, and Pottsville Housing Authority.
On those boards of directors, Brennan said he found 13 errors in term dates. And for four of those current sitting members, their terms had already expired.
Bill DeAngeles’ term on the Sewer Authority expired in January.
Ian Lipton’s position on the Redevelopment Authority expired in May.
Mike Weres’ term on the Parking Authority expired on June 1, 2024, and Jim Humphrey’s term expired on June 1, 2025.
On the Housing Authority board, Brennan told council members he believed Marie Wilson’s term ended on April 7.
Brennan said a vote Monday to correct those and nine other term ending dates would make them all conform with state law, which mandates that no two or more terms on these board ends in the same year.
“It’s clear that a mistake was made and you just have to correct it. You’re not replacing anybody. You’re simply correcting the terms,” Brennan said.
The Solicitor told council members that terms on these boards must be staggered so that only one seat expires and can be appointed in a given year. Exceptions to that rule exist for members who resign or pass away in the middle of their terms.
To research the ending dates, Brennan said he “went back until he found the appropriate seats” to learn whose term ended when on those specific boards.
Term dates likely went sideways, in Brennan’s opinion, when a previous board member didn’t finish their full term and the remaining board members erred when setting the end date for their replacement’s term.
“Anything that is not staggered is not a valid term of office,” he told council members on Monday, which served as the final regular council meeting of 2025.
Mayor-elect Pleads for Time
Before any vote was taken to correct these alleged errors in term dates, Smith spoke out from the gallery inside council chambers and pleaded with the board to hold off on the vote.
Smith said the fact that the current council was considering a vote on correcting the term dates and likely making appointments to fill those positions was inappropriate.
“This is so out of line,” Smith said. “This isn’t right.”
He asked council members to table any votes on these agenda items until his administration has a chance to do its own research on these board terms.
Brennan attempted to reassure Smith that his research into the matter was exhaustive and he believed he’d righted them.
“You can disagree but I’ve researched it,” he said to the Mayor-elect.
Smith countered that these corrections were being made suddenly and believed the fixes may not actually be fixes.
After making that plea, Councilwoman Cat Mahon confirmed that Smith didn’t want the council to move forward with the fixes to the term dates.
Councilman Andy Wollyung said he’d support tabling the motions but wanted assurances from his recent political opponent that his administration would work with the remaining council members next year, himself included, on the board appointments.
“I would like to hear that now that you’re going to be willing to work with us and we’ll do the same to you,” Wollyung said.
He added that he wanted to dispel the notion that the current board was appointing people just for the sake of appointing them at the end of their run as the majority on council.
Wollyung said he wanted to get Wilson and Walter Davis appointed to authority board seats.
“I hope that is an honest statement, Mr. Smith, that we want to work together because I would like to see two of the people on here,” he said. “The most important thing is to have the right people in these roles, no matter the party affiliation.”
Council voted 4-1 to table Brennan’s corrections to the board terms. Councilwoman Dottie Botto voted against the motion, saying she believed Brennan did his due diligence in making the changes.
“Null and Void”?
That still left a number of agenda items Monday to fill the seats of board members who Brennan said were serving beyond their term ending dates.
As a round of voting was beginning on those, Botto and Wollyung asked if these items were “null and void” after council had tabled the corrections. After all, since the council voted to table the corrections, it technically meant they weren’t recognizing that the terms were incorrect, despite Brennan’s assurances they were.
Brennan disagreed.
The first motion after tabling the corrections was to appoint someone to Wilson’s seat because he contended that her time on the Housing Authority board had expired earlier this year.
“This one is expired,” he said.
However, it technically wasn’t expired because council voted to hold off on voting to agree to that. Council then voted to table all appointments to those allegedly expired terms until January.
Brennan also defended the fact that the agenda did not mention any potential appointees’ names.
“If we would have listed (Wilson) on the agenda someone to appoint to this position, even reappointing her, it suggests that you met and discussed ahead of time, which didn’t happen,” he said.
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