Mayor casts tie-breaking vote to adopt contracts GOP and Dems disagree on contracts of two municipal employees BY DANIEL HOWLEY Staff Writer EATONTOWN - Mayor Gerald Tarantolo was called on last week to cast a vote after council members voting down party lines landed in a 3-3 deadlock over renewing the contracts of two borough employees. Tarantolo voted in favor of two resolutions at the Jan. 23 council meeting to approve the contracts for Borough Attorney Gene Anthony and Public Defender Paul Zager. This marks the second time this month that the Democratic mayor had to vote in order to break a tie among the six-member council. "The mayor is allowed to vote however he feels he should," said Councilman John Schiels, who voted against the measure. Scheils and the two other Republican members on council, Victoria Rau and Therese Forbes, said the content of the contracts should have been reviewed by council prior to the vote. "[The resolutions] were not brought before council before they were voted on," Schiels said. "I was questioning who gave the authority to approve [a vote] on them. "Who on council sat down with you to review [your] contract?" Schiels askedAnthony at the meeting. Anthony said that he discussed his contract with the borough administrator in 2001 and the contract has remained unchanged. He added that if council members had questions about the contracts, they should have approached him prior to the council meeting. Schiels said he did not see the contracts until Friday and wanted more time to examine them. The council packets containing the resolutions on the two contracts were sent to council members on Jan. 18, which was five days before the public meeting, according to Tarantolo. "So you had over the weekend, plus two days to review it," Tarantolo said. "If you had problems with any aspect of [the contracts], you had an opportunity to bring it to our attention. "If you felt there was something that was in the contract that should be held because of clarification, you should have made that known to myself, or the clerk, and we could have held it tonight. "Having not heard any of that, I would call to take action on the resolutions," Tarantolo said. The two resolutions were adopted with a final vote of 4-3 for each of them. Democratic Council members Charles DaVis, Gerri Hopkins and Carl Sohl, along with Tarantolo, voted in favor of the resolutions. Anthony and Zager were reappointed to their borough positions at the Jan. 1 reorganization meeting. Schiels, Rau and Forbes, who were sworn in to office Jan. 1 after defeating three Democratic incumbents in the November election, also voted against the resolutions on Jan. 1 calling for the reappointments of Anthony and Zager. The Republican council members said they objected to the reappointments because the amount of money to be paid to the professionals was not attached to the resolutions, according to Schiels. The resolutions also lacked lists of political contributions, according to Schiels.