{"id":3707,"date":"2020-01-16T01:39:31","date_gmt":"2020-01-16T06:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/?p=3707"},"modified":"2020-01-16T01:39:31","modified_gmt":"2020-01-16T06:39:31","slug":"new-toms-river-mayor-retains-most-of-the-townships-44-confidential-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/2020\/01\/new-toms-river-mayor-retains-most-of-the-townships-44-confidential-employees\/","title":{"rendered":"New Toms River Mayor Retains Most of The Township’s 44 ‘Confidential’ Employees"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Toms

Toms River municipal building. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

Mayor Maurice \u201cMo\u201d Hill, who made headlines after his re-election when notices were sent to 44 non-union town hall employees asking them to resubmit resumes to keep their jobs, has decided to retain nearly all of the workers in question.<\/p>\n

The 44 positions are known as \u201cconfidential\u201d positions and the employees serve at the pleasure of the mayor. There had been some calls, after the election, to shed some of the employees in order to reduce expenses, while other argued that some of the hires had been political in nature. Both Hill and his predecessor, Thomas Kelaher, are Republicans, though Hill\u2019s run was challenged by the party in last year\u2019s primary when the Ocean County GOP backed for prosecutor Joseph Coronato.<\/p>\n

Two charts of the township\u2019s confidential employees obtained by a reporter, one from 2019 and one from 2020, show all of the positions have been retained except three: the human resources division manager, first assistant township attorney and the assistant township planner.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have three or four of them that are vacant and they will probably stay vacant,\u201d Hill said after Tuesday night\u2019s township council meeting.<\/p>\n

The salaries of confidential employees vary widely, with the lowest paid employee on the list earning $33,600 to the two highest-paid, Police Chief Mitch Little and Township Attorney Ken Fitzsimmons, earning $234,869 and $201,517, respectively.<\/p>\n

Further changes could come to the positions, however.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of them are going to be moved into union positions, and we are going to reduce some of the confidential employees,\u201d Hill said. \u201cIt will probably be three or four, which is about ten percent.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mayor Maurice \u201cMo\u201d Hill, who made headlines after his re-election when notices were sent to 44 non-union town hall employees asking them to resubmit resumes to keep their jobs, has decided to retain nearly all of the workers in question. The 44 positions are known as \u201cconfidential\u201d positions and the employees serve at the pleasure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[943,11],"class_list":["post-3707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","tag-confidential-employees","tag-toms-river-nj-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/IMG_5230.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/tomsriver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}