City's Employee Sues City for $1 Million

Stone Mandia LLC of Neptune, attorneys for Bill Gray, Asbury Park's head of Code Enforcement, filed a notice of claim against the City on July 12th, 2010 for an incident on May 7 of this year. Gray, who was put on paid suspension (see earlier story), is looking for damages of $1Million.

The claim looks like one used for compensation cases, referring to "Date of Accident or Occurrence and Place".  Listed as having caused the damage or injuries are the City, and Terence J. Reidy, City Manager, and James Famularo, Asst. City Manager.

The claim names five Asbury Park employees as witnesses: Anthony Nuccio, Dir. of Social Services & Public Relations, Brian Grant, City Engineer, Hazel Samuels, now retired Dir. of Community Development, Robert Bianchini, AFSCME Local 2255 President, and Garrett Giberson, Fire Inspector.
"Under Description of Injury", the claim cites "emotional trauma, mental and psychiatric stress, anxiety and depression together with aggravation and exacerbation of pre-existing stress..." and similar complaints arising from the workplace and suffered by Claimant, William Gray.

The papers provided AsburyRadio.com in response to our FOIA request do not include a description of the May 7 event. But the description of injury includes references to "negligent and wrongful suspension and/or termination of claimant...hostile work environment...defamation, libel, slander...discrimination in the workplace...", etc.
Terry Reidy is on vacation until August 30th.

City Manager Reidy Responds

City Manager Terry Reidy wrote back to say that the reason he didn't call code official Bill Gray to appear as scheduled on the January 21 agenda was because councilmember Ed Johnson had not arrived at the meeting.(Johnson did not attend the meeting.)
Councilmember Johnson had requested that Bill Gray attend the work session, a public meeting after the executive or private meeting of the council and its attorneys prior to the public session, during which the audience can observe but generally not comment, to explain how decisions are made regarding when and how summonses are written.
In the mp3 posted below, you can hear resident and former city historian Werner Baumgartner asking Reidy what summonses if any had been written on a list of sub-code properties throughout the city. Gray wrote 19 summonses against Baumgartner this fall and winter each carrying a fine of $1250 and 9 months in jail. Gray has said that some of the summonses are for violations relating to previous summonses, where the situations have not been corrected. Some are for failure to mow the lawn or remove leaves.
Asbury Radio plans to reach out to Johnson to see why he did not attend.
Maureen