WESTFIELD – The Law Department this week provided information about lawsuits involving City Council members, at the request of Ward 4 Councilor Mary O’Connell, who stated that it took her months to get details of litigation naming her as a defendant.
O’Connell made a motion at the Feb. 7 session requesting the Law Department “to update City Councilor on all pending law suits naming City Council and City Councilors.”
O’Connell requested that the information be provided by the Feb. 21 City Council meeting, which was postponed to Monday, Feb. 25 because of scheduling conflicts.
Law Department supervisor Susan Phillips said yesterday that there is only one pending law suit naming the City Councilors who were in office when the suit was filed.
That suit was brought by Attorney Mark A. Tanner of Bacon & Wilson on behalf of Cross Street residents charging in Hampden Superior Court that the city is violating Article 97 of the Massachusetts General Law, which sets preservation protection for open-space land by incorporating the Cross Street Playground, used by the Westfield Little League for ballfields, into the campus of the New Ashley Street elementary school.
Hampden Superior Court Judge Tina Page issued the temporary restraining order in early September or 2012 after a motion, filed by several residents of Ashley and Cross streets, contended that the city is violating state and federal law by using part of the Cross Street playground for the $36 million school project.
Those residents also charged that the city should be required to perform an environmental impact study as part of the review process recently completed by the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and the Massachusetts Environmental Protection Agency.
The city was notified at the beginning of this month that the EOEEA determined that the city will not be required to submit an environmental impact report for the use of 1.37 acres of the 5.32 acre Cross Street playground in the Ashley Street school project.
The suit names Mayor Daniel M. Knapik, City Councilors in office at the time of the suit filing and the School Committee members in office at that time.
Phillips said there is also litigation, filed by the city, relative to the Ward 2 City Council seat in which Cross Street resident Brian Winters is named as the defendant in which Tanner has filed a motion to intervene, adding the City Council to the litigation. Currently Knapik is listed as a plaintiff.
Both the city and Cross Street residents are seeking direction from the court in the process of appointing a Ward 2 City Council representative.
Knapik is seeking a declaratory judgment pertaining to the process of naming a successor for the ward 2 council seat.
“We’re asking the court to define an interpretation of the term in the Charter which says the ‘mayor should make a choice’ and what that means in terms of this process,” Knapik said recently. “We’re also asking the court to determine the time frame for making that appointment. The Charter requires the City Council to act within 15 days but does not address the time frame if the appointment goes to the mayor.”
The Ward 2 seat has been vacant since former councilor James E. Brown Jr. resigned in August of 2012. Under City Charter, the City Council selected the candidate with the next highest vote to complete that term in office, but Brown ran unopposed.
Winters was one of three people to receive one write-in vote and the only one of the three willing and capable of serving on the City Council. The City Council voted 2-1 to seat Brown, short of the seven votes required for the motion to be approved. Ward 3 Councilor Ann Callahan, who was named in the original Cross Street suit, and Ward 4 Councilor Mary O’Connell, who was also named in that original suit, both voted to seat Winters. James R. Adams, who also was not named in the original suit, cast the lone negative vote.
The other nine councilors abstained from voting, with seven citing a conflict of interest in that they were named in the suit to which Winters was a party and had been told that he would withdraw from the suit if appointed, meaning that their vote would result in personal gain.
The ninth council member, At-large Councilor Agma Sweeney, also abstained on the grounds that no council vote was needed and that the City Clerk’s Office had already established Winters as Brown’s successor.
At-large Councilor David Flaherty, who is suing Knapik for violating his civil rights by removing campaign signs along a section of East Silver Street between Cross Street and Lindbergh Boulevard, left the council chambers and was not present for the vote.
The Ward 2 City Council seat appointment then defaulted to Knapik, who filed the suit asking the court to determine who he can appoint to the vacant seat.
Neither the City Charter nor state law clearly defines the term candidate. The City Charter calls for seating “the defeated candidate with the next highest vote” count. The court will have to decide if a single write-in vote satisfies that standard.
Currently the City Council members are not party to that litigation, but if the court accepts Tanner’s petition to intervene, Councilors Adams, Bean, Beltrandi, Crean, Harraghy, Keefe, Onofrey and Sullivan will be added in both their official and individual capacity, while Councilors Callahan, O’Connell, Sweeney and Flaherty will be added in only their official capacity.
