Gather Patience for Monday's Big Meeting

The recent turns and twists in the Bibi Taylor situation - her firing and the mayor's mentor's call for her to rescind her decision, not to mention the council's plan to overturn it - have residents planning to crowd Monday's council meeting and urging others to do so as well.

But on Monday's agenda there is an announcement that the governing body will open the meeting and go into closed session for approximately 45 minutes. Assuming they will go upstairs to a conference room in police headquarters, the public will at least get to sit around on benches in Municipal Court while awaiting their return. Normally, the council would stay and the public would be excluded, but it's pretty uncomfortable standing in the hallway or on the court steps for a prolonged time.

However, the logistics are just a petty thing compared to the import of whatever action may come out of the meeting. The mayor has been asked to attend and explain who will be running the city during the city administrator's maternity leave. She failed to appear last week, and meanwhile fired Taylor and named former city Finance Director Ron West as her choice for acting city administrator. So perhaps from her perspective, the question is moot.

But her mentor, Assemblyman Jerry Green, is now asking her to restore Taylor to the post.

Green, also head of the Democratic City Committee, cannot be mayor due to a city ban on dual office-holding, but ever since Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs took office on Jan. 1, 2006, there has been a public perception that Green actually pulls the strings. His intercession now after she has announced her choice of West makes some of us recall how Green tried to pin the closing of Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center on West, who is also suspect to the Regular Democratic Organization because he served under the late Mayor Albert T. McWilliams, a New Democrat.

Amidst the many perplexing aspects of the situation, the spectacle of a nine-months' pregnant city administrator being fired effective Christmas Day even evokes passing thoughts of the Nativity, the political inn being City Hall.

All in all, it is attracting a lot of negative attention to Plainfield, which is already suffering from the stigma of dozens of shootings since May.

Part of the current public outcry is undoubtedly due to the citizens' fervent desire for order at the top. Since coming to the city in July 2009, Taylor has impressed many with her articulate, intelligent style. When the mayor named her in January to be in charge of day-to-day operations as city administrator, residents and council members alike were effusive in praising the choice.

Taylor has staunchly defended the administration's position on several controversial issues this year, but has seldom been caught short in providing the governing body with factual information as requested. In the present situation, the mayor alludes to "internal issues" that cannot be openly discussed, but which have led to the firing.

If you go to Monday's meeting, maybe a mystery novel would be an appropriate choice to bring to while away the time the council spends in closed session. There is a quote attributed to Winston Churchill: "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."

Perhaps there is a key to a positive outcome in this situation. Perhaps it is the city's public interest.

We'll see.

--Bernice