Lower Burrell Council sets up new process for members to meet board appointees

After a heated discussion last month over a Lower Burrell Council member not meeting a person seeking reappointment to the city’s Zoning Hearing Board, council is formalizing its process to meet appointees for its boards and committees.

Council last month shelved a proposal to reappoint John Kamarados, an attorney, to the city’s Zoning Hearing Board because Councilman Robert Hamilton complained he hadn’t met the man yet.

On Monday, council voted 4-0, to reappoint Kamarados. Hamilton was absent.

Last month’s incident prompted Councilman Chris Fabry to discuss the issue with other council members.

“The idea was for us to try to schedule meetings with appointees ahead of time,” Fabry said.

Scheduling complications and pandemic gathering restrictions made that difficult, he said.

On Monday, Fabry proposed a new policy formally scheduling new or existing board appointees to appear at a city council meeting a month before the board or committee position begins. If council members are absent, it will be up to them to make other arrangements to meet or talk with an appointee, he said.

“I’m 100% on board with that,” said Hamilton, who did get a chance to speak with Kamarados before council appointed him Monday.

“It was never about him,” Hamilton said. “Lower Burrell continues to do things the same way they’ve done it before. When you are blindly reappointing people, you don’t look at the needs of the city, which evolve. And committees should evolve to better meet the needs.”

Mayor John Andrejcik backed Fabry’s idea.

“It would alleviate some of the problems we had in the past,” he said.

Grillo said he’s a policy guy and is willing to go with what works best. Last month, he took offense to council shelving Kamarados’ appointment because of Kamarados’ good work history. Grillo said he had followed an earlier policy for appointments but had problems setting up a time for some council members to meet him because of pandemic restrictions.

“I want to apologize if there are any types of ill feelings over this,” he said. “I’ll go along as long as that there is a policy in place.”

Solicitor Steve Yakopec is drafting the new appointment policy for council to finalize.