Weichsel to Town Council: Ignore the Vote of No Confidence

East Hampton Interim Town Manager John Weichsel made his opinion known concerning the local police union’s vote of no confidence taken on Sunday and delivered to Police Chief Matt Reimondo Monday afternoon.

Weichsel, who was not at work on Tuesday, had a town employee forward the following email to town council members:

“While I have not been given a copy, I take it the Police Union has issued a vote of no confidence in the Police Chief. My strong advice to you is to basically ignore that. There is nothing in the union contract about votes of confidence or no confidence. As to discharging the Chief, we’ve been down that road before. Everyone is familiar with the fact the Town and the insurance carrier paid out approximately $270,000 to the Chief and his attorney. This vote of no confidence has no standing in labor law. As this very document may be able to be FOI’d, I will stop there.”

By an 11-3 vote, the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, Local 524, issued the vote of no confidence and called on Reimondo to step down.

Among other things, the vote contends that Reimondo runs the department using threats, intimidation and retaliation, favoritism that benefits certain officers, unjust disparity in discipline and his failure to instate needed policies and refusal to identify and abandon ineffective policies.

Local union president Mike Salafia had brought some of these concerns to the attention of the town council during meetings in September and October as well as his concern, and that of other officers, over Reimondo’s handling of the Sgt. Michael Green investigations.

Salafia expressed disappointment in the email.

“It’s disappointing because the police department is asking for help in sending out a clear message,” he said. “It should not be misunderstood that things are not right and the department is not on track right now. We had hoped it would open lines of communication and apparently, through his email, it doesn’t appear to be the case.”

The email, however, does not go so far as to say there would not be any discussion of the union's concerns. Still, council member Barbara Moore made clear she is not ready to ignore the needs of the police department.

“My first impression was, I was quite upset John would ask us to ignore it because for me, that was him saying to ignore the needs of our police department. I just can’t do that," she said. “There are 11 officers. They’re asking us, they’re asking the town, for help, for guidance. The town manager doesn’t seem to think we should give it to them. That was the way I took his comments. … I’m just disappointed the way the town manager addressed it.”

Fellow council member Glenn Suprono said the vote of no confidence was a matter for Weichsel to handle.

“It is the job of the town manager and the unions to deal with this,” he said. “It is not the job of the town council to deal with this ... until the town manager can not deal with it. We must understand, and rightfully so, that what has gone on in the past has not been handled appropriately by the past town council. Today’s town council will do the correct job of the town council to benefit the town, and the business that the town manager, by charter, has been given will be handled by the town manager.”

Despite the apparent setback, Salafia hoped a show of support from within the town might help get the union’s concerns addressed.

“We’re hoping somebody out there or even the community can stand up for us because we’ve done all we can do now,” he said. “The [department] is looking for some help here and nobody seems to want to help. Maybe now it’s time for the community to come out and show us the support I’m hearing that we have.

“We’re just looking for some help here and to get on the right track, in the interests of public safety and the community.”