Recording of controversial Sewickley council meeting released

The Tribune-Review has obtained a recording of the May 11 Sewickley council meeting in which elected leaders fired their borough manager.

It is a recording that council voted against publishing and a personnel move that was not on the meeting’s original agenda and took place following a closed-door discussion.

The recording was obtained through the filing of a right-to-know request which Sewickley officials granted.

“I think there are positives and negatives here,” said Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association. “The fact that they didn’t just proactively just put it on their own website is a negative. That’s not required by law, but it’s just a good practice to have an open, transparent and responsible government.

“Many agencies simply post the recording of the video the next day or within a short period of time after the meeting takes place. That way it saves the public time and effort and it saves the agency employees time and effort, and there is no question that this is a public record.”

Sewickley Manager Marla Marcinko’s last day as borough employee was May 28. Council has since approved a separation agreement with Marcinko. Terms of the deal have yet to be disclosed.

A motion to publish the recording failed via 4-5 vote at a July 13 meeting.

Cynthia Mullins, Tom Rostek, Julie Barnes and recently appointed councilman Brian Bozzo voted in favor of publishing the recording.

Council president Jeff Neff, vice president Todd Renner, Sean Figley, Ed Green and Larry Rice dissented.

Neff said at the time that he “would love for everybody to see exactly what happened that night” despite voting against the posting, but would not do it for sensationalization.

Other council members against the posting did not explain their actions.

Actions leading up to the May 11 firing in the 3+ hour meeting include failed motions to approve a manager’s request for a compensation bonus for 2020, a motion to adjourn and a motion to put the manager on a 90-day probation.

The minutes from that meeting have been posted on the borough website, sewickleyborough.org.

Minutes of council meetings are usually approved and posted the following month. However, May’s meeting minutes were tabled in June for further review and approved at the July regular voting session.

Bozzo was appointed to council July 6 to fill the seat of Ward 1 resident Christine Allen, who resigned earlier this year.