Ousted deputy clerk won’t rule out challenging dismissal
TRENTON » A line of supporters and well-wishers gathered outside City Hall to bid farewell to deputy clerk Cordelia “Dee Dee” Staton on her last day.
Mayoral aide Andrew Bobbitt put Staton’s personal belongings inside her vehicle as former employees and residents swarmed Staton with hugs and words of encouragement after last week’s bid to extend her contract died before a bitterly divided City Council.
“I’m going to miss working here,” Staton told The Trentonian in her first public comments since the vote. “I’m just going to move on.”
With the vote deadlocked 3-3, council president Kathy McBride, a fierce Staton opponent prior to being re-elected to the legislative body following a yearslong hiatus, put on her best Pontius Pilate impersonation by technically washing her hands of the council bloodbath in abstaining from casting the deciding vote on Staton.
Her abstention – after council members Marge Caldwell-Wilson, Joe Harrison and former Staton supporter turned executioner George Muschal voted against bringing back Staton – meant Jerell Blakeley’s reappointment resolution didn’t garner majority support.
Some residents were confused about the implications of McBride’s nonvote thinking that meant Staton, a former two-term councilwoman who has served as deputy clerk the last six years, survived the push to can her.
Staton needed at least four votes in order to have her expiring contract renewed, so McBride’s move had the same effect of costing Staton her job over what supporters described as petty grievances stemming from an old 32-page personnel report.
The report was never released publicly, and council members have squabbled about what was actually contained in the report.
Staton said she never pushed to make the confidential report public hoping it would vindicate her.
After reading the report for himself, Blakeley blasted council members for holding out the “bogus” and “phantom” report as proof Staton was unfit to remain employed by the city.
Blakeley said the report didn’t state what Muschal, who called the findings “horrible,” claimed it did.
He called the council’s decision a “new low point” in city politics and said Staton deserved better.
The personnel report, conducted by an outside law firm, detailed alleged dynamics inside the clerk’s office and focused heavily on an acrimonious relationship between former councilwoman Phyllis Holly-Ward and Staton.
Staton has long been a target of city officials and was previously escorted out of the clerk’s office in 2010 when she was axed by former Mayor Tony Mack.
At the time, Muschal pushed to get Staton reinstated but he has since soured on her.
Choosing to remain above the fray, Staton declined to divulge what she thought of the council’s decision to show her the door just as she got back from vacation.
She said she decided not to attend the council meeting to defend her professional reputation, feeling it wouldn’t change the outcome.
Impassioned pleas from supporters weren’t enough to save Staton, who faced a horrible double whammy. She was voted out of a job Thursday and then attended a relative’s funeral the next day.
Asked whether may take legal action to try to get back her job back, Staton wouldn’t rule it out.
“Anything’s possible,” she said. “I’m just going to take it one day at a time.”