Schirmer won’t run for council, a new candidate emerges
HAMILTON >> Republican Councilwoman Ileana Schirmer, a huge critic of GOP Mayor Kelly Yaede, is not seeking re-election to Hamilton Township Council.
“As my term comes to an end this year and as a supporter of term limits, I have decided to not seek re-election,” the councilwoman said Wednesday in a press statement. “As a mother of two, and with my son in high school, I look forward to having time to support him, attend his baseball games and spend more quality time with my family, who have supported me throughout my terms on Council.”
Serving as a councilwoman since December 2012, Schirmer once enjoyed a cordial relationship with Yaede. But the friendly ties between Hamilton’s first elected Hispanic female and the township’s first female mayor have devolved into downright antagonism in recent years.
Schirmer earlier this year described Yaede as “an embarrassment” to Hamilton Township, and the mayor in turn has blasted the councilwoman, saying, “Schirmer’s own words and actions alienated herself from the Hamilton Township Republican Committee.”
Had Schirmer decided to run for re-election this year as a Republican, she would have faced intraparty resistance because the Hamilton GOP officially took steps to replace Schirmer with a more preferred candidate.
“Additionally, I simply cannot support an administration I no longer respect,” Schirmer said Wednesday in her press statement. “An administration defined by bullying, intimidation, retaliation, secrecy and self-absorbed attitudes that puts residents last.”
Schirmer has long requested the Yaede administration to reveal how much the mayor’s security detail costs, and Yaede addressed the issue with a Wednesday news release announcing her security detail in 2018 “appears to be less than $15,000.”
When Schirmer first emerged on the political scene, she was a proverbial
rock star within the township’s Republican ranks.
On Dec. 18, 2012, Hamilton Council voted unanimously to appoint Schirmer onto the governing body. She replaced former councilwoman Yaede, who resigned from that position to assume office as Hamilton’s new leader-in-chief following the corruption scandal that brought down former Mayor John Bencivengo.
Schirmer eventually won election to Hamilton Council in 2013 and re-election in 2015. Ever since Democrats regained majority control of the governing body, Schirmer over the last 15 months has worked in a bipartisan fashion with her colleagues to demand better government from the administration. For example, Schirmer played a major role in facilitating Hamilton Council’s independent investigation into the embattled Hamilton Township Animal Shelter, which garnered major headlines last year as the New Jersey Department of Health cited the facility with numerous violations.
“I am forever grateful to all the individuals who throughout the years have provided support and guidance,” Schirmer said Wednesday in her statement. “Those friendships will always mean the world to me, and while I will no longer serve on the governing body in 2020, I will continue to be involved in serving the Hamilton Township community in different ways.”
New candidate
As Schirmer counts down her final months in office, a new candidate has stepped up in what could prove to be a game-changer.
Former Hamilton councilman Vinnie Capodanno, a lifelong Democrat, on Wednesday said he’s changing his party affiliation to run for Hamilton Council this year as a Republican. “Monday I’m going before their screening committee,” Capodanno said, “and if I get the nomination, I told them I don’t want no hanky-panky bull crap and arm twisting.”
Capodanno himself is an outspoken township resident and says his single term on council from 2000 to 2004 often put him at odds with then-Democratic Mayor Glen Gilmore.
“I was a lot like what Schirmer was doing,” Capodanno said. “I am not like that anymore.”
Capodanno was one of Yaede’s biggest critics four years ago, and now he wants to run on a GOP slate with her, saying he cannot support Democratic mayoral candidate Jeff Martin.
“I’d rather be with Kelly Yaede,” he said. “At least she has some experience.”
Martin was first elected to Hamilton Council in 2017 and currently serves as council president.
Capodanno says one of the major reasons why he endorses Yaede for re-election is because the mayor, he says, is now a highly supportive and strong ally of City of Angels, a community-based, all-volunteer, peer-to-peer nonprofit organization that is committed to helping people who suffer from the disease of alcohol or drug addiction.
“I support the mayor,” he said. “I’ve gotten to know her. We’ve buried the hatchet.”
Instead of publicly ostracizing the mayor, Capodanno
said he has been admonishing her in private, telling her to be more transparent with the public and the press but to also be more “aggressive” in defending her record of service.
Perhaps the mayor is taking his advice.
In a memo dated June 1, 2018, Hamilton Township’s then-attorney Lindsay Burbage said Hamilton Council is “entitled to certain information” concerning the mayor’s security detail, namely an “estimate of historic costs.”
“As you can imagine, providing security to the Mayor (conferences, functions, travel time, etc.) creates a great deal of ‘down time’ for the security,” Burbage said in the memo, which the Yaede administration released Wednesday. “During that ‘down time,’ they frequently work other police jobs by telephone or text.”
In addition to releasing Burbage’s memo to the press, the mayor’s office on Wednesday disclosed financial information related to the annual costs of the mayor’s security detail.
“Based upon a review of six months’ worth of data, the cost of Police security for Mayor Yaede for 2018 appears to be less than $15,000,” the administration said Wednesday in a press release. “Of that total, approximately $12,000 were salary costs — but it is important to note that because the officers are ‘on duty,’ the officers would have received the same compensation during that time, even if not assigned to the Mayor. In addition, $2,872.50 were travel-related costs for the entire year of 2018.”
The administration did not release the six months of data, so The Trentonian could not independently verify how exactly the administration arrived at the $15,000 cost estimate.
All of the Hamilton Council meetings this year have been safeguarded with a presence of Hamilton Police officers. If Hamilton Council continues to utilize police security for the remainder of the year, it would cost over $20,000, according to Yaede’s office.
The analysis provided by the administration suggests Yaede’s security detail, which is summoned on an as-needed basis, does not demand as much police resources as Hamilton Council’s public meeting security. According to purchase orders obtained by The Trentonian, it is clear that a security detail has accompanied Yaede to various mayoral conferences requiring hotel accommodations.
In an interview last month, Yaede told The Trentonian that her security detail costs the township less than $25,000 per year. Schirmer, who ran unsuccessfully for State Senate in 2017, was skeptical of that figure, suggesting it does not take into account the full logistical costs of deploying a detail whenever and wherever the mayor requires police security.
Although Schirmer is not seeking re-election, she will continue to be a vocal watchdog holding government accountable.
“I will always speak my mind,” the councilwoman said Wednesday. “That is who I am and who I will always be.”