Shorraw removes councilman as Monessen’s rec board liaison

By KRISTIE LINDEN

klinden@yourmvi.com

The mayor of Monessen decided to remove a councilman as liaison to a board this month because he felt there was too much “drama.”

Mayor Matt Shorraw made a motion to remove Councilman Tony Orzechowski as council’s liaison to the city’s recreation board.

Orzechowski asked Shorraw why and the mayor responded, “Because you keep causing drama.”

Orzechowski asked why the issue wasn’t discussed at the previous week’s work session.

“Because a lot of drama has transpired since then and we had issues when you were liaison to the library board and now there’s issues on the recreation board, so that is why,” Shorraw said.

Orzechowski asked what issues they were and Shorraw said he was “more than happy” to go over them with the councilman, but wasn’t going to go through them at length “at this moment, unless someone else on this board would like to. We went through the back and forth last week.”

Shorraw was referencing the workshop meeting at the beginning of this month in which Monessen’s Recreation Board Chairman Ed Lea was watching the livestream at home but came to city hall to join the meeting in person midway through.

In that meeting, Shorraw gave a list of issues he had with the rec board, including his claim that board members were refusing to get child abuse clearances after being asked three times to do so. He also said there is an issue with the board collecting cash for rentals at the Civic Center, among other things.

Lea, hearing the charges made against this board, drove to city hall and entered the meeting to answer the charges being leveled against him.

Lea said no one had told him the things Shorraw said were issues. Lea hadn’t received the requests Shorraw said he’d made for certain things and Shorraw said some requests weren’t sent to Lea, despite the fact that he was chair of the board.

Further, Lea said many of the board members’ clearances weren’t expired or in need of being renewed but they were all getting new ones just to satisfy Shorraw’s requests.

Lea said at the time Shorraw hadn’t had one conversation with anybody on the board.

Lea and Shorraw discussed working together to rectify the issue of how to handle cash receipts.

Instead, Shorraw presented a resolution the next week for approval that established procedures for recreation board financial transactions and facility rentals, which he based on conversations with the auditor. Shorraw told the board he did not discuss it with Lea as they had talked about a week earlier.

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