Dear Long Hill Township,

Please accept this electronic request for public records made under OPRA and the common law right of access. I am not required to fill out an official form or use a particular software platform to submit my request per NJSA 47:1A-6(f), which states that an email from a requestor including all of the information required on the adopted form shall suffice in place of a completed form as a valid government record request.

I HAVE NOT been convicted of any indictable offense under the laws of New Jersey, any other state, or the United States.

I WILL NOT use the requested government records for a commercial purpose.

I AM NOT seeking records in connection with a legal proceeding.

Records requested:

"All correspondence, by email, physical letter, or otherwise, sent to Longhill Twp Officials, on or about September of 2024, from, or on behalf of Prosecutor Robert Carroll of the Morris County Prosecutor's Office, regarding a "review of a draft township ordinance related to the (Long Hill) police department"

According to Daily Record News reports of 7/24/2025, quotes in this letter also suggested the authority granted in (Former Public Safety Director Michael) Peoples' contract "goes well beyond what is permissible."

and further that,

"The civilian public safety director may not serve as the executive head of the Long Hill Police Department," Carroll wrote. "This is a role reserved for a sworn law enforcement officer. The town must appoint an officer-in-charge."

My preferred delivery method for response(s) to this request is by E-mail as attachments. Please confirm you have received this request. If you are not the custodian of records, please forward my request to that person and provide their email address to me for future reference.

Yours faithfully,

Stephen Jones

Dear Megan Phillips,

Please see below for the clarification you request:

"Long Hill Township Officials" would be one or more of the following titles, and/or named individuals:

Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Township Committee Member, or Township Administrator

Guy Piserchia
Matthew Dorsi
Aubrey Reichard-Eline
Victor Verlezza
Scott Lavender
Randy Bahr

"specific timeframe" would be:

8-1-2024 to 10-31-2024

Yours sincerely,

Stephen Jones

Dear Megan Phillips,

Just wanted to make sure you received my response of July 31 with the clarifications you requested, and also to see if you had an estimate on a response. Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen Jones

Dear Megan Phillips,

I haven't heard back from you since my response to the "clarification" that you requested, so in order to assist you better in promptly fulfilling my OPRA request and cutting through the bureaucracy here, I did some further investigation and uncovered that the Echoes-Sentinel Newspaper OPRA'd the same exact information from you that I am currently seeking now, in September of 2024.

According to an article published by the Editor, Solace Church on 7/15/2025, your Township, and presumably you as the records custodian, provided them the following:

"Letters and email correspondence, obtained by the Echoes-Sentinel through an OPRA (Open Public Records Act) in September 2024, revealed an approximate five-month back-and-forth between the county and township officials about what the public safety director can and can’t do."

If you need me to, I can OPRA the results of that OPRA by the Echoes-Sentinel separately, or you can just provide those results here, which should close out this present OPRA for you.

Thank you!

Yours sincerely,

Stephen Jones