SaveTheHill.org

Candidate Deadline Friday! April 8 Meeting, Another Lawsuit?? by Kevin Wine, Apr 18, 2026, 10:36 PM, reply, branch, edit

2025/2026 Election Nomination Reminder
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The candidate profile deadline for running in the combined 2025 redo and new 2026 election is this Friday, April 24 at 4PM. Since this is the combination of two elections, there are 5 seats up for grabs!

April 8th Special BOT Meeting Report
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Even though the regular April BOT meeting was scheduled for April 14th, for some unknown reason the board decided to call a special meeting of the board a week earlier. If you missed it, the agenda was here:

https://www.savethehill.org/Board/Agendas/2026/Agenda_4-8-2026_SpecialMeeting.pdf

There were only 5 board members in attendance - Mr. Marchitto is still in exile after being removed on March 4th, and Mona Wan was missing with no excuse. The board has a new policy with strict rules about trustees missing meetings - let's see if they are keeping track for when one of their core members is missing. As a result, everything on the agenda passed, 3-2. If Mr. Marchitto was allowed to participate, nothing would have passed, so the boards illegal removal of him has just had an actual material impact on the Association.

The board approved the totally unnecessary replacement of the entire clubhouse HVAC system, rather than repair the existing system for a few $k. I have been involved in HVAC in the past, and I know how most of the contractors work - they have no shame and will sell a total replacement job whether it is needed or not. Unfortunately, it looks like the current board leadership fell for the sales pitch, so we get to waste another $17k.

The clubhouse electrical upgrades were approved, of course, using President Phillips' favorite electrician. This included replacing the outlets in the clubhouse office because there were the wrong color - apparently the management wanted white instead of ivory.

The board also approved 26 pages of new "Code of Conduct" for board members. I feel that it is directed at limiting the free speech rights of board members, so that the board leadership can use the new rules to remove board members that talk (or write - lol) too much. Penalties include "Removal from the Board by a majority vote of the Board". This is totally illegal, as the board will soon be finding out this coming Thursday at the Order to Show Cause hearing on MID-C-50-26. This is crazy - I'm sure the Code of Conduct was prepared by the Association's attorneys, and they should know better, but they don't care. More "professionals in action" for you.

Update on Trustee Removal Lawsuit
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The defendants have filed their response to the election lawsuit that Mr. Marchitto and I filed "pro se" (without an attorney) on March 19th. All this is public record, so here is their response:

https://www.savethehill.org/Legal/2026-4-13_Response.pdf

We have prepared a response to their response, which is due by 4PM Monday, April 20th. There is also an ADR scheduled on the same day, but relating only to the removal of Mr. Marchitto, and none of the other claims raised in the lawsuit. We don't fully understand the defendants' strategy with ADR, but one way or another this issue will get resolved by Thursday the 23rd at the latest, which is the final hearing on the Order to Show Cause. I will be impressed if the Boards 6 attorneys somehow find a way to wiggle out of this one.

By the way, for some reason the board did NOT submit a claim to their D&O insurance carrier on this lawsuit, and instead are using their in-house counsel (Becker) to defend themselves. While the insurance coverage does have a $5k deductible, the in-house counsel charges up to $495/hour, which is going to add up real quickly to over $5k. I assume this is on purpose, so they run up a $40k legal bill defending themselves, and then blame it on me after they illegally removed a board member.

They Want to LOCK US UP!!
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The more interesting thing in the board's response to the trustee removal lawsuit is the 9 page "Certification of Probable Cause" and 23 attachments, filed with the Township of Piscataway Municipal Court, in which Board Vice President Mohiuddin Syed is charging both Mr. Marchitto and I with various criminal violations including assault, harassment, and cyber-harassment. See pages 43-52 of the response. We also both received another Certification of Probable Cause in the mail, from the Piscataway Municipal Court, with a mediation scheduled for May 8th. So this means that the prosecutor did not see sufficient evidence, anywhere in the 9 pages and 23 attachments, to justify any criminal charges, and could only refer it to mediation.

The alleged criminal charges that were filed do potentially carry jail time, so this has gotten very serious very quickly. They are literally trying to get us locked up!!! Filing false criminal charges against someone is also a crime itself, so the drama is not over yet. As you can see from the 9 pages, some of our board members have a limited understanding of what it means to serve the public in an elected position. Even though this is a private corporation, the board members are "limited public officials" in the eyes of the court, and are thus subject to scrutiny and critique by the governed. The defamation laws also raise the threshold for a successful defamation claim by a public figure, requiring them to show "actual malice", meaning that the offender intentionally published statements they knew where false, for the purpose of damaging a reputation.

Ironically, a defamation claim against VP Syed is forming here. Several weeks ago, Mr. Marchitto was the subject of similar criminal charges filed against him by the management. The dispute ended up in mediation, because the record did not support any criminal acts. VP Syed knew or should have know about the outcome of that dispute, and that the criminal charges were false, but proceeded anyway to file his own nearly identical criminal complaints. At this point, it is clear that the intent is to damage our reputations, by making false claims of criminal acts, which would satisfy the "actual malice" threshold and leave him vulnerable to a defamation lawsuit. I'm sure that the boards counsel wrote all or most of his 9 page probable cause certification, and knew or should have known that what they are doing was unethical, but "the professionals" proceeded anyway... I wonder how much that cost??

Another Lawsuit!? NOT Mine!
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Last Friday, April 10th, I found out quite by chance that me and Mr. Marchitto are not the only ones suing the Society Hill Board! It turns out there is a dispute between the Board and the contractor it hired for Board Vice-President Mohiuddin Syed's retaining wall project at the pool. This project goes back to 2024, or even earlier, when VP Syed had his turn with a new project involving the Township and the DEP. You might recall, he criticized me heavily for the pond dredging project in 2012, and probably still thinks I didn't get any permits (not true!!).

The lawsuit was filed in Burlington County, Superior Court Law Division, Docket number BUR-L-665-25. It is a matter of public record, so here it is:

https://www.savethehill.org/Legal/BUR-L-665-26.pdf

It has been over two years since the contract was signed, but the wall project still hasn't started. There have been occasional updates from VP Syed at board meetings, at which he has reported that additional permits were required from the DEP, which apparently have been in the works for the last year or more. We were told everything was proceeding well. I was never told about any problems with the contractor - not a single mention, nothing in the weekly management report, and Trustee Anthony Blanco was told nothing either.

The contractor is claiming that the project scope changed considerably since the contract was originally signed, and as a result, the contract price needs to be renegotiated. I am reading this from the complaint. It has also been over 2 years since this project was supposed to start, which as resulted in monetary damage to the contractor as he had geared up to begin work 2 years ago.

There are a couple of interesting parts about the whole mess. First, the lawsuit was filed on March 24, 2026. Had I not accidentally found out about it 17 days later on April 10th, I doubt I would have ever known. I'm sure the 4 ruling board members - Matt Phillips, Mohiuddin Syed, Mark Kelsey, and Mona Wan - were planning on keeping this a secret forever.

Second, VP Syed took total ownership of this project, and wasn't too interested in other input, especially from me. I'm pretty sure I was not involved in any of the meetings with the engineers, environmental consultant, township or DEP. I remember sometime finding out about the meetings, but after they had happened. This was his baby.

Third, it looks like the request for proposals and the award of the contract was premature, since all the necessary permits had not been obtained when the contract was signed. Isn't this similar to what he was accusing me of on the pond dredging?? Beginning work with no permits??? Hummmm...

Fourth, it should have been obvious from the start that portions of the retaining wall were within the 50 foot stream encroachment boundary of the stream that runs behind the pool. This would trigger DEP permits. VP Syed bragged multiple times about how the board hired an engineering firm to handle this project properly, come up with all the specs and drawings, the contractor bid documents, and so on. Remember his "professionals" comments from last year?? "but major jobs need licensed professionals for safety and compliance", and then he went on to criticize "past DIY projects". Well, I guess that didn't work out for him either, because the "professionals" somehow missed the obvious, resulting in major delays, and now a lawsuit. I'm sure that's why the didn't want me to know about the lawsuit - because it would wind up the subject of another savethehill post.

This is another datapoint in the alarming and illegal habit of the current board of hiding things from some of the board members. All the board members share the same fiduciary responsibilities towards the Association, but it is very difficult to fulfil those responsibilities with only a sub-set of the information.