The ouster of a Burlington County mayor of nine years led to a chaotic hour of finger-pointing and name-calling

The new year has had a rough and wobbly start for the people who run Medford Township, Burlington County.

In a single 57-minute mess of a meeting on Jan. 7, a new mayor was nominated, voted on, and sworn in by the township council, ousting the man who’d been mayor for nine years before he had even taken his seat.

After that, a zoning official claimed that a council member had accused him of spying on township leaders. Then, the official said council had staged a coup to unseat Medford’s leadership. He was so displeased with new developments that he resigned his position the next day.

Meanwhile, the new deputy mayor and the old mayor hissed harsh words at each other in what seemed like a private exchange that everybody could hear.

A woman who calls herself the “most hated person in Medford” (and is also the zoning official’s wife) accused the new deputy mayor of spending more time with his kids than with council. A member of the public hurled a nasty word at her.

Assessing what had occurred, Kristen Sinclair, a member of the school board who stressed that she was only speaking for herself, said at the meeting, “That was disgusting.”

Sinclair was referencing the more distasteful comments aimed at council members, but observers were left wondering whether her opinions could pertain to the entire proceeding.

“It’s humiliating that our lawyers are not telling everyone that this is not how you behave,” Sinclair concluded.

The meeting, first reported by the Pine Barrens Tribune, was recorded on video.

A cauldron of old resentments and fresh wounds, the meeting was a messy slice of democracy transpiring over 57 minutes on a Tuesday night in South Jersey.

After the Pledge of Allegiance was recited, four of the five Medford Township council members nominated, voted for, and swore in a new mayor and deputy mayor in the first five minutes and seven seconds of the meeting. Charles “Chuck” Watson, the township’s mayor for nine years and the council’s fifth member, arrived late to the meeting and wasn’t there when he was replaced. He took his seat afterward.

Council members did not detail the thinking that led to the leadership change.

The new mayor, Erik Rebstock, is lead pastor at HOPE Community Church in Moorestown. During the meeting, he praised Watson’s tenure, but said that henceforth, the positions of mayor and deputy mayor would be filled on a rotating basis. In this way, Rebstock said, the entire five-person council “can share the expanding roles of governing our community,” a method used in the past.

A prosperous township of around 25,000 people where Census figures show the median annual household income was more than $160,000 (both numbers as of 2023), Medford has a council-manager form of government. The township council, which is elected by the voters, itself votes for mayor from among the five council members.

The council also hires the manager, kind of the town CEO and COO, and the only full-time job in the government, according to Medford’s manager, Daniel Hornickel.

At the meeting, it seemed as though the vote for the new mayor had been worked out ahead of time. Asked if that was true, Hornickel, who hadn’t attended, said in an interview, “How they decided to do what they did is politics that I’m not privy to.” Hornickel added he’s required to be nonpartisan, while the incoming and outgoing mayors, as well as the council members, are all Republicans.

Asked for comment, the new and the outgoing mayors and deputy mayors, members of the township council, as well as several others who spoke that night, didn’t respond to emails and repeated phone calls.

Brian Carns, 49, a co-owner of a tree service in Medford who attended the meeting and is a longtime critic of Watson, said in an interview that Watson had agreed to step down as mayor a while ago, then changed his mind at the last minute, but that it was “too late.”

But Watson’s ouster angered some at the township meeting.

“As far as I’m concerned, this is a hostile takeover of this council,” Joseph Wolf, then the vice chair on the township’s Zoning Board of Adjustment, said during the meeting. He quit his post a day later, Hornickel said.

“[Y]ou have no integrity whatsoever.” Wolf told the council. “I’m very displeased at what you’re doing and the way you’ve gone about it. And for you, Erik, I thought as a person of religion [you] had some higher ethics.”

No one on council responded.

Wolf also got into an awkward back-and-forth when he accused Councilmember Michael Czyzyk — the new deputy mayor — of calling Wolf a spy during a previous township meeting.

Afterward, Wolf’s wife, Alberta, got up to speak. She introduced herself as the “most hated person in Medford,” with a reputation for being meddlesome, according to people familiar with her. Neither Alberta Wolf nor her husband responded to requests for comment.

Carns called Alberta Wolf a vulgar name as she rose to speak.

“His mother must have taught him that,” said Alberta Wolf, who Carns said has clashed with his family in the past. Then she laced into members of council for Watson’s “terrible” ousting, telling the body she was so dismayed that she planned to abandon the Republican Party and become an Independent. “This wasn’t done right,” she concluded.

Things degenerated further from there.

Accusing some council members of having “destroyed this town,” Alberta pointed at Czyzyk and said, “You never show up to anything because you’re always busy with your kids.” Clearly angered, Czyzyk snapped, “Don’t speak about my children. You got it?”

Then Czyzyk turned to Watson, the new ex-mayor, as though he had motivated the attack, and said, “It didn’t have to be like this, just so you know.”

Openly expressing pique for the first time since being replaced, Watson said, “I have nothing to do with this … even though you’re gonna tell me I do …

“Go ahead and call me a liar.”