NEW PALESTINE — To say the first seven months on the job as clerk-treasurer have been challenging for Tonii Pyle would be an understatement.
Just a few months after she started her new job as an elected official keeping financial records for the town of New Palestine, her father-in-law, town manager Dave Book, was fired by the town council. At the same meeting, the council also voted to censure her, accusing her of not doing her job properly.
Pyle immediately hired her own office attorney, a first in the history of the town, and asked the council to pay for it. Council members responded by putting a cap of $2,500 on those attorney fees and have said they do not plan on paying any more, particularly after Pyle spent close to $30,000 on other consulting fees that were not budgeted for 2020. The council also hired a firm to handle the town payroll after accusing her of mishandling it.
Council members also are challenging her election in 2019, accusing her and her father-in-law of illegally gathering signatures to get her name on the ballot.
Pyle, who has kept silent for the most part during the extended feud, except speaking during contentious council meetings, is now seeking a reset. In a week in which her family is grieving the death of her father-in-law, Book, who died Tuesday, July 21, Pyle said it’s time to change the tone in the town so that leaders can resolve their differences.
“My main focus is to move forward,” Pyle said. “My job is to focus on the finances and make sure we keep the town running and not look back.”
On Tuesday, she sent an email to two council members, Angie Fahrnow and Bill Niemier, asking them to meet to discuss putting the past behind them.
“We need to stop this bickering about who is right and who is wrong,” Pyle said.
Fahrnow replied that she would be happy to meet. Niemier also agreed to meet with Pyle but said such efforts in the past by the council to mend fences have fallen short of expectations.
Pyle insists her loyalty is with the people of the town who voted her into office in 2020 and said she hopes the council will work with her and compromise on problems to get things running smoothly between the two sides.
Issues between Pyle and the council started to brew when council members asked for several years’ worth of town business contracts and paperwork not long after she took office. The request, Pyle said, overwhelmed her, causing her to put up a wall with the council, and it’s been downhill ever since.
Council members were requesting past documents because they were investigating mistakes, some of which pointed to Book and how he had run the town. Given Pyle’s family relationship, that made for some awkwardness.
The only way to fix things, Pyle said, is to stop attacking each other and looking into the past and just do the work at hand.
“We have to come to some kind of mutual trust,” Pyle said. “We have to stop accusing each other.”
Pyle’s mother-in-law, Kathy Book, Dave Book’s wife, took the same tone with the council during a meeting last week, days before her husband’s death. Kathy Book told the council members they were wrong in accusing her husband of any wrongdoing. Among other things, council members accused Dave Book of running a private business out of the town’s wastewater treatment plant without the council’s knowledge.
“For 37 years, David Book managed this town and wastewater treatment plant with integrity, honesty, foresight and loyalty,” Kathy Book said.
She also scolded the council, saying Book did not deserve to be fired and that Pyle not deserve the criticism she has received.
“She has been repeatedly harassed as they’ve demanded things, and council members have been very nasty to her,” Kathy Book said. “She is new in this position, same as they are, and it takes cooperation from everybody if this is going to work.”
Pyle was an assistant to the clerk-treasurer for eight months before being voted into office, and she kept the former clerk-treasurer, Becky Hilligoss, on board for nearly four months as a consultant. However, Pyle said, Hilligoss was training the new assistant, Susie Morris, during that time and wasn’t working directly with Pyle.
Morris was the town’s clerk-treasurer from 2000 to November 2003. Pyle has since fired Morris, saying the position may have not been the best for her.
The council has since made Morris a town assistant.
Pyle feels there is a great deal of miscommunication between her office and some members of the council and said they need to better communicate and make a commitment to work together, at least to get the 2021 budget submitted.
“If we could work together, what could we accomplish?” Pyle said. “But, I almost feel like we are too far gone. I just don’t know… I’m just exhausted. I’m physically and mentally exhausted.”
Pyle said she is willing to work through a mediator if their upcoming meeting does not produce positive results.
“Right now we’re just tit-for-tat,” Pyle said.
