It's Time For Lyle To Go, Part 1

Lyle Criscuolo is a liability to Hayes Township's governing boards.   


Lyle embodies the Peter Principle.  He has reached his level of incompetence and has remained there for the past 22 years. 

By his own admission, he was appointed to the Planning Commission in 1988 and sometime around 1993 he was elected by the planning Commission to be the chair.  He has chaired the Planning Commission for some 15 years. 

I understand that one member of the Planning Commission must also be on the Zoning Board of Appeals, but why Lyle?  And why was he elected by the Planning Commission to Chair the ZBA too? (You're kidding me, right?  One board gets to decide who is going to be the chair of another board?  Because that's not a recipe for problems down the road, as Hayes Township is finding out.  It didn't occur to them more than 15 years ago?  Lyle isn't the first dual chair.) The answer to that question is complacency on the part of the Township Board of Trustees, the Planning Commission and the ZBA, and the desire on all three boards to maintain the status quo and a Good Ol' Boys' Club.  

Lyle’s Predecessor as Chair of the Planning Commission was also the Planning Commission member on the ZBA. Instead of electing a new Chair of the ZBA when the old one resigned, when Lyle was elected to be Chair of the Planning Commission, he inherited the Chairmanship of the ZBA as well.  Nobody on the ZBA elected him to be their Chair.  Because he was not inclined to leave the position, Lyle remained the chair of both boards for the past fifteen years.  Lyle himself does not even know when his current term is up because, as he has said, after the first time, every three years they just automatically renew it.  (Again, you're kidding me, right?)

That's it.  No periodic elections or reelections.  He just hasn't been inclined to step down, and nobody has ever questioned it.  That's the way we've always done it.  The way we've always done it does not make it right, and most times it's the path of least resistance. 

What gave Lyle the right to be the Chair of two township boards for fifteen years?  In that fifteen years’ time, Lyle poised himself to be the power in Hayes Township.  It is too much power concentrated in one man. Not even the Township Supervisor has that much power, and since he's elected, he has to run again for his office every 4 years.  The voters in Hayes Township elected the Board of Trustees to have the power in the Township, not an appointee, and not for 22 years.  Lyle has become the Whip on both the Planning Commission and Zoning Board of Appeals. And like the Whip in national politics, he gets the votes for his desired outcome.  He runs Hayes Township, not the Board of Trustees. 

Everyone who was at the Zoning Board of Appeals meeting on 16 Jun 2010, saw Lyle browbeat Bob Johnson and try to bully him into changing his vote to uphold the Special Use on the Gamble-Longenecker property on Mostetler Road.  His heavy handedness is reserved for those on "his" boards who dissent from his view and opinion.  Bob Hale, and Shirley Becker did not receive the same heavy-handed treatment by Lyle because they voted the way he wanted them to vote.

Although there were originally several "off the record" dissenting opinions on the planning Commission (and they know who they are) expressed to Mostetler Road and Deer Lake residents, not one of them had the backbone or moral courage to stand up to Lyle.  Either that or they lied to our faces.  What Hayes Township does not need is a bully running the Planning Commission and the Zoning Board of Appeals.

Thankfully, he was removed from the Zoning Board of Appeals as the chair, but it took an amendment of the Zoning Ordinance to make that happen.  That should have minimized Lyle's influence, but he jumped on the first opportunity provided by Bob Hale and Shirley Becker who were only too happy to accommodate him, to insert himself into the deliberation process on the Zoning Board of Appeals at the 9 Nov 2010 meeting.  He became argumentative when Bob Johnson disagreed with him, insisting that "we did not change the zoning," when effectively that really is what was achieved by the Planning Commission's decision.  That's what Bob Johnson was pointing out.  Fortunately, the Zoning Board of Appeals has a few new members and some people who don't fall into line when Lyle starts to bully them.  A few independent thinkers who are not members of the Good Ol' Boys' Club.   

The bottom line is Lyle is an appointee and nobody elected him to be the king of Hayes Township.  As an unelected appointee, he has overstepped his bounds and abused his authority.  (More about his abuses of authority in Part 2.)  His continued presence as a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals and as Chair of the Planning Commission are detrimental to Hayes Township.  He should be asked to resign, and if he refuses to resign, official steps should be taken to remove him from all boards in Hayes Township.  He has mucked about long enough and created enough havoc that we will spend years dealing with the fallout left in his wake.