Edison Calls Special Session to Avoid Furloughs as Mayor, Councilman Trade Blame
Mayor Sam Joshi is using his authority under state law to force a Thursday vote on emergency spending, buying time to avoid furloughing employees, but the underlying fight over the budget emains unresolved.
This open-source image of the Edison Municipal Complex was cropped and enhanced using AI editing tools on Canva.
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Chris Howell | July 22, 2026 ***Updated: 6:45 AM ET***
With paychecks on the line, Mayor Sam Joshi has called a special session of the Edison Township Council for 7 p.m. Thursday. The official notice, published Tuesday, cites a section of New Jersey’s Faulkner Act that allows a mayor under Edison’s form of government to call a special council meeting on his own.
Late Tuesday, the Edison Policemen’s Benevolent Association said furloughs are no longer a future threat but already underway. In a statement urging residents to attend Thursday’s meeting, the union said it learned, following a meeting with township administration and labor leaders, that Edison has exhausted its available funding and that the majority of the municipal workforce, including police officers, is currently being furloughed. A second failed vote Thursday, the PBA warned, would mean even more officers sent home.
The union commended Council President Joseph Coyle, Councilwoman Kelli Dima, and Councilman Asaf Shmuel for showing up ready to act Monday night, and laid the blame for the furloughs it says are already in effect on the four members whose absence or departure cost the council its quorum.
“Police officers don’t get to decide whether they’re going to show up when the public needs them,” PBA President Michael Piperato said in the statement. “They answer the call every single day, no matter the circumstances. Our elected officials should be held to the same standard. Because four members of the Township Council failed to do their jobs Monday night, police officers have already been furloughed. If the Council fails again Thursday, even more officers are expected to be sent home. Public service begins with showing up.”
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The PBA’s account has not been independently confirmed by the township.
The agenda for Thursday’s session lists only two items, both resolutions authorizing a fourth round of temporary emergency appropriations, one for the municipal budget and one for sanitation. Both are meant to keep the township spending legally and limit further furloughs. The full 2026 budget is not on Thursday’s agenda. It remains scheduled to return August 3.
Richard Brescher is the council member whose departure ended Monday’s meeting. He left during what was supposed to be a brief recess, leaving the council one vote short of a quorum and unable to act on the budget at all.
The dispute spilled onto Facebook immediately after the meeting, when Joshi posted that Brescher’s actions were “childish.” The next day, Brescher posted a response to what he said was a “robocall” from Joshi blaming the council for the delay.
Before assigning blame, he wrote, residents deserve to know when this year’s public budget presentation was held, when the council received a comprehensive presentation of the numbers, and why the budget was submitted later than in past years.
“If Council members were still requesting information, why was the administration urging an immediate vote instead of providing the requested details?” he wrote.
Reviewing the numbers and asking questions before voting is part of the council’s job, Brescher argued. He closed by calling for a budget process that is “open, informative, and based on complete information, not political finger-pointing.”
Joshi answered a few hours later with a detailed log of his own.
His post offered a list of meetings he said were held with council members over the spring. According to the list, administration staff met with pairs of council members three times on April 22 and 23, including an afternoon session with Brescher and Council Vice President Robert Kentos, who was not at Monday’s budget meeting.
Joshi said he then held six one-on-one meetings with individual council members between May 14 and May 18. Counting those sessions alongside the township’s own public council meetings, Joshi put the total at 18 meetings, plus what he called “countless phone calls,” over three months.
“Including the extensions they’ve given themselves, they have not introduced even one single alternative, or amendment to the budget,” Joshi wrote.
He argued the council has taken longer to act than the county, state, and “often” federal governments do on their own budgets.
“Council members need to do their jobs and vote on a budget,” the mayor wrote.
In a text message to The Central Jerseyan after Monday’s meeting, Brescher said he wants cost breakdowns of EZPass tolls and fuel spending tied to township vehicles used by employees for their commutes.
“I asked for the EZPass and asked for the fuel bills multiple times,” Brescher wrote. “The administration said they no longer allow take-home cars anymore. They said they removed the money from the budget, but they can’t show me the savings in line items. They did not show me.”
He added that Council President Joseph Coyle had acknowledged during the meeting that the administration should get him those numbers.
Asked in a follow-up text whether he would attend a special session this month if the numbers still hadn’t arrived by then, Brescher didn’t hesitate. “I am available any day,” he wrote. “I can get tomorrow if they get me the information.”
During the council meeting on Monday, Business Administrator Sonia Alves-Viveiros did not dispute that employees drive township vehicles home. She responded that the specific costs were not yet available. She said the EZPass figure could not be calculated because it is a new charge this year that has never been tracked before, and that she had sent Brescher what information she had on May 20 and followed up again June 1 without hearing back.
Thursday’s vote won’t resolve the furloughs the PBA says are already underway. It may determine how many more follow, and whether Brescher ever gets the numbers he says he’s been asking for since spring.
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