A Munster Town Councilman doesn’t want to pay the town attorney until that firm finishes a two-year task for which the council asked it to complete in three months. Tempers flared early in the November 18 meeting when Councilman Jonathan Petersen, R-5, asked the council to separate from the claims register a $508,507 bill from attorney firm Westland & Bennett because the firm, which represents the town, hasn’t finished going over the town’s zoning code. An annoyed Councilman George Shinkan, R-1, said he didn’t understand why the council had been separating those bills from the register. “We identified as a serious concern some zoning work, and on May 20, we approved the payment of $51,000 to an outside engineering firm, and Westland & Bennett and Planning Director Sergio Mendoza, (who) were going to complete a deep dive of the zoning code. The work was to be finished at the end of August. It’s still not done,” Petersen said. “As an attorney myself, you have a responsibility to get work done, and to the extent that Westland & Bennett is still submitting invoices for other work when other urgent work that was supposed to be done by the end of summer isn’t, I’m objecting, and I’m hoping the that the council will take this seriously and refocus on getting this work done.” Shinkan asked Petersen if he understood that one of the attorneys, Nicole Bennett, has been having to travel to attend to a family matter. “You couldn’t even show up for an agenda review this past Wednesday, and we know why? Can’t you take a heart and sympathy for her?” Shinkan said. “You didn’t show up for an agenda review because of your mother-in-law, but it’s not Ok for her.” “I don’t understand why you’re getting angry. I’m not the bad guy,” Petersen said. “This firm has three attorneys getting work done when we are spending extraordinary amounts of money.” “I’m not in a hurry for this — you are,” Shinkan fired back. “The council isn’t a hurry for this; when it gets done, it gets done.” Town Attorney Dave Westland pointed out that his firm did submit a comprehensive draft to the town September 13, but the town has yet to respond. Petersen called the draft “incomplete” and not fit for council approval, to which Gardiner pointed out that the last time the town did a zoning code review, it took at least a year-and-a-half and cost between $150,000 and $175,000. “We asked in February or March to have this code redone — when it took a year-and-a-half to two years to be done — in three months, and I think it was pretty much a task that could not be accomplished,” Gardiner said. Westland explained that they knew the draft was incomplete and therefore included with it an email saying they couldn’t go any further without a response from the council, which they haven’t received yet. “We’ve been put in a trick bag,” he said. “We’re in a trick bag because when we need a response, we don’t get a response, and then 60 days later, we’re delinquent.” The council then agreed to continue the conversation offline but voted 4-1 — with Petersen dissenting — to pay the Westland & Bennett invoice. In other business, the council voted unanimously to uphold a Munster Park Board resolution to tear down the Centennial Park Clubhouse. The town closed the clubhouse’s main hall in November 2021 because of unsafe structural problems, the Post-Tribune previously reported. The Town filed a lawsuit against the contractor, subcontractor and engineer in 2016 over “construction and contractual failures that impact the clubhouse and amphitheater at Centennial Park,” which was built on the former landfill on the town’s south side and was opened July 4th weekend in 2007. The building was not constructed to specifications and best practices were not used, the Post-Tribune reported. The lawsuit alleged that Larson Danielson swapped out Indiana Department of Transportation-approved fill to stabilize the building for regular slag — which is less-expensive but considerably less stable — in order to increase their profit. For their part, town officials “had no objection to the use of stabilized slag so long as it satisfies the Indiana No. 53 spec,” it read. Insurance wouldn’t cover either the damage to the building or, if the damage can’t be repaired, a brand-new structure, the Post-Tribune reported. Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.