{"id":30391,"date":"2025-11-10T21:12:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T21:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/30391\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T21:12:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T21:12:08","slug":"newly-elected-lehigh-valley-municipal-facing-harassment-charge-police-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/30391\/","title":{"rendered":"Newly elected Lehigh Valley municipal facing harassment charge, police say"},"content":{"rendered":"

A newly elected Slate Belt township supervisor<\/a> was charged Saturday with grabbing the arm of the municipality\u2019s top administrator after a supervisors meeting over the summer.<\/p>\n

Jane Mellert, 67, of Plainfield Township is accused of intentionally harassing Township Manager Paige I. Stefanelli, 31, following an Aug. 27 supervisors meeting.<\/p>\n

Slate Belt Regional police Chief Jonathan M. Hoadley said in the nontraffic citation that Mellert grabbed Stefanelli\u2019s left forearm. When Stefanelli told Mellert to release her, \u201cthe defendant failed to do so,\u201d according to the citation document filed at Wind Gap district court.<\/p>\n

Mellert eventually released her hold on the arm and walked away from Stefanelli.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis action was unwanted and caused the victim to become alarmed,\u201d Hoadley wrote in the complaint<\/p>\n

Mellert has pleaded not guilty to the summary charge. She referred further comment to her attorney, Christopher Shipman, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Stefanelli said she had no comment.<\/p>\n

Mellert has been one of the most vocal critics on a major issue affecting the township, the proposed expansion of Grand Central Sanitary Landfill.<\/a> She has argued the landfill company\u2019s effort to rezone land and create a district to collect garbage goes against a solid waste district on the landfill site off Route 512 that supervisors approved in 1988 and upheld as recently as 2020.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The 1988 district, she has said, was well thought out with legal counsel, a planner and study group. It also addressed Grand Central\u2019s right to continue to operate, with room for past expansions within regulations, while also protecting residents from solid waste uses creeping into additional areas, she said.<\/p>\n

Grand Central officials have said the landfill has enough space for about four more years\u2019 worth of trash. The planned expansion would create 81 acres of new disposal area, enough to add 20 years to its useful life, according to owner Waste Management.<\/p>\n

Mellert, who previously served as supervisor, won election Nov. 4 to a six-year seat on the five-member supervisor board. She and another Republican, Paul Levits, who won a two-year seat, will replace Supervisors Ken Fairchild and Jonathan Itterly in January.<\/p>\n

She received 1,036 votes to win against independent candidate Ryan Stull, with 916 votes, according to unofficial Northampton County results. Levits garnered nearly 41% of the votes in a narrower victory over Democrat Joseph Colosi and Stull.<\/p>\n

Contact Morning Call reporter Anthony Salamone at asalamone@mcall.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A newly elected Slate Belt township supervisor was charged Saturday with grabbing the arm of the municipality\u2019s top…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,836,182,139,434,28,10162,50,432],"class_list":{"0":"post-30391","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-headlines","10":"tag-allentown-news","11":"tag-election","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-northampton-county","15":"tag-pennsylvania","16":"tag-plainfield-township","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}