Almost five months after his predecessor was hastily dumped, a new chief financial officer for the borough of Red Bank was slated to start work Monday.
Peter O’Reilly, right, who literally wrote the book on municipal finance, steps into the post after five years as Jersey City’s treasurer.
O’Reilly was hired by the borough council at its April 10 meeting. He’ll start at an annual salary of $105,000, according to a resolution.
O’Reilly replaces Eugenia Poulos, who was canned after a closed-door, hastily-called council meeting on December 31, just hours before she would have been eligible for job tenure.
No reasons for Poulos’ termination were given, other than that the change was “part of our overall review of the borough,” in the words of Councilman Michael Ballard, who chairs the finance committee.
Poulos declined to comment on the dismissal, but told redbankgreen earlier this month that the closing of one door had opened another: she’s now the finance officer and treasurer in Berkeley Heights, in Union County.
According to his résumé, O’Reilly is a 1991 graduate of St. John’s University in New York, with a degree in actuarial science, and holds a master’s in business administration earned in 2014 from New Charter University in San Francisco.
After a four-year financial management program completed last year at the Rutgers Center for Government Services, he holds certifications as both a municipal finance officer and tax collector, his résumé says.
O’Reilly is also the author of “Definitive Guide to Local Public Finance in New Jersey,” a 796-page tome self-published in January. It’s touted as “an indispensable, go-to desktop reference” for municipal CFOs.
Among his career stints: seven years as a pension actuary at MetLife Insurance, and a decade as a senior analyst at Time Warner, where he worked on capital planning for information technology.
Employees from the Westfield-based CPA firm Suplee Clooney & Company were running the finance department on an interim basis since January 1.
