John Schmidt May Be Coming to a Town Near You

Perhaps you've seen him.

His sheer size may be enough to make you notice. John Schmidt dropped in on a Haddonfield commissioners meeting Tuesday and things may never be the same.

In this genteel town, where residents are allowed to speak their minds far past the five minutes of time a printed rules of order details, Schmidt, and at least one other attendee who sat near him, held the floor for over an hour. They peppered commissioners John Moscatelli and Neal Rochford with questions about a study on consolidation of police services in a seven-town group Haddonfield belongs to known as the Colonial Alliance. 

Schmidt and Jack Matty, who serves as a Haddonfield auxiliary police officer, an unpaid position, fired questions at Moscatelli and Rochford about the process and need for a cost-saving initiative for the police department.

The tone of the meeting changed when Commissioner Jeff Kasko, the mayor, returned to the meeting after opening it and leaving a half hour in to attend a parent-teacher night at a local school. Kasko had been gone for about an hour and a half when he returned shortly before 9:30 p.m.

When he retook the gavel from Moscatelli, things quickly changed. Watch what happened next in the attached video.

An Open Public Records Act lawsuit Schmidt filed against Haddon Township was part of a closed-door executive session meeting Tuesday before the Haddon Township commissioners meeting.

Schmidt, a self-described, open-government advocate, pled guilty in June to a disorderly persons offense after a harassment complaint was filed against him by Gloucester Township school board member Marianne Coyle.

Coyle filed the complaint in February after a school board meeting. Schmidt and several others had aggressively questioned her about her relationship with a political action committee while running for the school board, which is a violation of state law. The dispute at the school board meeting allegedly continued in a hallway after the meeting and Coyle filed a complaint against him.

In June, Schmidt agreed to pay a $100 fine, $33 court cost and to "refrain from complaining outside of a public meeting to an official acting in official capacity," according to a municipal court judge. Schmidt, however, says he never agreed to refrain from complaining to an official.

Coyle was later reprimanded for the issue Schmidt challenged her on by the state Election Law Enforcement Commission and ordered to resign from either the PAC or the school board. She resigned from the PAC.

Schmidt, 24, a Gloucester City resident went on a crusade last year to stop parents from parking in the yellow zone outside two schools in Runnemede, even though he doesn't live in the town or have children in the school district, Fox 29 News Philadelphia reported.