Hello, everyone. We have a Township Council Meeting tomorrow evening, Tuesday, February 7th. This meeting will begin at 6:00pm (as opposed to the usual 7:00pm start time). It is open to attend in person, watch on TV34, and on the Township’s YouTube Channel here. I expect public comment will be open from 6:30pm until 8:00pm or later depending on how many people wish to speak. Reminder, everyone is limited to 3 minutes. The evening with begin with the Mayor giving his individual take on the “State of the Township”.
To manage your expectations, note that we are not taking any action on Lackawanna Plaza, the Township Budget, or the Clary Anderson Arena tomorrow night.
A Smarter Approach to Crossings & Police Coverage
Today, our crossing guards are paid through the police department. If they call out sick, that crossing is then covered by a police officer. Over the years this has becoming quite challenging. We’ve had days where we have up to 10 police officers coming crossing guard duty and then as a result, not being able to do everything else we need them to do. (The average is about five officers a day.) Crime is up everywhere, not just here and we need to return more officers to the critical functions of the department — patrol, investigations, traffic enforcement, crime prevention and more. Therefore, we’re going to be moving forward with privatizing crossing guard management. All City Management Services will be hired. They will hire all of our existing crossing guards at the same or better hourly rate. When someone calls out sick, All City Management backfills that person with standby/on-call employees. This is very smart solution to increase our police capacity without increasing headcount or costs. I thank the Police Department, our CFO and management for going in this direction.
Traffic Study for Lackawanna Plaza Development
I’ve promised full transparency through this process. To that end, we have scheduled a public meeting to present the initial findings of the Lackawanna Plaza Redevelopment Plan Traffic Study. The meeting will take place on Thursday, February 9 at 5:00 pm in the Council Chambers at 205 Claremont Avenue and will be broadcast on YouTube. Joseph Fishinger, Director of Traffic Engineering at Bright View Engineering and the author of the study, will present the findings and will be available to answer questions. The study can be downloaded from the Montclair Township website using this link. Myself, Mayor Spiller, and Councilor Cummings are formally hosting the meeting which you’ll be able to watch here.
Listening to Seniors
Last week I joined Gateway to Aging in Place for an afternoon discussion and breakout sessions for senior services in Montclair. Later in the week I hosted my own Zoom with some seniors who had reached out to me over email the last few months. I don’t blame seniors for being frustrated with this government. There is a legacy of lip service being paid to creating a senior center, with no serious advancement of an actual project. Later in this email I talk about how we’re once again being asked to spend a huge sum of capital dollars on granite block curbing, instead of seriously planning and investing in a senior center.
The senior services department has also been particularly affected by the Town Manager scandal. With the loss of the well respected and regarded Senior Services Director Katie York, our Health Officer Sue Portuese and then our replacement Senior Services Director Margaret Church, this department has been stood up by the passion and sweat equity of Michelle DeWitt — Wonder Woman if I may say so, for well over a year now. Not only do we need to fill these roles (happening) but we also have to expand our services in a smart way.
I see a strong need for us to hire a Social Services Coordinator — someone to connect person A with resource B and so on. This person should have a full understanding of federal, state, county, municipal, private and non-profit programs and resources and be working across our government, with GAP, AIM and other advocates to back up this department and provide incremental support to make sure seniors have what they need. I want us to do this. I know Councilor Russo agrees with me. I believe at least one or two other Councilors do too.
Residential Rent Relief Fund (say that 5 times)
As part of our settlement in Montclair Property Owners Association v. Township of Montclair (Docket ESX-L-002774-20), a one-time $60,000 residential rent relief fund was established for the purpose of providing monetary relief to residential tenants located within the Township who demonstrate a genuine need or hardship in their ability to met their rental obligations.
We are introducing an Ordinance to establish the fund and have it administered by the Township Housing Commission that I also happen to be the liaison to.
Terms are still to be finalized and a process would be set up following enactment, in March. Basic criteria would be that an applicant must prove residency, would need to demonstrate genuine need or hardship based on a household income at or below 80% of the regional median income as defined by the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development; and they must either be unemployed or have had reduced income for 90 days preceding the date of the application. I will share more information on this in the future.
Cannabis, Here We Go
I’d ask folks to understand that we got about zero help from New Jersey to stand up a cannabis regulatory framework in Montclair. We’ve built out everything from scratch — the law itself, processes, forms, policies, procedures and more. As you probably know, last year we did award Ascend one of our three recreational licenses under the rules governing medicinal cannabis conversions. We’re now ready to move forward on issuing manufacturing and cultivation licenses in the next month or so.
In terms of the two remaining recreational licenses, these applications have gone through extensive internal screening — first, several applicants had to submit additional materials to complete their applications. Then we’ve needed to have applications reviewed and signed off by planning, legal, health, police and more. Over the next two weeks, Council will be reviewing the applications with the layered feedback from our departments and hopefully making determinations. I hope that we’ll be issuing the two remaining retail licenses by the last week of February or early March. I’m also of the mind that if we have a third or fourth solid candidate, I would consider opening up the law and increasing the number of licenses too. More to come.
Stormwater Runoff Zoning Code Improvements
A lot of people suffered damage after Hurricane Ida. I toured homes and businesses around Montclair and talked to so many affected people. Last October, following Ida, I authored this piece on local government’s role in flooding mitigation. Working with the Planning Board and many of their recommendations, with my colleagues on the Economic Development Committee we’re taking a final vote on new standards for impermeable surface coverage in all Montclair zones, including our single family housing zones.
The intention here for all future development, property renovations and when making decisions about secondary structures, pools and paving on property, that stormwater run off be more than a factor than it has been in the past. Development has run unchecked everywhere, without these kinds of standards for too long. When you pair that with increased precipitation from climate change, we end up with the flooding problems we have. This is how we start to mitigate.
To give you a simple example, for one and two family dwellings we would implement the following standards:
- For lots less than 10,000 sq. ft. in area, the maximum impervious coverage shall be 55% of the lot area (meaning no more than 45% of the surface area can be covered by impermeable surfaces)
- For lots between 10,000 sq. ft. in area and 25,000 sq. ft. in area, the maximum impervious coverage shall bet equal to 55 divided by the square root of the lot area
- For lots over 25,000 sq. ft. in area, the maximum impervious surface coverage shall be 35% of the lot area
- This continues across different zoning with various best practice standards applied
We also continue to look at and make improvements to our stormwater infrastructure. You’ll see another mention of that below.
Capital Improvements – Bond Action
- We’ll be taking a final vote on a bond issuance to repair the damaged stormwater culvert in the vicinity of S. Park, Bloomfield Ave. and Church Street — $1.25M to mitigate repeated flooding issues in that area. This is another promise kept to residents and businesses in that area.
- There is second vote scheduled for paving and curbing improvements throughout the Township for 2023 for $3M. I have reservations about proceeding with this given what we’ve heard from our Department Heads over the last few weeks. I don’t know that I can support spending more money on granite block curbing right now when we need a new ambulance, a new radio system for our firefighters, additional dollars for water infrastructure and much more. This will also be the third cycle of annual bond issuance where we’re not taking any action towards building a senior center or skate park — things we’ve all promised voters. I’m not a fan of lip service on these things without actually putting real resources into making them happen.
- Also included are important, but not yet transformational, improvements for Nishuane & Essex Pools – $700K. Items include: upgrading pool mechanical equipment, new lifeguard equipment, waterproofing improvements, and upgrades to bathrooms. This is cleverly connected to the above Ordinance, making it hard to vote for one without the other. But it can be done by amending.
- We’ll also be revising a 2020 Bond Ordinance that we issued for nearly $5M for masonry work at the Schools (before the Council lost its capital oversight for schools) at the request of the District to combine various projects into one.
Vision Zero Task Force
Last week, Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill, myself, Councilor Lori Price Abrams and Mayor Spiller met with Deb Kagan from the NJ Bike & Walk Coalition, Paul Mickiewicz from Bike & Walk Montclair, and a representative from Princeton, NJ’s Vision Zero Task Force.
We have our law department drafting a Resolution, modeled on what Princeton, Hoboken and Jersey City have done, to establish a Vision Zero Task Force in Montclair. We have a good sense of the composition of the Task Force and I’m looking forward to getting the ball rolling on this.
A Real Conversation
As part of Pastor Singleton and Union Baptist Church of Montclair’s 2023 Interfaith and Ecumenical Series of Sacred Studies, after an intro by the Pastor, I’ll be joining the Reverend Ann Ralosky of First Congregational Church for a discussion about Community, Faith and LGBTQ+ Justice in Montclair. All are welcome to join. You can register by clicking here or clicking the invite.
Join me for some Doughnuts and Democracy – Feb. 23rd
Then two weeks from Thursday, I’m having my first Democracy & Doughnuts event, which I’m hosting with Rachel Wyman at Rabble Rise on Thursday, Feb. 23rd to support my election fund, the Peter for Montclair Candidate Committee. Tickets and info are here.
If you know someone in Montclair who would be interested in receiving these updates, please forward this email to them. They can click his button to subscribe. As you can tell from reading this, local government has incredible power over our safety and quality of life. We need more people to be paying attention and getting involved. Please share these email and let’s get people engaged!