A Better South Orange

Yesterday, brought a better South Orange in 2 big ways:

First in the morning, was the annual Rahway River clean-up, sponsored by Main Street & the Lion's Club. There was a great turnout, particularly by Seton Hall students. Even Village President Newman was in the river pulling out trash. My daughter, in particular, had a great time being able to walk in the river. After doing it last year, she had been anxiously anticipating having the opportunity again this year. It was a fun event and a big Thank You to everyone for organizing and participating in the event.

Later that evening, was a party to celebrate the imminent opening of Eden Gourmet in South Orange. After years of "Coming Soon", the market is finally scheduled for a "soft opening" on Wednesday (April 30) and a Grand Opening on May 9. The owners of the market held a fantastic party for their friends, family, local merchants and town officials to showcase the amazing space. On the ground floor is a spectacular market with amazing variety of fine foods (as well as essentials such as milk, butter, eggs, paper towels, toilet paper, cereal etc). In addition, there is a smoothie bar, fresh bakery, produce, meat, fish, salad bar and much more.

On the second floor, is a pizza oven along with prepared foods and tables for eating. There are also 2 huge patios (one adjacent to the train tracks and one behind the building. There are also plans coming before the Planning Board to approve a full sit-down restaurant with table service.

On the third floor is a huge space that will be used for events, parties etc. It is clear the owners spared no expense and tried to think of everything to accommodate all tastes. They are also incredibly committed to the community and have been incredibly generous already.

As someone commented to me, the opening of this market will be a huge positive change for South Orange and will only lead to better things. After seeing the amazing transformation from a run-down old Shop Rite to the new Eden Gourmet, I have to agree and hope this is the beginning of many more great things to come. I wish the proprietors of Eden Gourmet much success!

Parking Woes

At the last Board of Trustees Meeting on April 14, an ordinance was passed to limit parking on Meadowbrook Lane to 4-hour parking - effectively banning commuter parking from that location. The origin of this was at the request of some people who felt that commuters who were parking there infringed on the ability of people to park there to use the park.


I voted against this ordinance and feel strongly that this is not the right solution.


At a minimum, the park is virtually unused from November-April - meaning for almost 6 months out of the year, we have prime parking available within walking distance to the train which does not negatively impact anybody. Clearly things get more complicated from April-November, but in reality, even during the warmer months the park (or certainly the parking) is virtually unused until around 4pm when baseball, soccer etc begins. That leaves a very small window (roughly from 4pm-6:30pm, when commuters arrive home) when there are competing interests for the space. (Plus, we can exclude Friday evening when no games are scheduled).


Banning all commuter parking (by imposing a 4 hour limit) year-round for a problem that has a limited window of time, is the wrong solution in my opinion.

Along with other reasons, people move to this community for our proximity to NYC and ease of commute by train. The waiting list for commuter permit parking is up around 700 people currently. Alternative parking sites are being explored to expand the inventory of parking, but that won't happen overnight. In an earlier blog entry I shared my support for higher parking permit fees to encourage people to use the jitney, as well as reducing hoarding of permits and also encouraging people in close proximity to the train to try walking or biking. Again, that won't happen overnight. So, in the meantime, to totally eliminate available parking for 100 cars (currently used by about 65 cars each day) now seems premature until a comprehensive solution is identified. The only result this ordinance will have is to push cars to surrounding residential streets, aggravating those homeowners who will now have cars in front of their home all day.

I've already been contacted by many angry residents (and non-residents) who are negatively impacted by this and I expect we have not heard the last word, yet.

Play Ball!

Another sure sign of Spring is the annual South Orange/Maplewood Baseball Parade. This year, I was honored to join the local elected officials in leading the parade from Columbia High School, down Valley Street and ending at the baseball diamond in Memorial Park. I was so impressed with the amazing turnout and seeing how many of our kids participate in the Baseball program. Hats off to everyone who coordinated the event, as well as to everyone who participated. This is a great example of how our two communities can join together to share a community service, right down to the throwing of the first pitch by both Mayor Pettis and Village President Newman. Let's hope this is the start of much more cooperation and sharing of services to come!

Spring has Sprung

It's a great sign of Spring when we can finally head out after dinner for a bike ride. Even though we had a pretty mild Winter, it still seemed long and there is nothing like the first 70+ degree day! Even better is finishing off that bike ride with some well deserved ice cream.

It's only a matter of time before we all start complaining about the heat and humidity, so let's savor days like this as they seem to be so rare.

Happy Spring!

The axe-man cometh

We are once again in the midst of budget season and after numerous Budget Workshops, we were finally presented with some tangible options for trimming the budget. Initially, we faced a 13% municipal tax increase for the "introduced budget", but the Board agreed to try to attain "only" a 5% increase. To close that gap requires almost $1.5 million in additional revenue and/or cuts.

At the Budget Meeting on March 25, the Board of Trustees agreed to the following: (amount in parentheses is the cost savings/additional revenue in 2008)

Additional Revenue:
- Increase parking ticket fines by $10 (~$109k)

Service/Funding Reductions:
- Cut funding for Main Street, CCR, CRC, Youthnet & SOMACOM by 10% (~$12k)
- Reduce publication of the Gaslight to 6x/year (from 10x/year) (~15k)
- Elimination of July 4th fireworks/evening activities (this had long been discussed over the past several years anyway due to Public Safety concerns) (~$30k)
- Reduce Summer concert budget by $2k
- Reduce holiday decoration budget by $2k
- Reduce lodging costs for League of Municipalities Conference by $2k
- Eliminate Grant Writing Consultant (~$20k)
- Have website articles written in-house (~$12.6k)
- Open pool one week later in June (~$7k)
- Move all Village Hall clerical staff to same floor to improve efficiency (~$46k)
- Encourage health benefits opt out for covered familiy members (~$33k)
- Close Recycling Center on M/W/F
- Privatize Crossing Guards (~$39k)
(Note: This was a preliminary amount which has since been determined to be inaccurate. As of June 16, 2008, NO DECISION has been reached yet on this item)
- Reduce Code Enforcement (~$16k)
- Purchase 3 Police cars (instead of 4) (~$34.5k)

It was also agreed to Capitalize certain engineering expenses, public work expenses and IT expenses, along with the $300,000 SOPAC operating expenses (~$583k). This is an area that I strongly disagree with and feel that it is simply creative accounting which shifts operating expenses to our already excessive debt service that will be paid for over the next 30 years without fixing our tax problem (and in fact, making it worse).

There were also some other suggested reductions that were rejected for now:
- Elimination of leaf pickup (~$91.4k)
- Elimination of Village Aglow (~$4k)
- Elimination of Police detail at SOPAC (~$29k)
- Close the Baird on Sunday and one evening (~$16k)
- Discontinue the Gallery (~$100k)

It is obvious that there will be somebody who will stand up to defend each of the reductions agreed to above. Everyone has there own particular "pet" service that they feel is sacred and cannot be touched. However, we must look at everything and try to make cost-benefit decisions that will impact the least number of residents and bring the greatest savings.
Ironically, after all of the above, it only reduced the budget by $975k, still leaving us with an 8.1% municipal tax increase. So, before everyone starts trying to defend their favorite municipal service above, we STILL need to identify ANOTHER $514k in cuts to bring us in line with a 5% increase.

In my opinion, we MUST start with requiring mandatory healthcare contributions for all staff. A 20% contribution towards their healthcare by ALL staff, would save the Village over $415,000 anually alone. Unfortunately, nothing is easy in Municipal government and a majority of positions are governed by Union contracts which are currently under negotiation and subject to binding arbitration. However, this is an area that MUST be addressed, as fully paid healthcare is nothing more than a relic from an era that no longer exists in the real world. It is time that government joins the real world.