Happy Holidays & Happy New Year

Hard to believe another year is coming to an end. It is amazing how the years seem to go by faster each year. I think 2008 will be remembered as an interesting year for both South Orange and the Country.

Across the Country, 2008 will be remembered most as the year people celebrated the historic election of Barack Obama and the sense of hope an optimism he brings. At the same time, 2008 will also be remembered for the meltdown of the economy and the painful aftermath after so many years of greed and excess.

In South Orange, we celebrated the long awaited opening of Eden Gourmet (plus Kitchen a la Mode, Robyn Ross, Sparkhouse Kids, Rita's, Village Trattoria and a number of others). The Village saw its first new Village Attorney, as well as its first new (Acting) Village Clerk in many many years. The Village also began to plant the seeds for our future over the next 10-20 years with the start of a series of comprehensive Village Planning "Conversations" with the community to help chart a course for where we want to go.

In 2009, we can look forward to having this process finish up, HOPEFULLY along with the the long overdue (understatement of the year) construction of our historic firehouse.

I just want to wish everyone a very Happy Holiday and all the best for a very Happy New Year!

Democracy in Action

For anyone who has read my previous blog posts on the "Parking Woes", we had a very interesting BOT meeting last night where the proposed Ordinances finally came to a head, a public hearing was held and a decision was reached.

For the first Ordinance, it was proposed to limit parking to 2 hours from 8am-noon on streets within a 3/8 mile radius of the train station. At the meeting last night, over 20 residents stood up to speak their mind and share their opinion on the Ordinance. While the majority of residents favored the Ordinance, there were some who felt their street should be excluded from the restrictions and there were some who felt the Ordinance didn't go far enough. In the end, the Ordinance passed by a vote of 4-2. The new restrictions will now go into effect in January.

For the other big Ordinance of the night, it was proposed to create residential permit parking on a number of streets that did not immediately abut homes or businesses. This time over 20 residents stood up to unanimously oppose this plan - mostly on the grounds they did not want the parking in their residential neighborhoods, but also on the fear of safety issues and the fact that there does not seem to be a crushing demand for parking at Mountain Station. In the end, there was no motion to move this Ordinance forward and it died.

I completely understand and respect the concerns of all the residents who came forward to speak on both of these Ordinances. I also certainly appreciated the time everyone took to sit through a very long meeting in order to be heard. I certainly learned alot by listening to what everyone said. I was particularly impressed at how professional and respectful everyone (both on the Board and at the podium) was towards each other. It just proves that people can disagree but do so in an adult manner.

I still feel that we desperately need additional commuter parking, however, I now feel we should focus that effort for South Orange station only and in areas which will have much less impact on the neighborhood, such as N. Ridgewood Rd (which already has bumper to bumper FREE daily parking) and Meadowbrook Lane (which has plenty of capacity - especially in the Winter).

I want to thank everyone who came out to the meeting to share their opinions and to participate in the process. While I'm sure not everyone walked away happy with the results, I am certain that everyone would have rather spent their evening elsewhere and I do think the process was fair. However, clearly we learned alot about how we can improve for next time.