Code of Silence

Since the publishing of a story in Sunday's Star Ledger about recent discord on the South Orange Board of Trustees, I have received many comments and questions about what is going on.  Most people have been incredibly supportive and sympathetic about the dysfunction, but some people have asked where this came from and what can be done about it.

By way of background, over the past few months a number of critically important requests for items to be added to the Board of Trustees meeting agenda have been denied by Village President Torpey.  The process is (and has always been) that Department Heads and Trustees submit requests for items to be placed on the agenda a week or so in advance of the meeting.  Generally, all items were simply included unless they needed further vetting in a committee or were redundant with another request.  However, over the past few months the list of rejected items has included the following important issues that impact all residents:

• Marylawn Development
• Hiring of a Business Recruiter
• Moving Elections to November
• BOT Meeting Agenda Process
• Assembly Bill S-1534
• New Water Supply Source
• PBA Collective Bargaining
• OPIEU Collective Bargaining
• South Orange Commons (Beifus Site Redevelopers Agreement update)
• Personnel Investigation
• Code Enforcement Staffing
• East Orange Water Commission

These are all items that do not fall within our normal committee structure and which required discussion by the full Board of Trustees in either open or executive (closed) session.   We were all elected to represent the community and that includes having difficult conversations about complex topics.....and we all volunteered to do this job which requires us to sit in meetings that often run very late.  Everyone on the Board has the right to express an opinion on these topics, but to  eliminate the opportunity to even have a discussion is simply wrong. 

This all came to a head in early July, when I learned at a Public Safety Committee Meeting that the Police Chief was also instructed to stop sending reports about criminal activities to the Board of Trustees.  Since I have been on the Board of Trustees in 2007, the Police Chief would share periodic updates about specific crimes or arrests that occurred in town, on the premise that the Board should be informed if anyone inquired about the situation.  However,  I noticed that starting in May 2012, the BoT was no longer receiving these reports.  After being told that the Chief was told by the Village President not to send the reports to the Board, I raised the issue at the July 9 BOT Meeting.  The Board of Trustees agreed the reports should be received by the full BOT and a formal policy was adopted at the subsequent meeting to codify this. 

As these topics were discussed at public meetings (and by the public on Maplewood Online), a reporter at the Star Ledger picked up the story by watching excepts of videos that were posted online:



and contacted members of the Board of Trustees for comment. 

Ironically, all of this occurred back in the earlier part of the Summer and for the most recent BoT Meeting on September 10th, all requested agenda items were listed and the Police Chief has resumed sharing reports of police activity with the Board of Trustees.  So, hopefully these problems have now been put behind us and, in reality, the Star Ledger article was "old news".  Hopefully these discussions and the attention generated by the article has accomplished  everyone's goal  - to return to real transparency and open government in South Orange.