April 21st Meeting Summary

We had a really important meeting on Monday, April 21st. Here are the highlights.

We once again passed our annual budget, which increases municipal taxes by 3%. This increase includes both the municipal taxes and the mandatory minimum library tax. Just to recap, our total change of municipal expenses was 2%, one of our lowest increases in years. Despite that low increase, we were able to include some necessary expansions in this budget, including improving our IT capabilities, increased staffing for our police department, and down payments for a host of necessary capital projects.

While I am supportive of this budget, we need to look to grow our ratables in town to help to alleviate tax increases on the average home owner. We continue to miss opportunities to expand ratables in town by moving too slowing on our rezoning. We need to fix our multiple zoning issues as soon as possible, so that we can strengthen our business community and generate some investment in our Bloomfield Avenue and Pompton Avenue corridors. I hope that we can get started on this work in July after our affordable housing plan is due to the state.

After we passed the budget, we had a discussion on the Linden Avenue repaving project, which will include some minor enhancements as a result of the Linden Avenue traffic and safety demonstration project. We are still waiting a final report from the New Jersey Transportation Planning Authority on the Linden Avenue traffic study, but we received hundreds of completed survey responses. In the design of Linden Avenue that were presented by engineers, what is proposed is some additional painting and striping to mimic some of the safety improvements that were tested out last year, but not all of them. You can see the changes here. This additional paint will hopefully help to slow drivers down a bit on Linden Avenue, and to make crosswalks more visible to drivers. We have tight timing to get this contract awarded by October, so the engineers are proceeding with this project.

Everett Field was also discussed at length at this meeting. The Council saw updated engineering plans. I encourage the public to review them here. For parents, I encourage you to look specifically at the design of the new ADA playground, which can be found on page 18. It will be officially rated for ages 5-12, but younger children can play on it if supervised. Please send any feedback on the playground design to the Council using the form here.

Some highlights from our meeting discussion. The field will remain grass, but will be completely redone to improve drainage and safety. The parking lot will be a porous pavement to comply with stormwater regulations. There will be some tree removal and subsequent replanting, but the entire field design was modified to try to mitigate impact to any slopes around the property. Lighting will also be updated. Some of the existing features will be repurposed with LED lights, which will be more energy efficient but also help contain light spillage.

To keep the costs of this project down, the VBSL organization has generously donated the construction of the bathrooms and snack bar. This is an incredible donation on their part. I want to thank them and their sponsors.

From the comments of my peers, it appears we have the votes to proceed. This project needs a significant capital investment. Please monitor our agendas to see when we will introduce the funding for this project, and subsequent approval. If we approve the capital soon, we will have a new field ready for opening day 2026.

Other highlights from our meeting include the following.

• We passed an increase of fees for our plenary retail distribution businesses from $1,866 to $2,239. [5.5.25 correction - We introduced this ordinance to increase fees. Final vote will be on 5.5.25]

• We submitted to the NJ-iBank the Claridge Pump Station project, costing $1.9 million.

• We adopted a Hazardous Mitigation Plan, which is part of a larger plan for Essex County.

• We hired Bannon, Rawding McDonald & Mascera to represent us in a matter pertaining to the development of West Essex Highlands, and housing development in West Orange.

• The Council accepted grants for Sustainable Jersey on energy efficiency and the National Opioid Settlement.

• We authorized an agreement with the Cougar Swim Team to use our pool for a fee of $13,000.

• The Council made a small change to the pool rules to start Family Night at at 3 pm based on feedback we received from a resident.

• We accepted a donation of a bench from the Kenny Brown Memorial Fund, and it will be placed at Everett Field.

• Finally we passed a resolution in support the RevolutionNJ for the nation's 250th Anniversary.

Under new business, we discussed adding an attendance policy for our volunteers on our boards and commissions. We talked about this issue in the past, and the Mayor put it back on our new business agenda. The Mayor and I went back and forth on debating points on this policy. He would like a volunteer removal process to start if volunteer attendance dips below 70%. I think that is too high for some of our Boards and Committees, and think the policy should kick in once the volunteer misses more than 50% of the meetings in a year, or 3 consecutive meetings. I would also like to see us adopt a code of conduct requirement, as we have had some rare but substantial issues that need to be addressed with a code of conduct policy.

Councilwoman Holland also participated robustly in this conversation, and I want to thank her for her comments. Her leadership strengths and level headedness were on full display as she navigated between the various arguments. I hope to see an updated ordinance with her thoughtful comments incorporated.

As I said in the past, attendance on some of our boards and committees used to be a more significant issue. It has gotten better as of late, but a policy is probably a good idea. However, while we want to have the best attendance possible, we have to realistic that some of our best volunteers are also our busiest. A volunteer can be both great contributor to our committees but at the same time struggle from time to time to make every meeting. Hopefully we can find a good balance compromise in a policy.

To send feedback to the Council on any item discussed, please send us your comments here: https://www.veronanj.org/councilcontactform.