At the very end of Monday’s Council meeting, when the Council members were asked to propose agenda items for future meetings, Councilman Santiago Soto quietly but clearly placed “a review of the mechanisms used for enforcement of ordinances” on the Council’s upcoming agenda.
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1 response so far ↓
Bill // September 26, 2007 at 3:49 pm |
I’m not sure Mr. Soto’s proposal was such a hopeful sign. Except for introducing an earlier ordinance, I believe this was the only instance that Mr. Soto said anything — other than “yes” — during the entire council meeting (he may also have said a sentence about hoping that the Villa Maria issue could be resolved, as did every other council member). (To be clear, my comment is not intended as a disparagement of Mr. Soto. Most of the other Council members, except for the acting President and Bob Hitchcock, also said very little. As I explain below, the problem is structural, not personal.)
Even then, Mr. Soto simply read from a previously prepared paper and said ONLY that he would like to see “a review of the mechanisms used for enforcement of ordinances” on the Council’s upcoming agenda. Mr. Soto, who was appointed to replace his son on the Council, is running in his first election this year. Accordingly, one has to wonder whether his statement was more about politics than policy.
That said, I believe Mr. Soto likely did not make the statement with dubious intentions. But no matter how well intentioned, I’m not hopeful that anything will actually get done. While his statement appeared to be a step in the right direction, it seems unlikely that such a review will ever happen. As I believe was discussed at a NPCCR meeting, the reason the Borough doesn’t enforce its ordinances is because the prosecutor drops the case or asks the judge to commute or significantly reduce the fine. My understanding from the NPCCR meeting is that the prosecutor has failed to enforce the ordinances AT THE DIRECTION of the Mayor.
Yet even if the Council decided to undertake a review, it’s even more unlikely that it would be effective or that, in the event it did uncover something, any of us would learn of the results of that review. Who would conduct such a review? The mayor or the administrator, David Hollod, who she hired and who works for her? If the mayor really has played any role in preventing proper enforcement, would she blow the whistle on herself?
There are two more global problems here.
First, the Council meetings are nothing more than window dressing. Nothing happens at them. Council members do not discuss town business, they do not ask questions about the very ordinances on which they are required to vote, they rarely raise issues that concern residents, but even then they do not discuss the issue at all, and, as was painfully apparent at the last meeting, they do not even have a working knowledge of the items they’re voting on — it seemed no one had read the new Villa Maria ordinance that they expected to vote on (only Mr. Hitchcock nodded as though he had read it), and while it was clear that no one other than the town attorney knew what was going on with the parcel of land the town is buying — and even he didn’t seem too clear on the subject — and three council members (including Mr. Soto) still voted to buy it anyway.
Part of the problem is that the Council does the vast majority of its business in private. As I understand it, the Council conducts its business at the mayor’s house on Saturdays. All the public ever sees is the end result — the Council’s vote. Not very democratic.
The second problem is oversight of town affairs. As residents, we have access to very little information about our government. There is, of course, OPRA, but that can cost taxpayers a lot of money — especially if you really want to dig into an issue. Furthermore, I’ve been told of at least one lawsuit involving the town refusing to produce documents of the type that should be readily available to residents.
It’s not even easy to get a hold of information about the council’s agenda. The town website only publishes past agendas. You have to actually go to Borough Hall or subscribe to an internet-based program (google group), which very few people know about, to get a copy of the agenda. Why doesn’t the town just post the upcoming agenda on its website BEFORE the meeting?
But even if you get a copy, you have to decode it. If it weren’t for other sources on the internet and word of mouth, I probably wouldn’t have known that the one sentence reference to “age-restricted” in the agenda dealt specifically with the Villa Maria property.
Katherine has done a good job of demonstrating how other towns make information, such as the town budget, easily accessible to residents. Why do we have to fight with the administration — sometimes all the way to the courthouse — just to get basic information about our government?
This lack of access to basic information is compounded by the complete absence of transparency into the workings of our elected officials. How do we petition our local government to address our problems if all of the relevant discussions about what happens in our town go on behind the closed doors of a private house?
To be honest, I’m not sure what the solution is other than voting out the mayor and the majority of the council. Although residents have raised concerns about the lack of information and transparency for many years, these problems have persisted. And I don’t think these problems will be completely solved until there’s a new mayor who values an open and responsive government. But that’s not going to happen for at least a year, and given recent history, maybe not even then.
Perhaps, since it seems unlikely that the council and mayor will police themselves anytime soon, the Borough could establish a formal citizen’s committee that has oversight responsibility. Such a committee could be established by the council via an ordinance or by voters via a referendum.
The committee could be similar to the planning board or economic development committee. It could be governed by a charter that defined its role and responsibilities. It could have six to nine members, consisting of two or three registered republicans, democrats, and independents. While not perfect, the idea here is that no one party can dominate the committee — the NJ Supreme Court is set up in a similar way. The members should probably have a single one year term and then should not be on the committee again for at least two years. This again would help to prevent a single party from shielding their friends in the administration from scrutiny.
The mayor would be obligated to give the committee access to any and all documents it requested and to answer questions at the committee’s public meetings.
I suggest this committee simply in an attempt to begin a discussion about how we might go about streamlining the type of oversight that I think the NPCCR is trying to do and that all residents would want to participate in if they had the time.
In theory, I think this oversight role is really the responsibility of the council. But, to date, it’s a role that they’ve abdicated. Perhaps a robust discussion about creating some formal mechanism for oversight and accountability might help to shed light on the issues we all care about, but cannot get answers to from our local officials.