Here’s the text of the October Changemaker newspaper, a one-page, double-sided information sheet recently mailed out to households that signed the ordinance petition. Some of the information has appeared elsewhere on the blog. The next issue will be published in mid-November, to update residents on progress on the issues raised at recent Town Meetings, and will be available for pick-up from porches of NPCCR people willing to provide such distribution points.
THE CHANGEMAKER
The Changemaker is a community newspaper published monthly by North Plainfield Citizens for Community Rights, a nonpartisan group of borough residents intent on empowering free and equal citizens to solve local problems through open public discussion and use of our democratic right to self-governance. Future issues of The Changemaker will be available for free pick-up at houses displaying a raised green ribbon on the porch posts. To contribute news articles or community events, or donate toward copying costs, contact the editor.
If this October 2007 issue came in your mail, someone in your household signed the “Corporate Land Development and Local Self-Government Ordinance” initiative petition circulated by NPCCR, and/or attended a Town Meeting.
VILLA MARIA/ORDINANCE BY INITIATIVE:
As the Planning Board began public hearings for condo development at the Villa Maria site in May, NPCCR formed. After years of watching the Borough Council and Planning Board minimize or outright ignore public concerns, we learned that under the developer-written NJ Municipal Land Use Law (NJSA 40:55D-1 et seq.) ordinary citizens really don’t have any right to meaningfully shape local real estate development, regardless of our legitimate concerns about deforestation, school overcrowding, flooding, pollution, congested traffic, loss of historic sites or other community values, because the state law protects the profits of corporate shareholders over the self-governance rights of ordinary people.
However, in NJ we do have the citizens’ right of initiative under the Faulkner Act (NJSA 40:69A-1 et seq), which lets ordinary people draft and push local ordinances. With help from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which is working with dozens of communities around the country on similar initiatives, NPCCR drafted an ordinance that will prohibit corporate land development, except for locally-owned and operated builders, and strip corporations of the Constitutional privileges, as fictional legal persons, that have allowed them to trump real people’s self-governance rights for more than a century.
The Planning Board ultimately approved the condo plan unanimously, despite overwhelming citizen opposition, but the project was stopped again on Sept. 10, when Superior Court Judge Victor Ashrafi ruled in favor of Bill Campbell of Green Brook, who had challenged the original Age Restricted Condo ordinance adopted by the Council in a 4-2 vote in October 2005. Throughout July, August and September, NPCCR gathered petition signatures hoping for just such a break, and nearly 700 North Plainfielders signed the petition to place the ordinance before the Borough Council for a vote, and, if they vote it down, on the ballot for a community-wide vote. We delivered the petition package to Borough Clerk Gloria Pflueger on Sept. 19, starting a 20-day clock for her to review and certify the package by sometime this week.
[Update: Borough Clerk rejected the petitions on Oct. 9, not citing lack of proper signatures, but three irrelevant legal arguments, made pre-emptively without legal authority. I filed a pro se lawsuit with the Somerset County Superior Court, seeking a judicial Order invalidating the Clerk's rejection letter, and ordering the Clerk to continue validating the signatures to put the ordinance on the ballot.]
Despite NPCCR’s momentum, the Borough Council attempted to reintroduce the ARC on Sept. 24, but this time, faced again with organized, energized citizen opposition, the Council decided to withdraw the ARC ordinance and meet with NPCCR reps to work toward a community-supported solution.
We currently have research teams gathering information on Somerset County and NJ open space funding; eminent domain; historic preservation; tax law regarding a potential lien to collect back property taxes on Villa Maria (more than $800,000 owed since Jan. 2005, when NJ revoked their nonprofit status); private developers who may be willing to cooperate with the Borough’s vision for sustainable, ecologically and historically sound development; and pharmaceutical or philanthropic organizations who may be interested in purchasing the property for historic preservation.
We have found the Borough officials less than cooperative about turning over documents regarding these and other issues, have filed a Government Records Council complaint with the state agency charged with overseeing the Open Public Records Act, (NJSA 47:1A et seq), and will continue to seek information to reach a community-supported and community-supportive resolution for Villa Maria.
[Update 1/28/08: GRC complaint was accepted and we're waiting for a decision.]
We’ll hold an open Villa-Maria Community Meeting on Sat., Oct. 13 at 10 a.m. at the Vermeule Community Center to share and discuss progress reports from each research team, and then discuss and vote on the NPCCR direction and representation for meetings with Borough officials at the Town Meeting, Mon. Oct. 29 at 7 p.m. at Vermeule.
PROPERTY TAXES: Community consensus is: property taxes are too high, rising too fast, driving out existing homeowners, discouraging new home buyers; impacting school funding, municipal budgets and services. We need to understand how and why local and state taxes are so high in greater detail to find effective ways to relieve the local property tax burden. We’ll be gathering and reviewing more information from Borough Hall and the School Board; recently received Financial Statements and Supplementary Data and Information, including audit reports, for FY 2003, 2004, and 2005; and are still gathering 2006 and 2007 data. In the meantime, for general town by town comparisons and property-specific data, check out the Star Ledger database at www.nj.com/news/bythenumbers/ and the Courier News database at www.c-n.com/specialsections/datauniverse/%20mod4taxb.html
EDUCATION: A very high proportion of local property taxes go to support public education for our town’s children, so working in cooperation with other communities to change the way public schools are funded statewide will probably be a big part of resolving local property tax problems in NP and across the state. We need to understand more about Abbott v. non-Abbott funding patterns; unfunded state and federal mandates; to what extent high population density and residential overcrowding cause school overcrowding; and the quality of local education, measured not only by tests, but by finding out how students, teachers and parents think feel about their learning and teaching environment.
ORDINANCE ENFORCEMENT: Another much-discussed local issue is that many good ordinances are on the books to monitor and control property maintenance, littering, overcrowding, parking, unregistered vehicles, commercial vehicles, speeding, and other local nuisances, but enforcement by the police and Department of Public Works/Zoning Officer is frustratingly non-existent, lax or inconsistent. In response, retired police officer and concerned citizen Frank D’Amore Sr. gave a presentation at the Sept. 20 Town Meeting on how regular people can enforce ordinances independently and said he’d be glad to help people through the notification and complaint process; e-mail here.
Step 1 - When you see a possible violation, check the Borough Code to make sure you know exactly what the ordinance requires. The Borough Code is available for review at Borough Hall, or online
Step 2 – Document the violation by writing a letter and/or filling out a Property Maintenance Complaint form, available at the Borough Clerk’s desk. Attach photographs, and request a written response. Send or hand-deliver copies to the Mayor, Council, Borough Administrator, Department of Public Works Director and anyone else who bears official responsibility for enforcement, especially the Council, to get the letter recorded in the next Council meeting’s minutes as “Correspondence,” establishing a paper trail. Have the Borough Clerk date-stamp your letters if you hand-deliver, and keep a date-stamped copy as proof that you notified the proper authorities and when.
Step 3 – Wait a few months and observe the situation. If the problem is resolved, great. If not, send a follow-up letter to the same people, note your prior written notice, request a written response and get a date-stamp on each copy, including your own file copy.
Step 4 - If still no response, request, through OPRA (forms available at Borough Clerk’s desk) copies of investigation records and/or summonses issued to the violator.Step 5 – If there’s still no response and no Summons has been issued, file a Complaint in Municipal Court. There are no fees for filing Complaints for local ordinance violations, and, so long as the case is fairly straightforward (i.e., collapsing porch, too-tall corner lot shrubs blocking drivers’ sight-lines, litter, commercial vehicles parked in residential neighborhood), you don’t need an attorney. You just write and sign a statement about the violation and attach copies of the prior notices.Step 6 - When the Court date comes up, go to Court, present your information, and, Frank has found, the Judge usually just orders the violator to correct the violation (fix the porch, trim the shrubs, pick up litter, move the vehicles).
GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY: Another theme at the Town Meetings is low responsiveness and accountability from local government. Villa Maria and ordinance enforcement are two big examples, but there are many others: the Economic Development Committee has no reports about how and why businesses succeed or fail in NP; the Environmental Commission has no Environmental Resource Inventory to identify ecological preservation priorities, NP is not properly registered to receive Open Space funding, and so on.
In many ways, these problems are structural. Some of the statutory limits on local self-governance were outlined above, and the Local Self-Government Ordinance directly challenges that state-sanctioned corporate usurpation of local power.
But even within statutory limits, there’s room for change. NP currently has a Strong Mayor-Weak Council charter under the Faulkner Act, which means the Council has limited authority to influence the direction of local government. Also, our elections are partisan, while many other NJ towns have nonpartisan elections.
Many residents are interested in creating a Charter Change Committee to review and possibly change the charter to improve responsiveness and accountability, and reduce the high levels of bitter partisan politicking.
There’s also a campaign to recall Mayor Allen, which may be expanded by NPCCR vote at the Town Meeting on Oct. 29 to recall most of the current Council members. For more information on recall, contact Sandra Sedam.
Maybe the current structure gives our current Mayor and Council the power to respond meaningfully and creatively to citizen needs, and they’ve chosen not to. Maybe they don’t have the authority or the wherewithal to truly look out for the Borough’s wellbeing, and need citizen help to get things back on track. Let’s find out.
