113 Uncontrolled Intersections

Another issue on Monday’s Borough Council Agenda was a check-in with Police Chief William Parenti on planned installation of traffic signs for the 113 uncontrolled intersections throughout the Borough.

Chief Parenti told the Council that rectifying this problem has been on his To-Do list since 2004, when he and then Traffic Safety Officer Michael Fahs identified it as a growing issue due to increased vehicular traffic throughout the Borough.

Parenti said he and Fahs determined, at that time, that it would cost about $6,000 to perform the necessary data-collection on accident rates and number of cars at each intersection, purchase and install the signs to “eliminate all uncontrolled intersections.”

But despite budget requests for the project in 2004, 2005 and 2006, funding was not budgeted until this year, 2007.

Borough Administrator Dave Hollod informed the Borough Council that all 113 intersections are listed in three draft ordinances covering stop signs, yield signs and through streets. Parenti explained that data collection will start soon, and the ordinances, with the supporting data, will then go to the NJ Department of Transportation for review and approval before the signs can actually be ordered and installed.

Open Public Records – Update

OPRA APPEAL:

The latest news on the Open Public Records Act appeal to the Government Records Council is as follows. It’s a response from the GRC Case Manager, to an e-mail I sent asking about the timelines for next steps:

“The next step in the adjudicatory process is for me as the Case Manager assigned to this complaint to prepare a report entitled “Findings and Recommendations of the Executive Director” (‘FR’). The FR will summarize the facts and assertions presented by both parties. The analysis portion will apply OPRA and any other applicable law to this particular set of facts. (Please note that if additional information is needed we will contact the parties).

At the GRC’s monthly Council meetings, Case Managers present the Conclusions and Recommendations portion of the FR to the Council members who then vote to accept, reject or amend said findings. All parties are notified in writing of the Council’s decision within 5-10 business days from the date of the Council meeting.It is impossible to provide you with a timeline of when this complaint will be adjudicated. Complaints are adjudicated in the order in which they are received. Please note that at which GRC meeting a complaint is adjudicated largely depends on how quickly the parties provide all documentation necessary for a thorough investigation and legal analysis of the complaint. The secondary determination for which GRC meeting adjudication will occur is the legal complexity of the issues involved. The GRC strives to adjudicate complaints as expeditiously as possible…”

So, it’s hard to say how long it will take or predict the outcome, although I believe it will be quite difficult for the GRC to make a good decision in light of the Borough’s withholding of information the GRC would need to make a good decision, and the fact that the GRC, as it turns out, doesn’t generally take strong steps to obtain additional information. In other words, stalling may well work quite nicely for the Borough as a way to keep lots of information out of the light of public scrutiny.

Local Democracy, Global Democracy…

…two sides of the same coin.

Link to Youtube video of Naomi Wolf, discussing her new book: “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot.” Video is about 45 minutes long. There’s a book review here.

I think it’s relevant to our work here, at least in part because the charge of “treason” has already been levelled at NPCCR – by Councilwoman Mary Forbes – because as a group, we are daring to take seriously the notion of self-governance: that people in a democracy have a right to draft and to vote to change laws to better protect ourselves, our children and our friends and neighbors, even at the local level.

And, although it would be comforting if I could convince myself that a “lefty” would never head down the totalitarian path, history forces me to acknowledge that the things happening in America could just as easily be happening under a Democratic administration, and that most of the leading Democratic candidates for President give no sign of intending to reverse the dangerous concentration of executive power and other disturbing, anti-democratic trends, if elected.

Which brings it all back to the grassroots, where we are, where we’re working to revive our living democracy…

Plainfield Council – Documents Online

Plainfield City Councilman Rashid Burney has started posting pdf versions of many, many council-related documents at a website available for residents to review and download to be informed about local issues. Councilman Burney also maintains a blog, where he writes about his perspectives on local issues.

Developers and Campaign Funding

A Highland Park blogger’s thoughts on the subject, regarding her hometown Mayor’s relationship with real estate developers.

Retroactive Year-End Bonuses

By a 4-2 vote, the Council voted last night to give 4% retroactive salary increases (aka year-end bonuses) to Borough employees, bringing their total 2007 compensations to the following:

Administrative Assistant – Tina Totten – $51,071
Borough Clerk – Gloria Pflueger – $88,291
Assistant Borough Clerk – Richard Phoenix – $40,124
Business Administrator – David Hollod – $104,000
Chief Financial Officer – Patrick DeBlasio – $36,910
Construction Official – Joe Alencino – $19,689
Court Administrator – Mary Petraglia – $68,984
Director of Public Works – James Rodino – $10,400
Zoning/Code Enforcement Official – James Rodino – $59,671
Municipal Court Judge – $49,156
Municipal Prosecutor – $14,872
Office of Emergency Management Coordinator – $4,160
Recreation Director – Lou Gomez – $16,971
Assistant Recreation Director – ? – $12,188
Tax Assessor – Barbara Flaherty – $60,124
Deputy Tax Assessor – Eugene Flaherty – $13,563
Tax Collector – ? – $20,800
Treasurer – ? – $3,895

The following public officials have their salaries set by collective bargaining agreements, so theirs weren’t subject to retroactive alterations:

Fire Chief – William F. Eaton – $134,919
Police Chief – William Parenti – $142,733

The retroactive pay raises were budgeted in the 2007-2008 budget and recommended by the Mayor.

But disbursing the money was at the discretion of the Borough Council. (For reference purposes, the latest Cost of Living Adjustment set by the Social Security Administration to keep benefits in line with inflation, was 2.3%)

The “No” votes came from Councilwoman Jenny Uptegrove, and Councilman Douglas Singleterry. The “Yes” votes came from Council President Skip Stabile, Councilman Robert Hitchcock, Councilman Michael Giordano and Councilwoman Mary Forbes. Councilman Frank Righetti was out sick.

I guess the next step, for people interested in matching up these pay rates with other public officials in other municipalities of similar size and median income, would be to get copies of job descriptions NP Job Descriptions and scheduled work-hours for each individual.

(Also, for some of the positions, I don’t know who the individual filling that position is, so if readers have more info to update the list, please pass it along.)

Contractor Time Overruns at Borough Hall

Frank D’Amore got some interesting documents via OPRA, about the renovations underway at Borough Hall.

Dauti Contract 

According to the original contract, the contractor, Dauti Construction Co., agreed to finish the renovations by 378 calendar days from the date of Notice to Proceed, and to pay the Borough $500 for every day over that time limit, should construction run over the deadline.

The Notice to Proceed was issued March 24, 2006. 378 calendar days later was Friday, April 6, 2007.

33 weeks later (November 23) would be 231 days plus four more days up to today (November 27) would be 235 days, multiplied by $500, means the contractor owes the Borough $117,500.

When Frank asked the Borough Council last night whether that contractual provision remained in effect and whether the money was being collected from the contractor, the Council chose not to reply.

Attorney-Client Privilege

Wikipedia entry on attorney-client privilege.

One of the arguments frequently advanced by Borough Attorney Eric Bernstein, to explain his refusal to make government documents available for public scrutiny through Open Publice Records Act requests, is that his client is Mayor Allen, not the Borough’s residents, and therefore his communications with Mayor Allen are exempt from public disclosure by virtue of the attorney-client privilege.

However, there are limits to that privilege, including situations in which any party other than the attorney and the client are present at a meeting, or included in a correspondence loop.

Determining whether the privilege has been broken requires review of the documents in question by a neutral third party, such as the Government Records Council, which Mr. Bernstein has also stonewalled in their requests for the relevant documents.

50 and counting…

Some of the local issues that bear close examination. If you’ve got information to shed light on any of them, clarifying misunderstandings; providing information, more detailed information, context or references; debunking rumors, etc., please pass that info along via a comment post below or an e-mail to communityrights@gmail.com:

1. PUBLIC FINANCES – Independent audit of the books needed; past audits have been non-independent.

2. PUBLIC FINANCES – No Time and Motion Study despite numerous citizen requests. Wasted time and overlapping public positions need to be identified and streamlined.

3. PUBLIC FINANCES/CORRUPTION – Borough Hall renovations. Cost overruns, conflicts of interest. $400,000 purchase of house near Borough Hall to temporarily house Borough offices during renovations.

4. PUBLIC FINANCES – Home values. Assessments, revaluation. $500,000 emergency appropriation to pay for assessments. Two full-time assessors already on staff for Borough. What do they do? Why didn’t Borough plan ahead to avoid interest fees on borrowing that money?

5. PUBLIC FINANCES – Property taxes. Rate of increase, quality of services provided as compared to other area municipalities. Residential development plans. No evidence that more housing will lower or stabilize property taxes. Flight of NJ residents to other states to escape taxes, high proportion of local housing stock on market, unable to find buyers.

6. PUBLIC FINANCES – Borough Council plans to adopt nominal salaries ($1,500 each, per year) to establish grounds for future access to state pensions.

7. PUBLIC FINANCES – General financial mismanagement; evidence in budgets, meeting minutes must be analyzed and compiled. Example: $75,000 for electronic notice board and Borough Hall furniture. Why not a non-electric sign, to save utility costs and electricty use in future?

8. PUBLIC FINANCES – Trash collection. Would it be cheaper for residents to have a Borough-wide collection service, rather than homeowner individual collection plans? Has Borough ever documented and presented the pros and cons of each system?

9. ADVOCACY/CORRUPTION – Borough officials’ well-established refusal to answer citizen questions or provide evidence-based information about how public decisions are made. Why? What are they hiding?

10. ADVOCACY – Comcast cable monopoly; Borough failure to pursue competition from vendors like Verizon FIOS.

11. ADVOCACY – Senior Housing. What is the documented, quantified, projected demand for housing for local seniors? What kind do they need and want? Assisted living? Independent living? Nursing homes?

12. ADVOCACY – Affordable Housing. What are the local Council on Affordable Housing statistics and requirements? What were the settlement terms for the 2003 COAH lawsuits?

13. ADVOCACY – Spanish language barrier. Up to half of Borough population is Spanish-speaking. No child care is offered at Adult School English as a Second Language classes. No translators available for Spanish parents whose children are being disciplined by the school district. What is the status of efforts to install English language signs on Somerset Street?

14. ADVOCACY – Historic Commission. Somerset Street, St. Joseph’s School and Villa Maria not yet historic districts with local protection.

15. ADVOCACY – Recycling program. When Somerset County recycling plant is full, all NP recycling goes to dump instead. Alternatives?

16. ADVOCACY – Borough stance on moving beyond public accountability to public power to solve our own problems, provide for our own needs for goods and services, create our own local jobs. Borough undermining/rejection of initiative-driven self-governance ordinance proposal. Other options to increase local self-governing power: drafting our own local Constitution to protect our right to local democratic self-governance, and repudiate the idea that we are children of the State or underlings for the Mayor and Council; charter change to establish direct nonpartisan general election of all council members and individual council member responsibility for specific public departments and public functions.

17. ADVOCACY – 410-412 West End Avenue. Lawsuit settlement in “inverse condemnation” case required Borough to purchase vacant, tree-filled, swampy, trash-strewn land from private landowner. Who negotiated it? What was the challenge?

18. CORRUPTION – Volunteers who register with the Talent Bank to serve on local committees are selected or overlooked for political reasons – possible litmus test of loyalty to Mayor.

19. CORRUPTION – Possible improper job postings and hiring procedures.

20. CORRUPTION – No performance review system for Borough employees; bulging complaint files, and those employees are ‘punished’ with raises and promotions; possible personal use of Borough vehicles by Borough employees.

21. CORRUPTION – Possible improper bidding procedures for public projects. Potential vendors don’t get the chance to bid, or bids are rigged to allow certain favored vendors to keep getting the business.

22. CORRUPTION – Department of Public Works and Zoning Office possibly used to selectively harass residents.

23. PUBLIC SAFETY – Ordinance enforcement. Police and DPW employees are unclear about ordinances, responsibility for enforcement, enforcement deadlines from complaint filing; consequences for failure to enforce or for selective, discriminatory enforcement. Is there Somerset County oversight for unequal or discriminatory local enforcement of laws? (Examples: household trash on lawns or in Borough garbage cans; property maintenance violations; leaf-blowing; noisy trash collection too early in the morning; sign-posting ordinances on public and private property.)

24. PUBLIC SAFETY/CORRUPTION – Overcrowding/rooming houses. Absentee landlords. Other towns have successfully dealt with these problems by consistently enforcing legally defensible ordinances. Why doesn’t the DPW prosecute overcrowding? Why doesn’t the Borough collect fines from absentee landlords, or provide evidence that such fines are being collected consistently and effectively?

25. PUBLIC SAFETY – Library HVAC, sprinkler, roof repairs, air quality. Borough liability to staff and patrons for airborne and waterborne illnesses. Budget requests, allocations, bidding procedures (March 2007, October 2007), construction scheduling. Borough Council is Board of Health and has provided no evidence of proper oversight or protection for staff and patron health.

26. PUBLIC SAFETY – Roads. Sandford Avenue full of dangerous potholes. Homeowner was told Borough has no money for repairs. Standardized procedure for prioritizing road repairs?

27. PUBLIC SAFETY/ADVOCACY – Farragut Place curbs. Special assessment imposed on homeowners to replace curbs despite no evidence of liens in title searches conducted over past 14 years as those homeowners considered purchasing in North Plainfield.

28. PUBLIC SAFETY – New fire truck needed for 2012, will cost $500,000, best to plan ahead by setting aside money in current budgets. Is that money set aside?

29. PUBLIC SAFETY/PUBLIC FINANCES – PARSA – Plainfield Area Regional Sewer Authority – reports sewer system leaking like a sieve. Study was to be conducted. Where are the results? Who is responsible for which sections of pipe?

30. PUBLIC SAFETY – Gang activity at middle school and high school; lack of local afterschool programming for teens.

31. PUBLIC SAFETY – Downtown police presence. Are they walking the beat? If not, could they? Would that help improve safety and perceptions of safety?

32. PUBLIC SAFETY – Flood and erosion control. Green Brook, Crab Brook, Stony Brook. Route 22. Retaining wall behind Rockview Avenue. Flood plains and flood maps, drainage, water tables, recharge, wetlands designation. What’s where and what does it mean for development and redevelopment planning?

33. PUBLIC SAFETY – Traffic. Speeding on Greenbrook Road, Watchung Avenue, other local roads. Delays on Somerset Street, Watchung Avenue up and down to I-78. Traffic lights? Scheduled plans to put up signs at uncontrolled intersections? Plans to improve pedestrian safety with sidewalks, traffic calming?

34. PUBLIC SAFETY – Emergency Medical Service staff, membership declining. Documented effect on emergency preparedness? Plans for solving?

35. SUNSHINE LAWS – Documents sought by citizens under Open Public Records Act routinely and improperly withheld.

36. SUNSHINE LAWS – Meetings held by decision-making committees and commissions in private homes without public notice or oversight, in violation of Open Public Meetings Act.

37. SUNSHINE LAWS – Green Brook Multi-Use Trail. What’s the progress of the grant application? When is the public hearing, promised by the Council to gather citizen input before any grant money will be accepted and spent?

38. SUNSHINE LAWS – Borough website. All public documents could be posted on the web, and many towns do so, including but not limited to detailed budgets, reports submitted to or prepared by committees, boards and commissions, detailed meeting minutes and contact information for every public official and committee member. NP website has very little useful information. Who is responsible for maintaining the website, and does he/she have adequate time, training and support to improve it?

39. INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS – Mayor and Borough staff rude, dismissive and uncooperative with officials from other towns, giving North Plainfield a reputation for being completely dysfunctional, and prompting other municipalities to refuse to engage in shared services or back out of shared service arrangements.

40. INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS – Plainfield-North Plainfield bridges. Where are the records of joint meetings. Where are the stumbling blocks and who’s putting them up?

41. INTRAGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS – Open hostility between boards and commissions. Inability for members of different boards and commissions to work openly and constructively together to work out differences and craft comprehensive solutions to Borough problems.

42. OPEN SPACE/ADVOCACY – Environmental Commission. No local Open Space tax collected. No Recreation and Open Space Inventory, Environmental Resource Inventory. No reports identifying critical slopes, critical habitats, endangered species of plants and animals, critical aquifer recharge zones, etc. Limited Borough eligibility for County and State open space grants and loans as a result of poor documentation.

43. OPEN SPACE – Somerset County special projects money ($1 million) set aside for North Plainfield in approximately 2003. Where is it? How can we access it? What can we spend it on? Open Space corruption scams – how they’ve been done elsewhere, how to avoid them here.

44. OPEN SPACE/ADVOCACY – State Master Development Plan. High-density role for North Plainfield. Who negotiated it on our behalf? By whose order must North Plainfield – already totally built up but for Villa Maria – absorb more housing density to spare other municipalities?

45. OPEN SPACE – Borough obstruction and interference with work of Shade Tree Advisory Board, permitting hundreds of healthy Borough trees to be destroyed. Obstruction of Shade Tree Commission ordinance. Compare to Hoboken shade tree commission. Potential for Faulkner initiative campaign to put Shade Tree Ordinance on ballot.

46. OPEN SPACE – Master Plan dramatically revised and condensed in May 2002 under questionable circumstances. Open space lost as a priority without citizen input. Citizens want open space protection. Need for thorough public education, input and revisal of plan.

47. OPEN SPACE – Possible Borough-proposed sale of high school football fields for development. Rumor debunked by School Board via Councilwoman Mary Forbes at 12/10/07 Council meeting: no sale of field planned.

48. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT – Economic Development Committee has no reports on business success or failure in the Borough. Where is the final report from the Smart Growth visioning meeting? Façade improvement funding?

49. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT – Borough officials are proposing to added Watchung Avenue as a Business District, although Somerset Street is already an ineptly managed business district. Somerset Street parking.

50. SCHOOL SYSTEM – School Board, with Mayor and Council support, fails to properly oversee Superintendent’s work and the Borough school budget. Low test scores; No Child Left Behind Act standards, accountability; unfunded mandates. Overcrowding (Plainfield students coming over into North Plainfield schools). Negotiated administrative contracts as compared to other districts of North Plainfield’s size and wealth. Permanent salary increases v. one-time bonuses for good performance.

51. VILLA MARIA – Unanswered questions. Drainage, recharge, soil maintenance, wetlands, floodplains, detention basins. Traffic impact. Condo demand from local seniors. Tree survey (established forest, backyard nature preserve). Asbestos studies, environmental studies, DEP demolition permits, relevance of DEP, especially for Somerset Bridge, structural capacity. Geotechnical reports, tunnel system, bedrock. Listing on property tax rolls. Hardship variances (converting ARC to general occupancy) or school tax exemption for adults-only occupants. Performance and maintenance bonds. Borough appeal of Campbell decision. Right of Borough Council to rezone property for open space. Real Estate Investment Trusts (hidden investors). Accurate assessment of development pros and cons, purchase for preservation pros and cons (i.e. bond for purchase by eminent domain, lease historic structure to institutional renters). Land trusts. Fair market value. EPA, ISRA, ECRA.

Agenda – Town Meeting 4

The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at the Vermeule Community Center.

1) INTRO – NPCCR background, updates, agenda review, add in items as needed; discussion is open mike-format, decision-making is by majority vote of people present. (5 min)

2) STRING EXERCISE – I learned this from a Pueblo man from New Mexico, who teaches teenagers about native agriculture and uses the exercise as a way for the students to get to know each other. Everyone stands in a circle, tossing a ball of yarn. Each person, in turn, catches the ball and says their name, how long they’ve lived in North Plainfield, one thing they love about NP and one thing that upsets them about NP. At the end, there’s a web of yarn connecting all these people who care about the community. In the (metaphorical) middle are the children and the elders of the community, who we are all supporting by our work together to take care of North Plainfield. [If we have a lot of people, we might split up into two or three circles to do this, because a circle with 60 or 70 people would be HUGE; we'd need really good yarn-throwing arms.] (15 to 20 min)

3) RECALL – Presentation of recall process for removal from office of mayor and/or Council members; open discussion of pros and cons for North Plainfield; vote about whether to kick off this campaign in Jan. 2008. (15 to 20 min)

4) CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION – Presentation of New Jersey’s rules for “Criminal Penalties for Public Corruption/Violations of State Ethics Laws,” summarized here; open discussion of possible applicability to NP Mayor and/or Council members.

At this point, we are not making specific accusations against specific individuals for specific criminal acts; we’re educating ourselves about what kinds of behavior are criminal when public officials engage in them, and whether there is anecdotal evidence to suggest to observant citizens that criminal activity may be going on among local officials, because, as citizens responsible for protecting the integrity and honesty of our local government, if there is anecdotal evidence, we have a duty to support criminal investigations to gather formal evidence, to remove from office any officials found to have undermined that integrity and honesty.

More detail here: “Bribery in official and political matters” (NJSA 2C:27-2); “Unlawful Business Transaction Where Interest is Involved” (NJSA 2C:27-9); “Acceptance or receipt of unlawful benefit by public servant for official behavior” (NJSA 2C:27-10); “Official misconduct occurs when a public servant, seeking to personally benefit or to harm another, either knowingly commits an unauthorized act while purporting it to be an official act, or refrains from performing inherent job functions.” (NJSA 2C:30-2)

5) PROPERTY MAINTENANCE CAMPAIGN – NPCCR plan for coordinated citizen filing of property maintenance complaints, starting January 2008. (5-10 min.)

6) FUNDRAISING, BANKING/NONPROFIT ESTABLISHMENT, DONATION BASKET. (5 min.)

7) TASKS & DEADLINES (Posted on flip chart paper for signups):

NEXT TOWN MEETING: TUESDAY, JANUARY 8 at 7 P.M. at Vermeule Community Center

9) SOCIALIZING