Dispatches from M. Emory Layne – Illegal Housing

By M. Emory Layne

In taking these trips into the past, one finds oneself constantly asking three questions, over and over.

• Why are some issues never satisfactorily addressed?
• Why do local politicians seem more knowledgeable about loopholes than public sentiment?
• And why do the same flipping names keep coming back, like heartburn?

There’s an article in the Green Brook – North Plainfield Journal dated September 30, 1992, headlined “Schools Target Illegal Students.”

Yes, that’s right: 1992.

The district is cracking down on students illegally attending borough schools and will have conducted more than 100 checks this year to ensure pupils are legal residents of North Plainfield.

The school district’s residency checks sometimes disclose students are living in illegal multi-family dwellings. Of 55 checks made to date this school year, the district has found two cases of zoning code violations of multi-family residences.

“We can’t do anything about the zoning violations,” said Schools Superintendent Dwight Pfennig. “But it is up to us to report it (to the borough).”

During the 1991-1992 school year, the district conducted 96 checks and “removed 13 students from the rolls,” the superintendent said. The district will conduct an additional 50 checks this year, he added.

At a joint meeting of the Board of Education, the Planning Board, the Board of Adjustment and the Borough Council Thursday, Sept. 24, Mr. Pfennig said the district has been “more pro-active in residency checks than ever before. The problems we are seeing go beyond students simply not living in town,” he said. “We have people in town in violation of the zoning codes.”

(Hooray for you, Mr. Pfennig, for showing a commitment to BOTH the educational system AND the taxpayer!)

[Democrat] Mayor Francis J. McArdle was informed of the two violations, said Councilwoman Mabel “Skip” Hansen, who is also the Democratic nominee for mayor in November.

(…that’s getting to be a pretty popular nickname among politicians in this town.)

Hansen said the mayor’s office has taken action on the violations, but she did not say what specific action was taken.

(She also did not explain why the mayor of such a small town needed a spokesperson instead of simply addressing the issue personally.

Mr. Pfennig asked whether the district’s inspections were sufficient for the borough to take action. The joint group agreed to write a letter to Mayor McArdle expressing concern about the violations and asking for clarification about reporting procedures.

Write a letter? Was this borough so HUGE that it had to resort to such bureaucratic silliness? Hey, here’s an idea – how about the mayor meets with them and answers the questions?

Acting Public Works Director Gordon Baillie is the officer who handles violations, but those violations usually have been channeled through the mayor’s office, according to Ms. Hansen.

Councilman Michael Haggerty, the Republican candidate for mayor, said he was dissatisfied with the borough’s handling of what he said were hundreds of illegal units, mostly concentrated in the downtown area.

“These codes should be enforced and they are not being enforced.” Mr. Haggerty added he will change the procedure for handling violations if he becomes mayor, and will give borough officials greater authority to deal with problems on their own.

He said Mayor McArdle does have the authority to channel complaints through his office, but that this procedure weakens enforcement efforts.

Stephen Schmidt, Planning Board chairman, called the illegal units a “pervasive problem” in the borough.

“This is a question of accountability,” he said. “What is Gordon (Baillie) doing?”

Mr. Baillie’s status as acting public works director will not change before the end of the year, Mayor McArdle said at Monday’s Borough Council meeting. The mayor is under pressure from the council to appoint a new permanent director, but the mayor told council “not to usurp his authority.”

Council President Theresa Frosoni said the mayor was circumventing the law by appointing Mr. Baillie to a series of 120-day terms as acting director, the maximum allowable by ordinance. When the term is up, Mr. Baillie resigns for a day and then the mayor reappoints him. The mayor said it is his “prerogative” to reappoint Mr. Baillie.

Please reread that last paragraph to yourself a few times, and then try to put a positive spin on what used to go on, and apparently, still goes on, in North Plainfield’s zoning and public works departments in relation to illegal housing in the borough.

Almost 20 years ago, borough officials were playing games. Back then, we had an “acting” director of public works, who would ‘resign’ and then conveniently be reappointed to an ‘acting’ status for the maximum term allowed by law. And after four months, the whole process would be repeated.

Today, we have an director of public works who, in common with his ancestor, seems to have more excuses to not find illegal housing than to find it and prosecute it.

Then and now, the issue is illegal multi-family housing.

Back in 1992, the mayor, a Democrat, had little demonstrated interest in enforcing the ordinances related to this issue. Despite there being strong interest in addressing it, from the School Board, the Planning Board and the Borough Council, the mayor seemed to feel that it was more important that no one, in his own words, “usurp his authority.”

He clearly believed it was his “prerogative” to engage in those something’s-rotten-in-Denmark appointment games.

And he had the vocal support of then-councilperson Mabel Hansen, who is just as vocal in her support of the current mayor, Janice Allen, who sat on the council at the same time as Hansen, and who has consistently shown similar disinterest in prosecuting illegal housing since she was elected mayor herself in 1996.

Obvious conclusion: allowing the same people to play the same games for so long is hardly a way to address issues and solve problems.