Grassroots Groundswell

Big thank you to Councilman/Friends of Vermeule President Bob Hitchcock for forwarding this report for easy public access to the information.

Friends of Vermeule Report - 2007

Spurred by the proposed rental of the upper floor of Vermeule Community Center, Green Acres representatives reportedly spent four hours yesterday afternoon conducting an audit of all Green Acres land within the Borough, including Vermeule, and how it’s being used.

1. Balas Florist has been using Green Acres property for several years to grow flowers and plants. Unknown: whether they compensated the Borough and/or Green Acres program for use of the land, and if so, where the money went.

2. Sundance School has been using Green Acres property as parking and playground space. Unknown: whether they compensated the Borough and/or Green Acres program for use of the land, and if so, where the money went.

3. The Vermeule Mansion contains two business offices being rented improperly without Green Acres authorization. I think these two businesses are paying rent and the rent is going into the maintenance and repair fund for the historic building, because Friends of Vermeule President (and Councilman) Robert Hitchcock presented a detailed report on the status of the mansion at a recent Council meeting, including a financial summary that mentioned the rental income. 

If any readers have a copy of that report, please send it in and I’ll post it here.

4. The new Vermeule Community Center building (at issue in the Red Cross rental proposal) is not intended to be utilized as office space.

Proposed Borough rental of Vermeule Community Center’s upper floor to the Tri-County Red Cross came up for discussion at the Town Meeting last night. [No word yet on whether the private meeting has yet occurred, or, if it did, what took place.]

Councilwoman Mary Forbes was at the Town Meeting for awhile, and then left.

Councilman Robert Hitchcock came later in the meeting, and participated in an informal question and answer session with the group. His respectful participation and forthright answers were GREATLY appreciated by the group, and many people thanked him for taking the time to discuss the matter publicly.

Mr. Hitchcock, who is also the President of the Friends of Vermeule historic preservation nonprofit organization, said his understanding of the situation was that Mayor Allen and Red Cross Executive Director (and former Borough Council President) Nathan Rudy had prepared a draft contract calling for a three-year rental at about $28,000 per year, with options for two consecutive one-year extensions. 

The rental would give two of the upstairs rooms to the Red Cross’s six staff members to use, and the two other upstairs meeting rooms would be available for community use when the Red Cross offices were closed. 

Mr. Hitchcock said that Mayor Allen told the Council she had contacted Girl Scout and Boy Scout leaders to find out if it would be burdensome for them to find alternative meeting space, and that the Scout leaders told her it would be fine.  

Mr. Hitchcock said Mayor Allen told him she then sent a letter to the Green Acres officials requesting permission for the rental, and his current understanding is that Green Acres people must now decide whether the rental plan meets their guidelines for use of Green Acres facilities.

He also said that, if the Green Acres people give the go-ahead, the Borough Council will have an opportunity to weigh in on the proposal by voting to authorize or reject the rental plan, and that it is within their power, as Borough Council, to vote to reject the plan.

He didn’t know whether the Council would have to rezone the area for commercial use to permit the rental, or whether a Green Acres okay would be sufficient. He said his understanding was that the rental would be a good way to raise money to pay for needed maintenance and repairs on the community center building and grounds.

NPCCR members raised several points.

To me, the most interesting was the fact that, since NPCCR members have their own community contacts within the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, they got a very different version of events surrounding the calls from Mayor Allen. The story they’ve heard is that Mayor Allen called the Scout leaders and informed them that a rental was coming and they had better find alternate space. The Scout leaders then called Vermeule Community Center Coordinator Joan Long to ask why the Mayor was kicking them out of their meeting space.

There are multiple levels of scout leaders, so it’s possible that Mayor Allen spoke to one set and residents at the meeting last night spoke to others, and it’s a question of poor communication, which is an ongoing problem anyway.

But another interpretation, and one that’s more plausible to me given her track record, is that Mayor Allen deliberately misrepresented the nature of her conversations with Scout leaders when she conveyed the information to Borough Council members, including Mr. Hitchcock, because she felt relatively confident that no one on the Council would try to independently contact either the Scout leaders or Joan Long for their version of events.

And one reason the Council would hesitate to do that is because, under the current Strong Mayor charter, without a formal Council majority (4-3 or better) vote to require Borough employees to appear before the Council, produce documents and testify about their actions as public employees, Council members are not permitted to speak to Borough employees (such as Joan Long) independently without the Mayor’s express permission.

Scout leaders, however, are not Borough employees, and don’t have to abide by the same de facto gag order. So Council members could independently seek their views on the issue.

Other issues raised by the public in the conversation with Mr. Hitchcock.

1. The Green Acres regulations permit temporary use of public facilities for up to two years. Although the Red Cross rental is being described as “temporary,” while the Red Cross raises money to rent or buy space elsewhere, the contract would essentially permit the rental for up to five years, not just a few months of “temporary” rental.

2. Prior use of the space as kindergarten classroom space to conduct public education of Borough children is not the same as the proposed rental to a nonprofit organization providing emergency services that are not at all part of the Borough’s governmental obligations.

3. If the purpose is to raise revenue to conduct needed maintenance and repairs, and commercial rental is legally permitted by Green Acres, then the space should be advertised as available so as to attract multiple offers and establish a market rate.

4. If the area does need to be rezoned for commercial, then the whole neighborhood will have to be zoned commercial, or leave the Borough open to “spot zoning” charges.

5. Increased commercial traffic would impact the safety of children, parents and staff at the nearby Vermeule playground and the nearby day school, the Giving Nest, located across Clinton Avenue at St. Luke’s Catholic Church.

6. Many appropriate commerical spaces, with ample parking, are currently available along Route 22.

7. Whether the proposed rental is an improper “sweetheart” financial deal being conducted between the current Mayor and the former Borough Council President, with or without collaboration from the recently ousted Council member Santiago Soto, who has been hired by the Red Cross since his failed re-election bid, and with or without collaboration from the current Council members (Stabile and Singleterry) who currently serve on Red Cross volunteer committees, as one audience member put it: “that’s exactly the appearance, whether it’s well-intentioned or not.”

8. If the matter does come before the Council for an authorization vote, Council President Stabile and Councilman Singleterry should recuse themselves from the vote due to conflict of interest.

It wasn’t raised last night, but Mr. Hitchcock’s position as Friends of Vermeule President, and Councilwoman Mary Forbes’ position as Friends of Vermeule Vice-President, probably mean they should recuse themselves also.

So the decision would be left up to Councilman Righetti, Councilman Giordano and Councilwoman Jenny Flynn, although three out of seven seems like not a quorum. 

Grapevine tells us that a closed-door meeting has been scheduled for tomorrow, so that Mayor Allen, Borough Administrator Hollod and Borough Attorney Bernstein can discuss their application to Green Acres - for permission to rent out the upper floor of Vermeule Community Center to the Red Cross - with a Green Acres representative.

For a change, it appears that we know about the closed-door meeting before it happens, rather than after the meeting is over and all the anti-resident decisions have been made.

The Green Acres rep is sending signals suggesting he will ask good investigatory questions, but downplaying his authority to stop the proposed rental, and he’s declined to put his intentions and authority in writing.

Joan Long, the community center coordinator, and the person in the best position to address questions about the rental’s potential impact on local civic organizations, is apparently not one of those scheduled to be in the room when the private discussion takes place. 

What should we do with this information?

Barbara Habeeb recently spoke with Green Acres reps again, and learned that two Green Acres reps will be investigating the Vermeule rental situation.

Green Acres could grant North Plainfield the use of the building for two years if no one was being “displaced” as a result. Joan Long, Community Center Coordinator, has been advised of this fact, and will reach out to the Green Acres reps to discuss who uses the top floor and how everyone who uses it will not only be displaced, but that many people are firmly against the Red Cross using it.

Barb learned that someone from North Plainfield government did write for permission from Green Acres, although it’s not clear if the request was submitted before or after news of the proposed rental hit the Borough grapevine. 

Green Acres reps are also going to investigate how the building and house are being used currently; the museum is legal, but the studios may not be.

In any case, any rental money the town would collect could only go to Green Acres use, ie: upkeep of the building, surrounding grounds, etc. but not for anything else in the town. If they used it for other things it would be a misappropriation of funds.

News from some readers who have been investigating the proposed rental of the Vermeule Community Center to the Tri-County Red Cross, unconfirmed, as yet, but plausible:

1) The Red Cross, while a wonderful organization, is not eligible for renting Green Acres space, because the only permitted uses are by recreational and conservational organizations, or for fully public use such as classroom space for schoolchildren, not office/commercial use by private charitable organizations.

2) For a waiver of those rules, the Borough would have to file an application to the Green Acres Commission of the Department of Environmental Protection, and the person in charge of such applications (at NJDEP Green Acres Bureau of Compliance and Stewardship) told an NPCCR member that he hasn’t yet seen any such application filing from North Plainfield, despite Mr. Rudy’s claim that the subject was already under Green Acres review. The DEP guy is  currently investigating further. And, part of a successful application would require that the Borough reimburse the state Green Acres program for state money invested in the local Green Acres parcel.

Again, all of this is pending confirmation next week, but it’s interesting food for thought in the meantime.

There’s a vigorous exchange about this subject going on at the nj.com North Plainfield forum. Link here.

Here’s the most substantive bit of what Nathan Rudy wrote at nj.com: 

4) The Tri-County Red Cross is interested in leasing the second floor of the Vermuele Community Center for about $30K a year. The school board used it for four or five years (I forget) at no cost to them, which is what brought this option to mind when we were looking to move out of our current unsuitable quarters.

My staff met with the Community Center Usage Committee in a public meeting. I have asked the Mayor and Council to discuss this with me there at a Council meeting, but not to vote on it at that meeting until folks had a chance to weigh in. It was not on Monday’s Council agenda because the Green Acres commission is still considering the issue. Until they determine whether it is allowable there’s no point in asking the Council to ratify it.

Earlier this week I offered to Joan Long to meet with her whole group or just a representative sample if she wanted. I’ve talked to a lot of folks, including Frank D’Amore and other active folks in town, regarding the potential lease and so it’s not an effort to sneak it through.

Look, anyone who has questions about this is more than welcome to call my office and talk to me, or set up an appointment with me. I’m happy to discuss this or any other subject related to the Tri-County Red Cross with any interested party. It’s my job, and I take it very seriously.  My office number is 908-756-6414 x 17.

I’ve been analyzing that and the other comments posted there. Here are my thoughts.

For starters, I don’t doubt for a second that renting the space at below-market rates would be in the best financial interests of the Tri-County Red Cross, and that Nathan Rudy, as Executive Director of that vital and effective organization, is doing his best to find the best possible deal for appropriate space.

However, in this case, as with Villa Maria, St. Joseph’s and other area sites, it’s not Mr. Rudy’s actions, public statements or explanations that matter.

What matters are the actions, public statements, explanations (or, more accurately, lack thereof) of the Mayor and Council.

In this case, as in others, they have made and continue to make decisions - even if they’re tentative ones - behind closed doors and as though their primary duty is to meet the needs of the non-Borough entities in negotiations (land developers, non-profit organizations, etc.)

The actual obligation of the Mayor and Council is to all the people of the Borough, and Nathan Rudy, private citizen, is just one of those 21,000-plus people.

He’s a former Council President, with a record that readers may or may not like, but he is NOT a person who should be regarded as the Borough spokesperson on the potential rental deal.

Questions asked by citizens should be answered by current Borough officials, and, to the extent that this subject has not been comprehensively addressed in public statements by Borough officials, it’s been done in a sneaky way, Mr. Rudy’s offers of discussion notwithstanding. 

There are a lot of relevant questions:

Is it legal for the Borough to rent out a Green Acres site?

I glean from Mr. Rudy’s comments that it could be legal, and that the application for Green Acres permission is in the works.

That’s a preliminary answer, but not a final answer. The rumor is that there’s a draft contract already written, which naturally raises suspicious hackles among a citizenry that has seen the Mayor illegally “sign” an improper ordinance into law and seen the Borough Clerk illegally reject a citizens’ initiative petition without seeking judicial review, to name just two of many surreptitious and improper, if not outright illegal, acts committed in very recent memory.

In fact, one common strategy of the Allen Administration, throughout the dozen years Janice Allen’s been Mayor, appears to have been portraying decisions as “temporary,” “potential” or “minor,” while sneaking around making things far more official out of public view. 

Another example is the adoption of the 2002 Master Plan, which, according to then-newly elected Councilwoman Margaret Mary Jones, was presented to the Council as a minor tweaking of the old master plan, when in fact it established a key piece of the preliminary legal authority that paved the way for rezoning Villa Maria for condo development.

Assuming, for the time being, that the Green Acres people ultimately decide renting Vermeule is legal, is renting the space at $27,000 to $30,000 per year a financially good idea for the Borough?

What are the costs (utilities, maintenance, traffic, parking etc.) and what are the benefits?

We’ve had no answers to these questions from Mayor or Council, and, until reading it in Mr. Rudy’s post at nj.com, I had no idea there was a Community Center Usage Committee, nor that they’d held a public hearing on the subject. It’s still not clear if any effort was made to advertise that meeting, not only through the required newspaper channels, but to reach people most likely to be concerned.

Maybe, maybe not.

Third, will a potential rental adversely affect existing community group usage of the space? Which groups currently use the space? How often? What other options for meeting space to those groups have? Are those other spaces equal in quality to the Vermeule space, and available at no cost, as Vermeule is?

What about zoning? What about the vacant commercial buildings on Route 22? What about the conflicts of interest, when sitting members of the Council also serve, even if unpaid, on Tri-County Red Cross committees? Their volunteer service is admirable; the potential or appearance of an abuse of influence, even if none actually occurs, is not admirable.

Again, perhaps those questions were asked and answered at the public meeting. Perhaps not.

It’s just another strange scenario, reading all the Nathan Rudy comments while the Mayor and Council lurk silently behind him, or not, but no one can tell because they don’t speak up publicly,  on the record, at Council meetings, at the Borough website, at nj.com, or at this blog.

I fully believe Mr. Rudy’s assertions that he got out of elected office because it was frustrating and irritating.

As Council President in a Strong Mayor-Weak Council municipality, there probably wasn’t a whole hell of a lot he could do to advance his own agendas.

I did know he announced the Age Restricted Condo ordinance had failed in Oct. 2005 after the 4-2 vote, but I don’t recall ever seeing evidence that he made his objections to the Mayor’s subsequent signing of that illegal ordinance publicly known.

That said, I’ve also never heard he took steps to lead the Council toward a charter change, which was certainly within his power then and remains within the power of the current Council.

From the little birdies who provide feedback to me on the mood of the residents, there’s fairly widespread bipartisan support for a local look at charter change to weaken the Mayoral grip on power and spread it back out among the Council members, even among people who think that I’m the crazy, radical woman advocating (HORRORS!) direct democracy. Very cool.

Mostly, what’s frustrating about Nathan Rudy’s role as (un)official government spokesperson in this current Vermeule situation is that he was either instrumental in establishing the precedent of Council silence at public meetings, or instrumental in sustaining and strengthening that precedent set before his tenure.

Even though he’s no longer on the Council, they still sit up there, week after week, terrified to open up their mouths and say anything factual, verifiable, measurable, thoughtful, logical - or openly admit that they have no factual, verifiable, measurable, thoughtful, or logical things to say - in response to residents’ questions, concerns and ideas.

It’s a precedent the current Council could reverse, if it chose to.

Skip Stabile could announce at the next meeting that the new policy is to answer questions as fully as possible right when those questions are posed, and to note all questions when asked, research the answers, and respond briefly but fully with the answers at the next meeting, if immediate answers aren’t known by the Council members.

But, thanks to Nathan Rudy and however many prior Council Presidents clung to the “public comments, not Q&A” dogma before him, it’s far easier for Mr. Stabile to hide behind the long-standing precedent and avoid responsibility for his own role in maintaining and expanding the huge gulf between voters and representatives. 

It finally hit me with blinding clarity this weekend: the Mayor, Council and Hollod are terrified of the residents they were elected (or appointed) to serve.

That’s why they won’t answer questions.

That’s why they won’t engage in public discussion of public issues, either at Council meetings or by scheduling and participating in a joint Town Meeting, or by posting their ideas, their respective visions, their concerns and priorities, under their own names, here or at nj.com or on the Borough website (which would then be linkable from here and nj.com, to better spread the word.)

I used to think mostly about why regular residents were so afraid of speaking up, and spent a lot of energy trying to build safe public spaces for those voices to be raised and heard by other interested, supportive residents.

Now, so many people are raising their voices, sharing information, pitching ideas and demanding responses, the former hunters (retaliatory, gossip-mongering, cliquish local pols) have become somewhat hunted by the sheer openness, gossip-debunking and clique-splitting capacities of the public spaces NPCCR has built.

NOTE TO MAYOR AND COUNCIL:

We don’t want you to beat us.  We want you to join us.

We want to back you so far into your silent corner that you suddenly surprise yourselves by realizing you’re standing in your own hometown, with your own friends and neighbors, and that, like us, you have a voice you can bring into the discussions to tackle the community’s problems and seize the community’s opportunities.

Until you put your own voices into the public discussion - good ideas, bad ideas, smart answers, dumb answers, whatever you’ve got to let all hang out -  it seems extremely plausible that you, like Mr. Rudy perhaps was while in office, may be mildly disgusted by your own cowardice and impotence, and prefer to deny it while in office, and leave office when you can no longer tolerate such an intolerably humiliating situation.

It’s very hard to respect yourself when you don’t treat others with respect. Likewise, it’s hard to respect others when you don’t respect yourself.

So consider a third option: come clean, open up, build a bridge to your constituency, and get on with your public service with a little confidence and a little self-respect. It might be a little rough and messy at the start, but it gets easier with practice. Give it a try.

Update:

Readers passed along info that:

“(d) A local government unit that receives Green Acres Funding shall not convey, dispose of, or divert to a use for other than recreation and conservation purposes any lands held by the local government unit for those purposes at the time of receipt of Green Acres funding. The local government unit shall list such lands on the Recreation and Open Space Inventory (ROSI) described at N.J.A.C. 7:366.5. The ROSI is required as part of the application for Green Acres funding and, if such application is approved, shall become part of the project agreement described at N.J.A.C. 7:369.1. The local Government unit shall execute a declaration, described at Proposed N.J.A.C. 7:369.1(A), which it shall record with the county clerk after it receives a disbursement of Green Acres funding pursuant to N.J.A.C. 7:369.4(F).”

Vemeule is a Green Acres site. More detail here. That’s apparently the main reason Joan Long objects to the Mayor’s plan to rent the top floor of the Vermeule Community Center to the Red Cross, as posted here.

This subject was not discussed at Monday’s Council meeting.

Rumor has it Mayor Janice Allen plans to rent the top floor of Vermeule Community Center to the Tri-County Red Cross (former Council President Nathan Rudy is the Executive Director and Councilmen Skip Stabile and Douglas Singleterry serve on Red Cross board committees) for $27,000 per year with no increases in rent allowed, subject to Borough Council approval of the rental contract.

This maneuver will impact other community groups that use the building, such as the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts and NPCCR. Apparently, Senior Center Coordinator Joan Long (who has been consistently helpful and professional in assisting NPCCR with scheduling Town Meetings) objects to the planned rental, because it will displace community groups.

Combine that with the Council’s efforts to reduce public comment portions of public meetings, and the peculiar news that Mayor Janice Allen was quoted in the Courier-News within the last week saying that she wants to reach out to her constituents for more communication, plus the lack of movement on scheduling a Joint Town Meeting, and draw your own conclusions.

Also heard that defeated Councilman Santiago Soto either has been or will soon be appointed to a paid position in Borough government with Tri-County Red Cross. Mr. Soto lost the seat he briefly filled for his son (after his son moved out of town a few months after being elected Nov. 2006, without bothering to resign from the Council until July 2007) to challenger Jenny Uptegrove in November 2007.

Keep your ears and eyes open and pass along additional info on these and other Borough issues.