Grassroots Groundswell

These are some of the hundreds of local issues about which Mayor and Council are perpetually silent, providing neither evidence to refute the conclusions drawn, nor explanations as to why, if the conclusions are accurate, the problems continue unaddressed and unabated.

I will only be in North Plainfield for about one more month. Readers who want answers to these questions should jump in and start digging into alternative sources of information - OPRA requests, Somerset County agencies, state agencies, and private citizens who may have important information to share. Any thread you decide to tug on, for however long you pull, will help lead to the truth about these local issues.

The questions are presented in the form of refutable conclusions, pending evidence to contradict those conclusions.

MUNICIPAL FINANCE

• Under New Jersey tax law, Robert McNerney, new owner of the Villa Maria, owes the Borough about $300,000 per year, dating back at least to January 2005 (when the state revoked the nuns tax exempt status) and possibly to January 2003 (when the nuns’ local charitable activities stopped). The Borough has not yet obtained that money because the Allen Administration and Borough Attorney Eric Bernstein have taken no legal steps to collect, or have incompetently pursued collection.
• Borough Hall Construction is more than a year overdue and millions of dollars overbudget; the contractor may have gone bankrupt. The Borough has failed to collect $500 per day from the contractor for every day overdue (after April 6, 2007), as the contract requires, because the Allen Administration’s oversight of the construction and construction spending process was incompetent - no one from Dauti Construction ever signed the Performance Bond and Payment Bond. Fiscal supervision provided by the architectural/project supervisor firm (Cornerstone Architects) was also incompetent or corrupt, because the firm had incentives to stretch out construction to continue receiving project supervision fees.
• The Borough Municipal Court is owed more than $300,000 in fines, and the money could be collected if there were a credit card scanning machine in Borough Hall, but there is not a credit-card machine and there are no plans to install one.
• Since receiving Somerset County grant money last year, there has been no progress whatsoever on the Shared Services study intended to help North Plainfield and Green Brook pool resources to provide better public service bang for the taxpayer buck. Despite numerous claims by current Borough officials that shared services are saving the Borough money, no Borough official has provided the public with any evidence to support those assertions.
• The Borough does not use a fixed asset accounting system, despite repeated audit reports calling for same. [The Borough is working to implement this system by the end of 2008.]
• The Borough Administration conducts no performance reviews of Borough employee performance, has no way to identify wasteful practices, and has no plans to conduct a “time and motion” study, to identify and eliminate wasteful practices.
• The Mayor and Council can produce no justification for the 4% across the board raises given to Borough employees last year at a time of rising taxes and stagnant private sector wages, nor any justification for the pay raises listed in the 2008 Municipal Budget.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

• The Economic Development Committee has not achieved any measurable results for the benefit of the Borough’s residents in the last ten years, and has refused citizen requests for documents that would identify measurable results, or informed citizens requesting such materials that no such materials exist.
• The Planning Board has not achieved any measurable results for the benefit of the Borough’s residents in the last ten years, and has refused citizen requests for documents that would identify measurable results, or informed citizens requesting such materials that no such materials exist.
• Businesses are moving out of North Plainfield (Capitol Lighting to Green Brook, Staples to Watchung) because the taxes are too high (higher than neighboring communities with no additional services) and because the town’s policies are unfriendly to businesses. These are the same reasons why available commercial properties are not selling and/or appear to be abandoned, many for 10 or more years, and the Allen Administration can’t point to any comprehensive or coherent past, present or future plan to address these problems.
• Borough Planner Marta Lefsky has made no progress whatsoever in conducting a Smart Growth Study with the Economic Development Committee, although the study has been “in process” since at least July 2007.

PUBLIC SAFETY

• Mayor Janice Allen independently decided to deny permission to Police Chief William Parenti to purchase and install traffic safety signage at more than 100 local uncontrolled intersections, approved for signage by the Borough Council last year, OR the failure to gain state approval for the signage was due to the Allen Administration’s incompetent filing of paperwork with the NJ Department of Transportation.
• Speed limits are not properly enforced on Borough streets; especially Greenbrook Road, Somerset Street, and Watchung Avenue. Police statistical records show that officers witnessing traffic violations issue warnings, not citations, to more than half of all violators.

CODE ENFORCEMENT

• No Borough department keeps any record of which landlords have been cited for overcrowding, which landlords have been convicted of overcrowding violations in Municipal Court, and how much money in fines for overcrowding has been collected; OR, if such records exist, Borough officials refuse to provide those records to citizens who have requested them.
• During the revaluation, Appraisal Systems Inc. will identify how many bedrooms and apartments are inside each residential property, and will provide that information to the Borough. The Borough, under Janice Allen’s leadership, could use that information to issue violations in housing and health laws, including illegal multifamily residences, but has never demonstrated any competence at enforcing these housing and health laws in the past. Thus, the revaluation will, in all likelihood, not reduce overcrowded housing or illegal school attendance at all.
• Despite Borough Council members assertions that having James Rodino serve simultaneously as DPW Director and Zoning Officer saves the Borough money, Mr. Rodino’s employment actually costs the Borough additional funds, because he is incompetent and fails to carry out the duties of either position properly, especially by failing to enforce zoning ordinances and collect fines for violations.
• In the absence of alternative explanations by public officials for non-enforcement, the most plausible reason why Mr. Rodino drops charges against law-violating landlords is that a system of cash payments has been established, whereby landlords pay Mr. Rodino and/or other Borough officials cash to turn a blind eye to illegal zoning and property maintenance activities.

HISTORIC PRESERVATION

• Mayor and Council have taken no steps to add Villa Maria, Somerset Street, or St. Joseph’s School to the list of local historic districts or the National Register of Historic Places.

INFRASTRUCTURE

• The Board of Health (which is the Borough Council) has no evidence that inspections of mold conditions at the North Plainfield Memorial Library (documented as of February 2007) have led to proper remediation to protect staff and patron health.

ECOLOGY/GEOGRAPHY/TOPOGRAPHY

• The Environmental Commission has no reports or documents regarding any environmental resources, critical habitats, critical slopes, wetlands or endangered species within the Borough. [See Dr. Harry Allen, EC Chair, report posted here. Although Dr. Allen cites a number of studies, he has not yet provided any of them to the public via the blog.]
• The Borough Council is not preparing to place a municipal open space tax measure (minimum of one half of one cent per $100 of assessed value) on the November ballot for a binding voter referendum, and thus the Borough will remain ineligible for Green Acres conservation grants and low-interest loans.
• The Environmental Commission and/or Planning Board are not preparing an updated Recreation and Open Space Inventory (ROSI) for submission by the May deadline, and thus the Borough will remain ineligble for certain types of open space funding programs for another year.
• Mayor and Council oppose the Shade Tree Commission Ordinance on the grounds that the Commission, as proposed by the Shade Tree Advisory Board, would have the authority to deny permits to destroy healthy shade trees on public and private land throughout the Borough.

RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT

• The Borough has not conducted a single cost-benefit analysis to establish the facts about the relative taxpayer costs that will be accrued by preserving Villa Maria as open space or developing it into residential housing.
• Attorneys for real estate developers drafted the 2005 Age-Restricted Condominium ordinance with Borough officials, behind closed doors without proper citizen oversight or input, to pave the way for Villa Maria development. Since October 2007, Borough officials have been fighting to keep documents and records surrounding the drafting of the ARC ordinance away from members of the public seeking to review those materials.
• The Mayor and Council have no numerical data to support their arguments that adding residential properties will lower or stabilize property taxes; no numerical data on projected local demand for senior housing, by type and quantity and no numerical data on projected demand for affordable housing, by type and quantity. A 2003 COAH lawsuit was settled, a written settlement document exists, the settlement imposed no requirements for affordable housing creation within the Borough, and the latest round of COAH rules projects a net decrease in housing in the currently overpopulated Borough over the next 10 to 20 years, and requires only rehabilitation of existing affordable housing.
• The official Borough position (Environmental Commission, Planning Board, etc.) on 9 single family homes to be built on the Dell’Olio property at 110-112 Rockview Avenue is that such construction will have no appreciable effect on flood hazards, environmental conditions, population density (already highest in Somerset County) and school overcrowding in the Borough, and/or that the Borough has no need or authority to intervene with the NJ Department of Environmental Protection (currently conducting stream encroachment studies) to halt planned construction.

LOCAL POLITICS

• During Janice Allen’s tenure as Mayor, candidates for Borough jobs and committee appointments have been overlooked or denied positions based on non-job-related considerations such as political affiliations, in violation of equal opportunity/anti-discrimination laws. The Borough can present no evidence to support the opposite conclusion (i.e., that all jobs and volunteer positions have been filled through open and fair announcement, review and selection procedures).
• The NP Democratic Committee, chaired by Tom Fagan (other members unknown) violated the provisions of the local party by-laws during the candidate selection process that led to the Giordano-Stabile-Hitchcock-Righetti ticket, by choosing the candidates during secret, unpublicized, unrecorded meetings without oversight from rank and file local Democrats. Mr. Fagan has refused to provide a copy of the by-laws for citizens to conduct oversight.