Fred Jones on “The Art of Politics”

By Fred Jones, responding to the “Baffled to Fight Better” post:

The art of politics is the art of making friends. Airing dirty laundry seldom makes friends.

The NPCCR leadership posted a review of the Shade Tree Ordinance Initiative and assigned responsibility for its withdrawal. Not surprisingly given the NPCCR agenda, they missed a key concern – the proposed Shade Tree Ordinance was poorly crafted and needed a rewrite. The NPCCR seemed more interested in achieving a success and in teaching the Mayor and Council a lesson. The NPCCR leadership skipped right over the need for improving the town by passing a good Shade Tree Ordinance.

When we reluctantly signed onto the Committee of Petitioners for the Shade Tree Ordinance, we were assured that the proposed ordinance had been well written and reviewed. Katherine said that it was straightforward, based on widely used ordinances, “with no chance of being kicked out by the lawyers like last time”. She also said it was well-vetted by Borough Attorney Eric Bernstein. We were told the Council had no problems with the way the ordinance was written – their concerns were the loss of control and the regulation of private trees. Our mistake was in trusting the NPCCR.

When we read the ordinance line by line, it became clear that the proposed ordinance was a cut-and-paste job of other town’s ordinances which at times were inconsistent. It needed editing in many places. Simple example: Section 2.28.5 defines the Shade Tree Appeals Panel and Section 2-28.16c. refers to a Tree Preservation Appeals Panel. A well edited ordinance would not have two names for the same appeals panel and two ways to indicate the ordinance sections numbers. Another simple example is that “charged” is written as “charted” in Section 2-28.14. The ordinance needed a careful editing.

When the Municipal Attorney reviewed the ordinance, he objected to the requirement that the Mayor must name current committee members as the initial Commissioners because this was inconsistent with the state statutes. The proposed ordinance’s section 2-28.2 says:

“The first commissioners shall be those five (5) individuals currently serving.”

There are two problems with this:

1) There is no Commission and therefore no “commissioners currently serving.” (Presumably they wanted to say Shade Tree Advisory Board members currently serving).

2) The fact that the initial appointments were restricted shows that the ordinance had not been revised to take into account the Municipal Attorney’s recommendations.

There is real doubt whether the Attorney would have approved the proposed Shade Tree Ordinance for the fall election. He rejected an ordinance last year and would do it again.

We also realized that the ordinance was written with an appeals panel that would be dominated by the Mayor’s appointees and so would offer little protection to the town’s tree canopy, including the Villa Maria forest.

We brought these concerns up at the meeting last Thursday but the NPCCR leaders seemed more interested in their control and achieving a success than in creating a good Shade Tree Ordinance. In fact we were the only ones at the meeting with copies of the Ordinance.

I wish the Shade Tree Petition Committee well but will not be involved with it again. Being accused “deliberate sabotage” once is enough. And I hope the NPCCR has furthered its agenda by posting their comment. I will not be reading this blog or reading the NPCCR emails in the future. I have seen enough of their dirty laundry.