Photos
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Councilman Glover debating Mayor Nancy Malool. Credits: by Thomas Fortunato
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SPF Superintendent Dr. Margaret W. Hayes with Brunner elementary school principal Scott Bortnick. The two showed up to urge the council and police chief to consider re-doing the parking situation around Brunner. Credits: by Thomas Fortunato
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Frank Festa, member of the Scotch Plains Tea Party committee, asking the Mayor about why the Senior Housing earmark had been removed from the budget. Mr. Festa also distributed flyers advertising the February 21st township meeting about the Fair School Funding Act. Credits: by Thomas Fortunato
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Councilman Kevin Glover debating township manager Chris Marion and township attorney Jeffrey Lehrer. Credits: by Thomas Fortunato
Scotch Plains "Workshop" Meeting Stirs Leaf Debate
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 • 9:26pm
SCOTCH PLAINS—On Tuesday, the mayor and council met for a special “workshop meeting” to discuss nine problems brought to the attention of the council and township manager Chris Marion by Scotch Plains residents.
The participants at the meeting were the mayor and council, the township manager, township attorney Jeffrey Lehrer, public works director Kevin Ward,and police chief Brian Mahoney.
The most debated topics of the night were snow removal and leaf collection and the respective impact on public safety.
“People don’t know what those iron-clad rules [about leaf collection are],” Councilman Kevin Glover stated, “that you can’t put your leaves out until such-and-such date, and then [the leaves] sit there for three months. It doesn’t work very well.”
“I lost five trees this year,” explained Mr. Glover, “and I dragged them out [to the street] thinking that’s what I was supposed to do. There’s no rule!”
“Actually there is a rule,” explained Mayor Nancy Malool, “there’s rules for all of it… we actually used to have someone that would enforce it, but that was cut in the budget, just like DPW workers were cut in the budget, and they were laid off and not replaced.”
“We can do a million things, but how much money do we have to spend on it?” the Mayor added.
“I’m not talking about spending any money,” Mr. Glover interjected, “we have a police force that could go [and enforce the rules about leaf collection].”
The Mayor then pointed out that the police force had better things to do than give people tickets for incorrect leaf disposal.
“We put up information about our cleanups, [but] people don’t read,” Mayor Malool later elaborated, “they claim they didn’t know. You can only do so much; you can’t hold people’s hands. They have responsibility, and they have to follow rules. The rules are in place for a reason.”
At the workshop meeting, the council also discussed the possibility of designating certain parking spaces in its public lots 1 and 2 as “merchant parking” and extending the current 1-hour parking limit; designating the stretch of Grand Street in front of the YMCA as a drop-off zone; and changing the traffic pattern and parking ordinances on the streets around Brunner School.
