Spring Break Edition: Budgets Still Need Attention

Holidays when kids are off and parents are on are the worst, so I hope you have time off this week or no children at home.

Apr 03, 2023

Hi! I’m your neighbor, Mariana Horta. I watch our local government because their decisions can make our lives slightly better or substantially worse. Yet, only 32% of voters participated in the last municipal elections. We, the People, are too busy to pay attention! So I started this substack to bring you a digest of local issues in five minutes--what happened last week and what needs attention this week—more details on my “about” page.

Hello from my aunt’s backyard. Montclair is on my mind, but I brought my daughter to visit our Brazilian family for spring break.

Whether you celebrate Passover, Easter, or neither, I wish you a great week with time to enjoy some beautiful spring days. It’s autumn where I am, but it always feels like summer here. I’m writing from my aunt’s old farmhouse outside Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Last Week in Montclair

It’s our kids’ lives vs. the NRA. So why does the NRA keep winning? Last Friday, several Essex County schools were on lockdown, including ours. We would love to know why, but our police department has not been forthcoming with information (as usual). Still, we can be grateful that nothing happened this time while also demanding information about last Friday’s threat to our kids’ safety.

Speaking of gun violence, nearly four and a half years since a domestic violence victim was killed by her partner in Montclair, his trial has begun. Meanwhile, we have no idea how many other domestic violence incidents or how many gun crimes have occurred in Montclair since this homicide because our police department does not report its crime data. Why?

Hillary Clinton came to Montclair. As Talia Adderley reported: “The overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court is not the only sign that women are seeing efforts to reduce their rights, said Clinton, a former first lady, a former U.S. senator and the first woman to run for president as a major party’s nominee.”

What happened at the March 27th council meeting? Read the MontClairVoyant first. At least you may chuckle at our collective misfortune.

Montclair’s council introduced its bonkers 100-million-dollar budget. As Craig Wolff reported for the Montclair Local: “Item 25-265 was one highlight, showing a precise $864,510.33 increase in appropriations for the Fire Department in salaries and other expenses, to more than $11.2 million from about $10.4 million. That's a roughly 8.3% rise from this fiscal year and includes the hiring of three additional firefighters. A modernized communications system and other adjustments would raise the department's expenditures overall by about $2.2 million.” And “In contrast, with advocates for older Montclair residents long insisting that more money should be dedicated to their needs, including a senior center, the budget contains a nearly 20% decrease for the Department of Senior Services, to about $293,000 from nearly $352,000. This comes even with the township recently posting a job for a new senior services director and creating a position for a full-time social worker.”

Stafford requested a hearing, but the council hasn’t scheduled it. As Liz George reported: “There has been no information regarding the status of Montclair’s town manager, but Councilor Bob Russo made some revealing statements Monday night at the end of a long public comment session where frustrated residents called for transparency.”

Decamping with substitutes. Both NJ Transit and Boxcar came to the rescue of Montclair’s and neighboring towns’ commuters.

New Jersey’s legislature is most definitely broken. Remember how every candidate in mayor Spiller’s late received $8200 from the NJEA PAC? If he decides to run next year, you can count on the same PAC giving twice as much because the bill full of bad government ideas has passed the assembly. Now the “kill the ELEC bill” is headed for Murphy’s desk, where he will be doing a happy dance as he welcomes even more corruption into New Jersey.

What needs your attention this week?

(I included the email addresses of our councilors and BOE members and our state legislators’ contact forms and phone numbers at the bottom of this newsletter.)

The Municipal Budget. You can read the bonkers version our council introduced last week here. If you don’t love it, please write to your ward councilor and two at-large councilors. I don’t like to see Montclair growing its fire department while severely cutting our senior services’ budget because there is no evidence that we need more firefighters. On the contrary, our fire department is exceedingly large for a town of our size, and our fire department provides no data. They don’t publish call data or information on the number of fires they responded to each month, whether in Montclair or neighboring towns or which fire departments helped with fires in Montclair. Fire services mutual aid should have reduced our staffing needs, so what evidence supports hiring three additional firefighters and budgeting an obscene amount of overtime? Please join me in asking the council to require that our fire and police departments publish weekly call data and additional monthly data--for example, mutual aid data for the fire department and crime, traffic stops, and arrest data for the police department. Montclair taxpayers spend a lot of money on these departments, so they deserve to know how they are utilized.

Zero Vision Task Force. I learned the township would create this initiative to improve pedestrian safety a few weeks ago. However, I am still waiting for a resolution, and no specific line item in the introduced budget is dedicated to it. Please contact your ward councilor and two at-large councilors and let them know you would like them to prioritize pedestrian safety by expediting the implementation of Vision Zero in Montclair. You can learn more about Vision Zero here (big thanks to Bike Walk Montclair for sharing this link and the Street Project documentary). You may also volunteer to join the Task Force.

Stand With Montclair Seniors. I have observed seniors advocate for budget equity at several Montclair council meetings. And it looked like they were making progress as the manager finally started searching for a new director of senior services. And the council approved hiring a social worker to support senior residents (thank you, Bob Russo). However, the introduced budget represents a significant step backward for our senior neighbors as the senior services’ budget decreased substantially. I am not positive, but I suspect this reduction reflects the end of a grant that supported seniors' transportation services. However, seniors’ needs for local transportation have not disappeared. If our council wasn’t so set on hiring more firefighters, they might find the resources to support local transportation options.

The BOE April 10 meeting agenda will be posted here by Friday. Download and read it to decide whether to comment at the BOE meeting. You may also review the BOE committee reports here.

Montclair Public Schools Budget. The MPS proposed 2023-2024 school year budget has a 7.5 million-dollar deficit. Please comment on priorities and potential cuts if you have opinions.

The Montclair Township Council meeting agenda will be posted here on Friday under “upcoming events.” Please download and read it to help you decide whether to attend and comment at the upcoming council meeting (April 12). Unfortunately, you still must attend in person to comment. However, you can watch it online via Montclair YouTube.

Coming up next week:

Montclair Board of Education Meeting--April 10, 6:30 pm in the George Inness Annex. The public portion of the meeting starts at around 7:30 pm.

Montclair PTA Council Meeting--April 11, 7 pm, on Zoom.

Montclair Township Council Meeting--April 12 (Wednesday), 7 pm, at 205 Claremont Ave.

Did I miss something? Please email me at montclairweekly@gmail.com.

Do you have friends and neighbors who are too busy to pay attention?

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