CSC Study Winding Down

CSC met on 7-18-13 in the City Hall Planning Conference Room, to continue deliberating over proposed changes to the charter. The Final Report is in the drafting process, and will be finally reviewed and edited by the Commissioners at the 8-1-13 meeting at 7:30 p.m. in the Planning Conference Room. Any last minute deliberations will also be conducted at that meeting.

Time has flown, and the 8-1-13 meeting is our final scheduled meeting. Our Final Report is due on 8-6-13 in the City Clerk's office, and will be available to all interested citizens shortly after that, check the blog next week for details. 

CSC Holds Public Forum and Deliberates

At the July 11th meeting, CSC held a public forum during the first hour of the meeting, and deliberated during the second half of the meeting.

Commissioner Criscione prepared and presented a slide presentation reviewing the activities of the Commission to date. Thank you to the members of the public who came to watch and participate. The entire presentation can be downloaded from the City Clerk's website.

Deliberations regarding amendments to our special charter will continue at our next to last meeting on Thursday, July 18, 2013 in the Planning Conference Room. The Commission's final meeting will be held on August 1, 2013, and our Final Report is due on August 6th.   

Charter Study Commission announces Public Forum

The first hour of the Charter Study Commission July 11th meeting will be devoted to a Public Forum. A PowerPoint presentation will outline the work that we have done since our organizational meeting on 12/11/12, and we will seek comment and feedback from citizens.

The Commission has welcomed public participation at all of our meetings and participation will be encouraged at this meeting as well. We will answer charter study related questions from any citizen who wishes to attend. 

If you cannot attend, but have been following our meetings by reading minutes, email your charter related questions to meburgwinkle@comcast.net. We will deal with as many questions as time permits at the meeting, and will answer the others on the blog.

The meeting will be on July 11, 2013, starting at 7:30 p.m. at City Hall Library.  All Charter Study Commission meetings are open to the public.
 

Thanks to all after a busy week for CSC

Thanks to former 4^th Ward City Councilor Elliott Simmons for taking the time to give us an interview on 6/18. Marie Davis and Mary Burgwinkle conducted the interview at a subcommittee meeting that was also attended by Mr. Robert Edwards. Mr. Simmons had interesting thoughts about qualifications for office seekers, and he observed that “politics should not be personal, even though they both begin with “P””. 

 At the regular meeting on 6/20, three officials gave us interviews.  Mr. Al Restaino, Director of the Department of Administration, Finance, Health and Human Services, Mr. Eric Berry, City Administrator and Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs appeared. We thank them for their time, and it is fitting that CSC ended the series of interviews that we started in January with three of our highest ranking city officials.

After the interviews on 6/20, the Commissioners turned to deliberations, which they will continue at the 6/27 meeting.  Summaries of all of the interviews described earlier will be attached to the 6/20 minutes.

Thank you to Councilor Mapp for his 6/13 interview

CSC schedule this week
Charter Study Commission met on 6/13 with an agenda that included interviews and preparation for deliberation. Our thanks to Councilor Adrian Mapp for his thoughtful interview and for bringing typed answers to the questions, making the secretary’s job easier!

This week we are interviewing Councilor Brown, former Councilor Elliott Simmons and Council President Bridget Rivers on 6/18 beginning at 5:30. This will be a subcommittee meeting (Mary Burgwinkle and Marie Davis) in the Planning Conference Room on the Second Floor of City Hall. The meeting is open to the public and interview minutes will be posted on the blog and on the City Website.

The entire Commission will meet on 6/20, also in the Planning Conference Room, beginning at 6:30. The agenda will include interviews that we are in the process of confirming, as well as pre-deliberation and planning for the Public Forum portion of the 6/27 meeting. The meeting is open to the public.

CSC Thanks our 5/30 Phase II Guests!

At our meeting on 5/30, we welcomed Mr. Jim White, the Township Administrator of East Brunswick (Mayor-Council form) and Mr. Christopher Raths, the Town Manager of Roxbury (Council-Manager). Mr. White and Mr. Raths accepted invitations to speak to us about their Faulkner Act forms of government, and about others they have experienced.  Both gentlemen are very long term managers in their municipalities (Mr. White-16 years; Mr. Raths-12 years) and they gave us insight into how their municipalities work. Mr. Raths is an enthusiastic proponent of Council-Manager form. One of the takeaways for us from Mr. White was the impression that any form of government can work. The form does not matter as much as having a strong administrator and elected officials who learn to work well together under whatever the form of government. Both believe that a strong administrator can be a big help to part time mayors and city councilors who learn to work with their administrator.
Both gentlemen are very experienced City Managers, excellent speakers and natural teachers with sense of humor thrown in. We were pleased that 6 college students who are members of the Plainfield Youth Organization for Unity joined us at the meeting, and our speakers were equally happy to see young people taking an interest in civics and their government.
All in all it was a wonderful meeting. We cannot thank Mr. White and Mr. Raths enough for making the trek from their towns for an evening meeting. Our other guests, Robert Edwards, Dan Damon, Roni Taylor, former city administrator Larry Bashe, and the members of the Plainfield Youth Organization for Unity made the meeting interesting for their participation as well.
CSC will meet next on Thursday, June 13, 2013 in the City Hall Library at 6:30-this is one hour earlier than usual. We are expecting City Council Members Adrian Mapp and Bridget Rivers, as well as Assemblyman Green as our guests.  All meetings are open to the public.

Thank you to Dr. Ernest Reock, Speaker at CSC meeting on May 23, 2013

CSC’s  May 23rd meeting was headlined by the return visit of Dr. Ernest Reock, Professor Emeritus and retired Director of the Rutgers Center for Government Services.  Dr. Reock is an acknowledged expert on New Jersey State Government. After speaking at our Organizational Meeting on December 11, 2012, he has been available to us and answered our questions during our study. At the May 23rd meeting, he gave us a fascinating thumbnail sketch of the history of municipal government forms in New Jersey. He also gave us a synopsis of the forms of government that Charter Study Commission has the power to send to referendum, the forms that we could recommend in an advisory opinion only, and we discussed amending or suggesting special charters. Our minutes (8 pages) are attached to the blog and contain a reasonably detailed summary of the meeting material for citizens who could not attend.
At our May 30th meeting, Mr. James White, Township Administrator of East Brunswick and Mr. Christopher Raths, Town Manager of Roxbury, will attend to discuss their respective Faulkner Act forms of government, the Mayor-Council form and the Council-Manager form, respectively.
All of our meetings are open to the public with ample opportunity for public participation.  The May 23rd meeting will be in City Hall Library, starting at 7:30 pm.