Emotions High at Tuesday's Meeting

Tuesday's City Council meeting included several sharp exchanges between Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs and City Council President Annie McWilliams and was packed with enough issues to keep bloggers busy for days.

The public was excluded for about two hours while the council heard from employees who had been notified of possible layoffs. Submission of layoff and furlough plans for state review were linked to introduction of the SFY 2011 budget and the council passed all three without amending the layoff plan to save one position as the administration requested. Instead, the governing body took Councilman Cory Storch's suggestion to pass the resolutions and work out changes in budget deliberations that the council will begin holding next week. Details of the layoff plan were not made public Tuesday.

In other matters, the council agreed to table a "payment in lieu of taxes" plan sought by developer Frank Cretella for a downtown project including 148 residential units and a commercial portion. Also tabled was an accompanying resolution to grant Cretella a "global agreement" that included naming his company, Landmark Developers, for development of the North Avenue Extension (PNC Bank block). Council members said they wanted to meet in executive session with Cretella to see whether he would still go forward with the plan if Gov. Chris Christie sticks to his rejection of the tunnel project that would give city commuters a "one-seat ride" to Manhattan.

The mayor and council president clashed over items including the administration's stance on council-named citizen committees' access to staff, nominations of commissioners to the Plainfield Municipal Utilities Authorityand the Housing Authority of Plainfield and whether the city paid any costs associated with an Oct. 2 event that was relocated on short notice to the grounds of City Hall.

Each of these topics deserves more explanation to readers, but the meeting ran very late and this writer is now half an hour shy of being up for 24 hours. So I will sign off for now and take up the subjects in more detail later.

--Bernice