Many Appointments on the Agenda

Tonight's City Council agenda includes a slew of appointments, but the timing may be off for a couple of board members.

The agenda-fixing meeting tonight (Jan. 5) is 7:30 p.m. and the regular meeting will be 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 20, both in Municipal Court, 325 Watchung Ave.

Years ago, appointments for boards and commissions were made at the council's annual reorganization on New Year's Day, along with numerous others. Each group was then able to start the year with its own reorganization, setting a calendar and choosing a chairman. But in November 1988, City Clerk Laddie Wyatt was targeted for removal and was out of her office during the weeks when preparations for the New Year were normally made. As a result, many boards and commissions lacked members in the following January and were disrupted. Wyatt regained her post through a history-making legal decision and went on to serve for many more years, but just to be on the safe side, boards and commissions began including later January dates in their calendars.

For 2015, the Zoning Board of Adjustment will meet on the second Wednesday of January instead of the first. But longtime Chairman D. Scott Belin's reappointment may not take place until the council's regular meeting on Jan  20, leaving him in limbo for the reorganization. According to a legal notice today, the meeting is rescheduled to Jan. 22. Similarly,  Planning Board member Gordon Fuller may have to sit out that board's reorganization on Jan. 15.

One bright spot among the appointments is that Deputy City Administrator for Economic Development Carlos Sanchez is up for a one-year appointment to the Planning Board. The board has several categories of membership, including one listed variously as "city official" or "municipal officer." When Plainfield had an in-house engineer, that individual was assigned as the city official. More recently, "municipal officer" was perhaps taken too literally and a police officer was named to the board. (If this writer may say so, it makes a lot more sense to have Sanchez filling that slot.)

Among other nominations, Rich Sudol and Robert. K. Graham are up for reappointment to the Zoning Board of Adjustment; Oscar Riba, Barbara Sutton Spellmeyer and Lynne Wallace are named to the Shade Tree Commission; and Sandy Gurshman, William Michelson, Reginald Thomas and Gary F. Schneider  are named to the Historic Preservation Commission.

Addendum: An example of the problem from 2006

--Bernice