Fourth on the Third

The sunny side of the street had a sparse crowd Saturday as the annual July Fourth Parade kicked off on July 3.

There were no marching bands, but churches, steppers, community organizations, beauty queens, sports teams and others took part.

Politicians and dignitaries were plentiful in the line of march.

The Rev. Tracey L. Brown, pastor of Ruth Fellowship Ministries, former school board member and also a PMUA commissioner, served as grand marshal.

An enthusiastic bunch in green T-shirts represented Investors Savings Bank.

Youth soccer and baseball teams took part.

Many public safety vehicles could be seen. Fire Division mascot "Sparky" waved to the crowd.

The Plainfield Branch of the NAACP was represented.

A contingent of riders and their handsome steeds enlivened the parade.

The city's youth baseball team had a float.

Omega Psi Phi steppers wowed folks with their energetic moves.

The reviewing stand was down by the YWCA instead of the Park Madison plaza. Here is the emcee stand.

Colorful balloons delighted the eye.

Participants also included the Nation of Islam Mosque No. 80, the Independent United Order of Mechanics Western Hemisphere Inc. , Community Girl Scouts, the New Democrats, Maritza Boutique's Bolivian dancers, the Plainfield Board of Education, American Red Cross, Angels in Action, the Jersey Wolves and many others.

For today, I will be playing some John Philip Sousa marches at home and trying to stay cool.

--Bernice Paglia

Hotter Than the Hinges of Hell

I took a lot of parade pictures today, but the prospect of a big heat wave is distracting me.

Forecasts call for unrelenting heat from Monday through Friday.

Over the years since retiring, I have promised myself to avoid being in New Jersey in July, but the promise has yet to come true.

Make a game plan to have loose clothes, water, fans if not air conditioning and early-morning shopping if you are a senior. Feel free to lie down and rest during the day and do things at night after it cools down.

Heat waves are serious threats to health and require strategies to be safe.

-- Bernice

New Signs Mean Business

This handsome sign was spotted near the main train station, in the city's original commercial district. More will be placed throughout the Special Improvement District to alert residents and visitors to businesses.

The Special Improvement District includes both the downtown and South Avenue commercial areas. A quarterly SID newspaper, Positively Plainfield, is mailed to all households and includes a listing of businesses by category. I find the Park & Seventh business district especially convenient and I am looking forward to the new signage there.

--Bernice

A Tree Grows on Block 832

Coming home from the Plainfield Public Library Thursday, I was struck by the size of the ailanthus tree that has grown up in our front yard by the Lot 7 fence. This tree is a big weed! After a new owner in 2000 cut out landscaping services, a number of weed trees and vines began to take over. Asiatic Bittersweet is rampant along the fence. City workers regularly trim the city side of the fence, but over 10 years our side has become a jungle.

Ailanthus, or Tree of Heaven, is featured in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," symbolizing the main character's ability to thrive in poor circumstances. We actually have a lot of these trees on our block, too many now to remove without a lot of trouble. My neighbor and I yank up any young ones we come across. The presence of these invasive trees nowadays symbolizes neglect and urban decay.

Take this as a cautionary tale: Let ailanthus get a foothold and within a few years it will be three stories high!

--Bernice

City Will Forego Extra State Aid

City Administrator Bibi Taylor said Thursday the administration will not seek extraordinary state aid for FY 2011 to avoid the delay in budget passage that usually comes with the request.

The new fiscal year began Thursday and Taylor promised to present a budget to the council for introduction by August or September. Without having to wait for word on state aid, the city could conceivably pass the budget well before the third quarter, which is when the FY 2010 budget passed. By that time, payment of salaries and expenses left little leeway for cuts.

But Councilman Adrian Mapp said the decision puts the city "between a rock and a hard place."

Mapp said he doesn't like waiting to hear from the state, but he does like the "discipline" imposed by last year's Memorandum of Understanding with the city. The MOU tied acceptance of the funding to strict reins on spending for food, travel and other discretionary items. Click here for an earlier Plaintalker post on the subject. Part of the agreement was that any future application or acceptance of extraordinary state aid, now called "transitional aid," would carry the same caveats.

"It pretty much restricts unnecessary spending," Mapp said.

The governing body has clashed with the mayor over funding for special events and other non-essentials.

Councilman Cory Storch asked whether the governing body could impose similar restrictions on the administration's spending, but Corporation Counsel Dan Williamson said, "My gut feeling is, no."

As the council approved a temporary budget for the first three months of FY 2011, Storch questioned whether it allowed for contract settlements. Taylor said five of six union contracts expired on Dec. 31.

"So this may not reflect the true cost?" Storch asked.

"Correct," Taylor replied.

As passed, the temporary budget reflects only what was expended per quarter last year.

The budget process will be for the administration to review departmental requests and make modifications before presenting the proposed budget to the governing body for deliberation and final decisions. In recent years, the council has relied on its own Finance Committee and a panel of citizens to review the budget before taking action. The final bit has been to wait for the state Division of Local Government Services to announce the special aid amounts. The FY 2010 budget for the year beginning July 1, 2009 did not pass until February of this year.

--Bernice Paglia

FY 2011 Opens with Debt

The city entered the 2011 fiscal year Thursday more than a quarter million dollars in debt, a tab that may go higher when winners of FY 2010 legal judgments press for payment.

The biggest chunk of the debt came from an emergency appropriation of up to $200,000 in March to take down a failing historic building on North Avenue. While the demolition took just one day, the cleanup went on for a month. At this time, City Administrator Bibi Taylor said no additional bills for the work have yet come in.

In addition, because budget transfers were not approved before the end of FY 2010, various salary payments totaling $82,275.69 must be made up in FY 2011, Taylor said.

Corporation Counsel Dan Williamson said motions are being filed by people who won lawsuits in 2010 but have not yet been paid.

Taylor stressed that Thursday’s transfers were the first of the new fiscal year, but others may be made up until Sept. 30.

The council made adjustments to the $460,700 transfer total to allow for possible payment of a repair bill for Drake House Museum, a city-owned building where programs are administered by the Historical Society of Plainfield. The repairs were made with a $50,000 loan from a trustee, in anticipation of city funding. But Councilman William Reid opposed the amendment, saying the council had no documentation of the cost and no assurance that the work was done in accordance with New Jersey contract law.

Discussion of the amendment took up most of a “special emergency meeting” with the transfers as the sole item.

The council also held a separate special meeting to allocate funds for the first three months of FY 2011. Most of the proposed costs represented about a quarter of last year’s funding, but a few – the Independence Day celebration and a summer youth program, for example – were “front-loaded,” Taylor said, and needed to be paid at a higher rate.

The July 4th celebration cost of $50,000 will be expended this week, with fireworks on Friday and the parade on Saturday.

During the lengthy discussion of transfers, Williamson reminded the council that “the responsibility of approving or rejecting certain items” goes through the chief finance officer and director of Administration & Finance. Though possible, council involvement in such decisions could be “inappropriate,” he said. But the city has not had a CFO officer since the end of 2007 and there is currently no director of Administration & Finance. The situation has led to some sparring between the governing body and the administration over finances. A closed retreat Monday was meant to increase cooperation between the two branches.

--Bernice Paglia

Library Cuts Upheld

Hopes to restore library funding were dashed Thursday when budget transfers were approved without consideration to what speakers at the June 21 council meeting called a community gem, a necessity and a vital source for education.

The ostensible reason was that a resolution on budget transfers referred only to expenses incurred in the 2010 fiscal year.

Once the 2010 city budget passed in February, the library found itself operating at a budget reduced from a proposed $1.9 million to $1.556 million. The result was numerous staff reductions, curtailed hours and other deficits.

Thursday’s council vote on a temporary three-month budget for the 2011 fiscal year retained the current funding level, although Councilman Adrian Mapp held out the possibility that future temporary emergency allocations month-by-month would be at the discretion of the governing body and could include restorations to past funding levels.

The library also suffered from an administrative decision to turn back $300,000 in employee benefit costs from the city to the library. Plainfield Public Library Director Joe Da Rold said the council restored half the cost, but questioned whether the same rule would apply in FY 2011. City Administrator Bibi Taylor said after the meeting that as of the present time, no change was contemplated, but she said the FY 2011 budget was “still in its infancy stage.”

In a presentation on June 21, Da Rold and others spelled out the losses that would occur from funding cuts, while citing the current administration’s view that the library was not part of municipal government.

The next round of arguments on support of the library therefore may not take place until September or October, by which time staff cuts and other reductions will have been ongoing for about a quarter of the 2011 fiscal year.

--Bernice Paglia