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ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS HERALD
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7/28/04 COUNCIL MEETING This past Wednesday was the first regular council meeting for the new council majority. There were no ordinances on the published meeting agenda and only six resolutions. Before the meeting was over however the council voted on 11 resolutions, five being added to the agenda during the meeting. I want to start the article this week by congratulating all the students who received honors at the start of the meeting. Seven recent graduates of the Bolger School were selected to represent our town at the Congressional Youth Leadership Conference in Washington. In addition, five other students from our town received honors from the State of New Jersey presented by Assemblyman Sam Thompson. Those students were honored for their fund raising efforts because of a book they read in school. I also would like to congratulate those students. Now on to a topic I have previously mentioned here. That is the decision to have only one council meeting a month. The reason I am bringing up the topic again is because this past Wednesday’s meeting was a good example of why I think one meeting a month will not work. First of all the meetings started at 6 PM and did not end until nearly 11:30 PM. Now about the meetings it starts as I said before with a workshop at 6 PM and a regular meeting supposed to begin at 7 PM. The workshop meeting started on time at 6 PM however it did not end until 7:45 PM that then delayed the start of the regular meeting. In fact, it only ended at 7:45 when the mayor and new council members terminated the public portion by asking the public to wait until the next public portion to speak. Next started the regular meeting agenda which progressed along slowly until after council reports when we were suppose to have the open public portion. At that point, the borough attorney requested the council consider a motion to go into executive session before the public portion. In my opinion, this was not a proper thing to do to the residents as it was now after 9:15 PM and some residents had been waiting to speak since the 6 PM meeting. A vote was taken to go into executive session which carried 3 to 2. Councilperson Cantillo and I were the only two members who objected to the inconvenience of the residents. Besides the apparent lateness of the meeting, there is another reason to object to only one meeting per month. That reason is as simple as payment of bills. Previously the council would approve payment of bills twice a month of course at each council meeting. Now we are only going to be paying bills once a month. There is the possibility that we might incur late fees. On this subject, there was a resolution, number 134, passed by a 3 to 2 vote during this meeting. This resolution gives our towns Chief Financial Officer authority to pay certain bills without prior council approval. The council would still approve the payments but after the fact. In my opinion this is dangerous ground. Think about it for a minute and you will see this is similar to allowing the electric company to deduct payment for the bill directly from your checking account before you have a chance to review the bill. The council is responsible to review the monthly payment of bill yet the new council majority member chose to give up that responsibility. Another aspect of only one meeting per month manifested itself and I found that during my review of the bills. There were many double payments being authorized for instance to insurance companies and to our local board of education. The reason being that the next meeting would occur after the payment is due for August. This may result in a loss of interest in the borough accounts. That may be mitigated because the acting manager said he would not pay the bills before they are due in the next month. However my concern still stands to me prepayment of bills before council review is not a valid option. Well this article is already long enough. I will cover more on this council meeting in the article next week. As you can see just covering one meeting a month is quite a task. Upcoming Council meetings. There will be a special meeting of the Keansburg Borough Council on Wednesday 8/11 at 5:30 PM in borough hall. The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Keansburg Borough Council will not be until Wednesday 8/25 at 6 PM due to the new one meeting per month schedule. As usual, all meetings will be held in the Borough Council Chambers at Keansburg Borough Hall. Upcoming town events and announcements. Summer Concerts by the Bay: The summer concerts by the bay will again occur this year on the large lot at the corner of Raritan and Beachway. The concerts will be held on Thursdays instead of Wednesdays as in the past years this summer and the start time for each concert has not yet been confirmed. Scheduled so far on 8/12 will be “Daddy Pop”; on 8/19 will be “New Power Soul” and finally on 8/23 will be “Saturday Night Fever”. Reminders. The new Keansburg Waterfront Public Library has a web site however like our library you may find that some of the site is still under construction at this time. However, I wanted to remind everyone of the library web site. The address is: www.keansburglibrary.us. This web site has been built and is maintained by the members of our library committee and the volunteers.
http://www.ahherald.com/keansburg/ |
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