SOUTH ORANGE - Registered village voters, thanks to Village President Alex Torpey and four of the Village Trustees' votes here July 25, will have a say on three proposed municipal charter changes Nov. 8.
Voters will decide on three charter questions while making their choices for state legislators and Essex County freeholders from the General Election ballot. Those questions, subject to Essex County Elections Board wording, are:
- Should the Township of South Orange Village remove "Township of" from its name?
- Should the titles of "Village President" and "Village Trustees" be replaced by "Mayor" and "Council?"
- Should the Village President/Mayor and Village Trustees/Council Members each receive annual stipends, at $2,400 and $1,800 each, for their duties?
South Orangites will receive interpretive statements next to each question on the ballot. They may receive - going by the July 25 council meeting discussion among the elders, municipal counsel Steve Rother, administrator John Gross and clerk Robin Kline - additional information based on the Charter Review Committee's May 25 report and recommendations before Nov. 8.
The non-binding questions, if approved by voters, would go before the State Legislature in Trenton for final approval and charter change asearly as Jan. 1, 2013. The recommendations are the fruit of two years' labor by the volunteer CRC.
Voters, however, will not see a fourth CRC-recommendation on their Nov. 8 ballot. The question of moving the non-partisan municipal election from the first Tuesday in May and join the General Election ballot, for the want of a trustee's second, did not go to a vote.
That was not the only moment of contention over the four ballot questions displayed by the elders before a Village Hall audience of 25 July 25.
None of the measures were unanimously passed. Trustee Michael Goldberg, for example, voiced his solitary dissent by speaker phone on the municipal name change ballot resolution. Trustee Howard Levinson was the sole dissenter on the proposed elders' title name change.
The stipend question would not have gone if it were not for Torpey being asked to break the trustees' 2-2 tie. Torpey sided with Trustees' Deborah Davis Ford and Mark Rosner for passage over colleagues' Goldberg and Levinson's dissention.
"I was never in agreement on offering stipends the entire time I was on the committee," said Levinson.
Davis Ford, who moved to vote on the first resolution, had to wait a moment until one of his other colleagues - eventually Rosner - granted a second.
"Come on guys," said Davis Ford during the pause, "Man up."
But Davis Ford never got a second on the election date change proposal July 25.
"We spend a lot of time in our budget workshops looking for areas to save money," said Davis Ford. "This would save us $12,000 in election costs."
"I'm concerned that our (nonpartisan) elections," said Levinson, "would be caught up in the partisan politics of the General Election."
Administrator Gross and Counselor Rother said, in response to another Davis Ford question, that the fourth question may return for consideration next year since it still exists as a committee recommendation. The state calls on municipalities to review its charters every 10 years.
Rother added that the trustees had to vote one way or another that night in order to give the county elections board enough time to draft the ballot questions and interpretive statements.
"I wonder how this night would have gone if our other two trustees (Janine Bauer and Nancy Gould) were here," concluded Rosner. Bauer and Gould were absent.
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