Alex Sohn
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On the Blog Post May 7 Town Council meeting
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On the Blog Post March 19 Town Council meeting
Alex Sohn
5:27 pm on Wednesday, March 27, 2013
@Mr. Peronilla:
If I may "vote" on the proposition, I'd love to see these questions raised publicly at the next open, public Council meeting on April 9th to get the discussion going. Better still would be an invited, brief presentation during the Conference Agenda where there is more give-and-take than is afforded by the 5-minute public question period with no followup. Perhaps Mr. Guarino would extend such an invitation subject to approval by the Concil President. (?)
The next Open Office Hours are scheduled for April 4th from 6:30-8:30 PM, but, in my opinion, stove piping concerns to the Mayor and individual Councillors is not be the most efficacious way to enlighten voters about the issues.
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On the Blog Post March 19 Town Council meeting
Alex Sohn
2:18 pm on Wednesday, March 27, 2013
In August 2010, Matthew Boxer NJ State Comptroller undertook to study the usage of municipal tax abatements throughout the State.
The 30-page report is available online here: http://www.nj.gov/comptroller/news/docs/tax_abatement_report.pdf
It's an interesting read.
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On the Blog Post March 19 Town Council meeting
Alex Sohn
10:03 am on Tuesday, March 26, 2013
@SaintCloud:
I share the concerns you've raised. Since the current tax abatement agreement, as passed by the Town Council last year, is based on Prism's gross revenues for the next 30 years, suppose Prism sells all of the units - on what is the PILOT based at that point?
I would hope that the whole abatement structure would be recrafted if Prism goes from a rental to a for-sale model. The PILOT agreement has been troubling to me due, in no small part, to the way the BOE budget is funded at 90%+ by the local tax levy on existing property owners. As few as 22 up to as many as 62 school age children are expected to move into the Edison site; that translates from a low of $220,000 to a high of $620,000 to be paid to the BOE out of the PILOT revenues. At current projections, that leaves from $0 to $300,000 to provide any and all other municipal services to the development area.
I fear that abatement of taxes for individual condominium owners on Main Street will increase the (already onerous) tax burden on existing property owners throughout the rest of the township with the only benefit being to Prism who can, presumably, get higher prices for the units due to the anticipated lowered tax burden over the next 3 decades. I hope that any change to the approved plan will cause the Town Council to take a good, hard look at the effect of the existing approvals and work toward something that benefits all of us.
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On the Blog Post March 5 Town Council meeting
Alex Sohn
8:15 pm on Monday, March 11, 2013
Mr. P - I'm going to think out loud here for a minute ...
The way I read this, the drunk driver who is an *employee* would be John Gross the CFO. I think his employer is the Administration (Parisi? Sayers?) and that is who would have to make a decision about terminating his employment - in my opinion that just ain't gonna happen.
Cirilo, our other drunk driver, is not an employee but an *elected official*. I think that makes it the responsibility of the electorate to dump him, either by recall or at the polls next May. I don't think a recall is worth considering. He will either graciously decline to run in 2014 or he can be voted out. He may also be elected to a second term (nothing much surprises me anymore since Ms Spango won a 2nd term in 2012 - oy!, eh?)
His board appointments (DWOA, WOPL, Renna House, Valley Rivitalization) are, to me, a grey area and I don't know who appointed him (I think the rest of the Council voted him into those at the July 1 reorg meeting). Again, it's just a little over a year to go on those and they're small potatoes.
Cirilo is an *employee* of the City of Passaic. Exec. Dir. of the City Housing Authority is his regular, nine-to-five job. I would guess that the City of Passaic could fire him if they had a DUI policy, but that's really not our problem.
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On the Blog Post March 5 Town Council meeting
Alex Sohn
11:30 am on Monday, March 11, 2013
He's an elected official of the township. The voters have the option of mounting a recall but it's hardly worth the time and effort when he's up for re-election in a little over a year. If the voters want to see the back of him, as they did with Anderton in 2012, all they have to do is go out and vote for someone else. Talk to your friends and neighbors. McCartney, Cirilo and Parisi will all be up for re-election May 6th, 2014. VOTE 'EM OUT if you want to see things change.
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On the article Fire in Restroom Clears Out Pleasantdale Elementary
Alex Sohn
7:04 pm on Thursday, February 21, 2013
Arson!?! Really?!? The two kids were probably just in the restroom smoking a spliff and, in a panic, tossed it, lit, into the trash can, thinking they heard someone coming in. Hardly an intentional burning down the house.
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On the article Employee Robbed at Gunpoint on Valley Road
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On the article Assembly Panel OKs Gun Control Measures Amid Raucous Crowd
Alex Sohn
7:17 pm on Thursday, February 14, 2013
RB:
Interesting discussion. Thanks for posting the link.
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On the article Fifth-Grade Teacher Charged with Sex Assault of 10-Year-Old Student
Alex Sohn
5:15 pm on Wednesday, February 13, 2013
While I can't speak for RH, having visited the link I took the comment to be a tongue-in-cheek swipe at cbslocal, as in "Mr. Yonitch has a rather extensive collection of neck ties - oh my!"
The cbslocal article mentioned Chris rewarding kids in class with candy and his neck tie collection, neither of which has anything to do with the allegations.
Alex Sohn
2:26 pm on Monday, May 13, 2013
Thanks, Councilman, for your efforts. The latest meeting finally made it to broadcast and, frankly, I was kinda stunned at the push-back from Cirilo, Kayser, and whoever else objected to your suggestion that all relevant docs that aren't of a confidential nature be provided on the township's website so that the residents/taxpayers might prepare questions before the meeting.
Mr. Sayer's suggestion that anyone can make an OPRA request (doesn't that cost a fee?) for any documents they want begs the question of how residents are supposed to know that the documents exist. I'm baffled by the anti-transparency attitude of this Council and Administration - how can Mr. Cirilo keep attempting to talk the talk when he is most obviously opposed to walking the walk? Frankly, most of what his says is incomprehensible jibberish to me. Usually, I can hardly understand the point he's trying to make (assuming there is a point).
I also felt that there was a problem during the tax rebate program vendor's presentation. Ms Spango always comes off more as a cheerleader for the vendor than as an advocate for the taxpayer (think back to the local media guy, was his name Schwartz?, where she was more interested in how his proposal might save her own business $5k than in its utility to the township - remember how THAT debacle ended? Where is he now? Or when she deferred to Diaz on Prismgate questions)
Again, thanks, as always, for working for ALL of residents of West Orange.