BHCW 09/24/2023 Newsletter

What’s Important to Know About Berkeley Heights This Week…

This weekly newsletter can be a meaningful example – a tale of two governing bodies.  

You already have a clear picture of how our BOE behaves, so I won’t rehash all that here.

Our Mayor and members of the Town Council responded to and spoke openly about complex issues to members of the public, knowing that their responses would be discussed and open to scrutiny. My email about affordable housing was a direct and implied criticism of at least one of the Town Council Members’ responses during the meeting (Jeff Varnerin) – yet he still responded.   Everyone knows the amount of scrutiny our contributors have thrown at Ms. Kingley’s decisions – she still responded.  

My email to Mayor Devanney and the Council on OPRA shed light on how OPRA reform was discussed and what is on the table. The Mayor and Councilwoman Poage still responded.

The responses were serious and direct to the issue.  No cheerleading, gaslighting, ad-hominem attacks or self-victimization.  No hiding behind “the children” .

Representatives shared their perspectives because lawyers and a politically self-interested majority did not muzzle them with threats of sanction.  I would also like to think it is because they understand that being an elected representative carries with it the responsibility of facing the public with your decisions.  I would like to believe it was also because they were providing their HONEST and AUTHENTIC analysis of the facts versus working from a political equation involving “how much bad shit do we need to hide from people”.

I have follow-up questions and concerns about the responses from Mr. Varnerin, Ms. Kingsley, and Mayor Devanney on the above issues- as I am sure many members of our Community do – but at least we didn’t have to submit millions of OPRA requests and play detective to get a basic understanding of their thought process and logic.

And while our Town Council can stand to use a lot of improvement on the issue of Transparency, they have been moving in a better direction and are light years ahead of a BOE and School District that takes the lion’s share of our tax dollar. JM

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