The Borough Council meeting on January 27th was uneventful and not well attended. There were multiple resolutions on the agenda, prompting a resident to request the resolutions be made available with the agenda online ahead of the meeting to allow sufficient time to review and prepare to ask questions.

This request has been made several times before ever since they stopped making the resolutions available online. Hopefully the Mayor and Council will listen to residents, as it's a topic that keeps coming up.

After the Resolutions were passed committee reports began. Councilwoman Camacho once again used her time to call out secret meetings and not being included in discussions:

"I'm just very frustrated with some of things that are not getting done, situations that are not being addressed, and a lot of money being wasted. I'm completely left out of the loop. I'm not invited to the secret meetings. I'm not privy to the backdoor deals and clandestine phone calls that are being held. Very frustrating to watch the Borough move backwards after all the progress that was made last year. Thank you!" Councilwoman Dayna Camacho stated.

This is at least the third time the Councilwoman has used her committee report time to share her perceived concerns. In the room, you could feel how uncomfortable people were. If there are real concerns, the Councilwoman should take those to the Mayor and Council President. Airing these rants are not productive, inappropriate, and should be handled outside of a council meeting.

During the public portion, two residents spoke. The first was concerned with construction vehicles parked at the end of Colorado Ave. DPW Director Watkins, who was in attendance, indicated the trucks are part of the work NJ American Water is doing on South 19th Avenue. He indicated the trucks are there as a staging site for NJ American Water.

The second resident asked about the Borough considering purchasing the Rustic Mall property (the large vacant lot on Main Street) and why it was being considered.

"Mayor, last meeting or the prior meeting, you had mentioned something that Manville is considering buying the Rustic Mall property?" asked the resident.

"That is correct," stated Mayor Richard Onderko.

"And what is the purpose of that, Mayor?" the resident continued.

"It's to improve our town, make our town more storm resilient and to provide housing opportunities for people who take Blue Acres buyouts and want to stay in town. It's called the Smart Moves program. You can look it up on the DCA's website. It's a HUD program that will I think will greatly benefit our town. And some of the money from that program can be used for property acquisition."

He continued: "It's long overdue. The owners of that piece of property, the old owners of the mall, refuse to develop it. Period. They view it as a liability. It's a superfund site. They don't want any private ownership on that 12 acre piece of property. We need it for the future of our town. We can't have emergency services going underwater. And we need to provide housing for seniors and other Blue Acres people who want to stay in town. It's very difficult when you take a Blue Acres buyout, to find another place to live in town, since there's only so many houses left."

"Is there a price currently being considered to pay for that property?" asked the resident.

"That's still in negotiations. We're under, um, getting a commercial land assessor to give us a value of the property. We also a few years ago, if everyone remembers up here, we asked them to donate the land to the town. It wasn't well received on their part. But, you know, we just said, hey, you know, why don't you just don't donate that to the town and write it off on taxes. The developer and the land owners are very very wealthy. They're worth billions."

Manville.Today did an in-depth series on the history of the Rustic Mall. You can view it here: Rustic Mall Analysis.