Jan 2025 - Mayor and Council Meeting Updates

Hey All - starting off with my first update for 2025 - I'll try to do these monthly at least. A couple of items:

First off we honored Cusumano Perma-Rail Co in Roselle Park for helping us redo the American Legion's Post 60 front steps. They helped (obviously) replace and rehab the rails as part of a volunteer effort led by Councilman Joe Petrosky and Councilman Greg Johnson to rehab the building. Great work all. We also want to extend thanks once again to local labor (Carpenters, Tile and Brick Layers among others) for chipping in and helping get this done!

Other than that it was a pretty uneventful meeting - we did look to expand the Shade Tree Committee from 3 to 5 as there is such large interest in said committee. This committee will be responsible for management and evaluation of town-wide trees. The members will be tasked with finding new locations for trees as well as evaluate requests for maintenance of existing trees. We are no longer taking applicants.

As a heads-up state-wide all NJ municipalities are getting their "4th round" numbers for affordable housing. I encourage you to read up on this here: https://www.njlm.org/522/Affordable-Housing. All NJ municipalities are legally required to build affordable housing (with few exceptions). During a special meeting 1/23 @ 6 PM at Borough Hall we will be taking action to participate in this upcoming round. Luckily, since Roselle Park has done it's required "3rd round" obligations, and has continued to develop, we have a relatively small target compared to other municipalities, and we see further opportunities to potentially bring our number down even further. I encourage you to see for yourself here: https://www.nj.gov/dca/dlps/pdf/FourthRoundCalculation_Methodology.pdf. To compare us please look at the other Union County towns under the "prospective need" column. Just to front-run this, plenty of towns have been in the court to fight this - and have lost, over and over again. Roselle Park has also personally fought these battles and lost. As a reminder Mi-Place is getting built as a result of a failed attempt to block affordable housing projects in Roselle Park.

Finally, we did receive our state operating relief money for our sewer system into our bank account, as discussed last year given the timing of our receipt of this we will factor this into the 2025 budget where the relief will be applied. Our budgeting season is very soon so we will factor this support into your bill for 2025. Thank you again to our LD22 reps who made this possible.

Thanks all - any questions please reach out to me at mayorsig@rosellepark.net