The Verona Town Council has posted the agenda for its next meeting, which will be held on Monday, May 7.
The Council will be recognizing Detective Sergeant Timothy Banta for his efforts to defuse a dangerous situation last year with a Verona resident who threatened to blow up the building in which she lived.
The first four proposed ordinances for the meeting seek to authorize the Council to acquire two pieces of property that a developer had been seeking to use as sites for affordable housing. One, 25 Commerce Court, has long been used as the Verona leaf dump, and the second, at 111 Mount Prospect Avenue, is a heavily wooded lot at the edge of Eagle Rock Reservation. Their current owner is South Orange developer Roger Kruvant.
The Council is looking to invoke the the Eminent Domain Act of 1971 to acquire both properties. Eminent domain allows a government entity, including a municipal government, to take private property for public use but requires “just” compensation to be paid to its owner. The proposed ordinances authorize the Council to use $25,000 per property from the Capital Surplus Fund for preliminary planning expenses, but do not indicate a total purchase price for the acquisitions. The ordinances say that the Council wants to maintaining both properties as open space and public parks, and that 25 Commerce Court will also be used by the Department of Public Works.
Also on the agenda is the repeal of Verona’s existing recycling ordinance and the introduction of new rules on residential and commercial garbage collection. Deputy Mayor Michael Nochimson has made several remarks on commercial garbage collection during Council meetings in recent months.
The new ordinance will authorize the town to continue to collect commercial garbage–something that other towns don’t do–but it would limit businesses to five “suitable receptacles” and specifies that plastic bags may not be used to dispose of food waste. Since Verona businesses often lack space for garbage cans that would conform to site plans, the ordinance would let businesses to get, for a fee, a waiver for a more convenient site. The ordinance would also raise the maximum daily fine for garbage violations to $1,000. The rules for residential collection appear to be largely unchanged in the new ordinance.
The meeting, which will be held in the second floor Council chambers at Town Hall, begins at 7 p.m. It is open to the public. You can read the full agenda here.
The Council’s website contains information on meeting dates, agendas, ordinances and resolutions, and links to videos of past Council meetings.
