Montclair Township Council Considers Fourth Ward Liquor License and Property Remediation

MONTCLAIR, NJ - The new Montclair Township Council under the leadership of Mayor Renée Baskerville met on July 17 in what was, apart from Mayor Baskerville herself, the first initial meeting of an all-freshman council since 2008.  The agenda was pretty straightforward – one newly introduced ordinance and seventeen resolutions – but the format was noticeably different from councils led by previous mayors. For one thing, the council chose to start the meeting at 5:30 and go immediately into an executive session, which lasted nearly two hours (the public portion of the meeting lasted for three hours after that).  More discussion was given to individual resolutions, and there was noticeably no consent agenda.  And Mayor Baskerville indicated that such meetings may be the rule rather than the exception; an additional meeting for the month, scheduled for July 30, will also start at 5:30 P.M. to be immediately followed by an executive session.

The lone ordinance up for consideration, an ordinance approving a grant for an easement at the property at 51 New Street in the Fourth Ward for a project, was tabled at the request of Fourth Ward Councilor Aminah Toler, who said she was unfamiliar with the measure and needed more time to go over it.  The two resolutions that took up a good deal of the council’s time for debate also involved the Fourth Ward, and Councilor Toler stepped to the fore (no pun intended) on both of them.

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The first such resolution was a resolution authorizing an annual liquor retail license for South End Liquors at 310 Orange Road.  Such a resolution should have been passed in June, but the liquor store was compelled to seek a temporary, 30-day license from the state Alcoholic Beverage Control board.  There have been local concerns about the lax approach the shopkeepers have taken to keeping up their property, and Councilor Toler expressed a desire to talk with the owners first.  The owners themselves were absent from the meeting, which some council members took as indifference toward local concerns.

Councilor Toler suggested that the resolution could be amended to demand that the owners keep the property clean, but Interim Township Attorney Paul Burr said that such an amendment was not allowed.  When Mayor Baskerville suggested the possibility of withdrawing the resolution, Second Ward Councilor Eileen Birmingham expressed fear that the mayor and councilors could harm the liquor store’s ability to conduct business if they did not pass it immediately.  Attorney Burr noted that the liquor store could simply get another 30-day stopgap license from the state.

Township Clerk Angelese Bermudez Nieves helped move things along by relaying a rundown on South End Liquors, explaining that the store is under new ownership and that any new owner of such a business would need clearance from the police, fire, planning and zoning departments.  In addition, she said, the township has not placed any issues with South End Liquors on the public record and she was unaware of any citations.  With that information at hand, the council eventually voted unanimously to grant the license, allowing South End Liquors to continue to do business through June 2025.

The other ordinance that sparked debate also concerned the Fourth Ward, and, coincidentally enough, it concerned another property on Orange Road a few blocks down from the South End Business District, at the corner of Orange Road and Pleasant Way.  The property, the site of a former service station, needs environmental remediation, and the township has received five different grants from the Hazardous Discharge Site Remediate Fund (HDSRF) to investigate the property and prepare a plan of action.  However, additional funding is necessary for remediation of the site, and so the township is seeking an additional grant from that would cover 75 percent of the costs of the remedial action for a project that would redevelop the now-contaminated property for “recreation and conservation purposes” – that is, for a pocket park.  Mayor Baskerville said that she would like to see such a park on the corner that would be a symbol of welcome to motorists entering Montclair from Orange and East Orange and would also include plantings to compensate for the trees that developers took down from open-space properties on the opposite side of Orange Road. The mayor also suggested that it could be a South End equivalent to Green Garden Park, a triangular scrap of land in Upper Montclair on the corner of Valley Road and Northview Avenue that was made into a park with a short path connecting the two streets and featuring a modern-art sculpture as its centerpiece.

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Councilor Toler asked how long the process would take and asked about the preparation of the grant itself.  Planning Director Janice Talley told her that her department’s Licensed Site Remediation Professional wrote the grant, and she added that she could provide any additional information that Councilor Toler needed.   The councilor thanked her and added that it was important to ensure that the grant would not be for a specific time frame, such as a month, when it may be necessary to allow up to a year for remediation.   Director Talley said that the grant is based on available funding and so it does not include a timeline. The grant application is currently under review by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority and once she hears from them, she can write up a contract and put out aa request for proposal to find a remediation company.  A deed restriction requiring that the property be made into parkland is already in place.

The park in question would be a public park operated by the township, not a community park maintained by residents, such as Waverly Park in West Caldwell, a park created by local residents from a town-owned vacant lot with a brook running through it. First Ward Councilor Erik D’Amato was unsure that the township should take on a recurring expense in the form of a new park and wondered aloud that perhaps it would be better to prioritize housing.  The resolution passed 5-0-1, with Councilor D’Amato abstaining and Councilor-at-Large Carmel Loughman voting no.

In public comment, numerous township employees praised Interim Township Manager Michael Lapolla for his leadership, and resident Judy Hurley offered acclaim for him for his strategy-based decision asking and use of data.  Manager Lapolla showed some of the leadership he was applauded for at the meeting itself when David Korfhage of Montclair Climate Action criticized a resolution authorizing the purchase of hybrid vehicles for the township and instead urged the purchase of electric vehicles instead, criticizing hybrid gasoline/electric power as a “25-year-old technology.”  (In fact, hybrid power is much older than that; the legendary Austrian automotive engineer Ferdinand Porsche created a hybrid motor vehicle in 1909.)   Manager Lapolla agreed, and he had the resolution withdrawn so he could look into electric-vehicle purchases.

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