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Thank you everyone for being here, and thank you Mr.

Lewis.

Before I dive in, I want to do something.

Will all the Trustees please rise for a moment.

Let’s please give a round of applause to Walter Clarke,

Sheena Collum, Deborah Davis Ford, Howard Levison,

Mark Rosner and Steve Schnall. Thank you. Not just for

being here, for all of you being here, but for your hard

work and your real genuine commitment to this

community. And for putting the people in this town first,

before politics, which has not always been the case even

in the time I’ve been here, and isn’t the case in many

towns. We’ll come back to that. But please stay standing

for a moment.

You met Mr. Lewis, our Village Administrator, and along

with Deputy Administrator Adam Loehner, and Cathy

Cameron in administration who helped coordinate this,

and to all of our department heads, will you all please rise

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as well, and let’s give them a round of applause for all of

their extremely hard work….

- Administration

- Village Administrator, Barry Lewis

- Deputy VA Adam Loehner

- Building Department

- Construction Official, Tony Grenci

- Clerk’s Office

- Village Clerk, Susan Caljean

- Deputy Clerk, Shinell Smith

- Engineering Department

- Village Engineer, Sal Renda

- Fire Department

- Acting Chief Dan Sullivan

- Health Department

- Health Officer, John Festa

- IT Department

- IT Manager, Stan Wilkinson

- Library

- Director, Melissa Kopecky

- Police Department

- Chief Jim Chelel

- Captain Kyle Kroll

- Captain Ed Heckel

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- Public Works

- Director, Tom Michetti

- Recreation

- Director Kate Schmidt

- Tax Assessor

- Assessor/Purchasing Agent, Ellen Malgieri

- Tax Collection

- Tax Collector, Ronke Zaccheus

- SOVCA

- Executive Director, Bob Zuckerman

- SOPA

- Executive Director, Mark Hartwyk

- SOPAC

- Executive Director, Mark Packer

- Rescue Squad

- Captain Dan Cohen

- President Melanie Trancone

And a special thanks to our administrator who plays such

an important role in not only helping manage this

rambunctious group of elected officials, but for finding

ways to bring our budget and services in at the levels we

want, and for generally being someone committed to the

advancement of this organization as a whole. And if there

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are any other staff that are here please stand too. A round

of applause for all of them please. These are just some of

the people who carry out the policy we set, and do an

incredible job of doing so. Please all stay standing.

Now will anyone who volunteers with the village or any

committee please also rise.

Thank you to all of you for your incredible contributions,

and for getting involved and doing the hard thing - actually

trying to find solutions and putting in the time to work

together to get there.

Now take a look around for a second… this is why South

Orange is as successful as it is, because so many are

active - and this is just a small slice of them - who are

involved in what’s happening in town, everyone has a role

to play, and everyone who does, plays it very well. I’ll

come back to this a little later, and you all can take your

seats.

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I know we have some other elected and public officials

here today too…. and I’d like to thank them for both being

here and also being committed to serving the public as so

many of us here are.

---

At this point in history when it is becoming increasingly

easy to measure things - we have more data, and

computing power and algorithms than we have ever have

had, it’s so important to be able to take perspective, take

a step back and ask ourselves a simple, but important

question: What, exactly, are we measuring - What’s the

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quality of our measurement… how do we measure our

ability of measuring? Does any particular measurement

offer a complete view of what we are trying to understand,

or is it just the most convenient, most easily quantified way

to measure a part of what we want to know, while

mistakenly leaving something else out?

Often, our increased ability to measure certain things at a

micro level means we actually fail to measure the whole of

something - we often fail to see the larger picture -

including those things that are extremely hard, or

impossible to measure, and sometimes to even

understand.

Tonight, I’m going to offer you as complete of a picture as

possible of our performance and the quality of government

in South Orange. In addition, I will explain how we plan to

continue to improve that performance, and the role that all

of you so critically play in that process.

Before I dive in, I need to make an important distinction

that underpins our ability to get a complete picture of the

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quality of government in South Orange, and ultimately the

state of our village.

There are actually two different governments, and

subsequently, really two “Villages” that you will be given

the state of tonight - and spoiler alert - the state of both of

them is strong.

The first, is the government, with a lowercase g. This is

the government you can most easily recognize. This

government is the buildings, the staff, the payroll, the

interactions, the services. This is the police officer who

responds to a 911 call, this is your child participating in a

program at the Baird, this is your road getting paved, your

recycling getting picked up and so on. This government,

we’ll find, is much easier to measure, and is where we will

start, in a moment.

But we can’t make the mistake of thinking that

understanding this government will give a complete picture

of what we want to know tonight, which is the state of our

Village, not just the state of the operations of the institution

of the village government. This government, with a lower

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case g, you can think of actually as the output and is only

half of the puzzle.

The second half is Government with a big G. This

Government is the idea, the concept and the philosophy

and the culture of Government, and it is inclusive of every

single one of us, all of our ideas, our desires, our fears,

our interests and our frustrations. This is the entire

ecosystem where people, and thoughts come together, or

don’t, where ideas percolate, where rules get interpreted,

where minds get changed, where priorities get thought

about, set, modified and set again. This encompasses

every single person and entity in and around South

Orange, whether meaning to participate or not, or part of

the little g government or not. This is a dynamic, non-

physical Government. It has no institution - no buildings,

no payroll, no employees, no meetings, no contracts.

This is the theory of Government… The idea of using

collective and publicly accessible systems to codify

values, priorities and rules through democratic

means, in an attempt to provide equity, justice,

progress, innovation, safety and opportunity.

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This can be thought about as the input. It is much more

abstract, and it is much harder to measure, but it is no less

important.

But before we get to these big pie in the sky abstract

ideas, where most of you know my head lives most of the

time, let’s start on the ground level and talk about the

government with a little g. The government that we all

interact with daily.

To start, let’s talk about how much of the government you

can see and understand.

In South Orange, we have been recognized state-wide,

regionally and nationally for setting the example on how to

be a transparent government. We don’t have enough time

tonight to go over everything we have done in this regard,

but let me make sure to make you all aware of a few of

them:

- Not only do we continue to post budget information on

the website as has been done in the past, but we do so

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with a mind towards not just what we share, but how we

share it, now with a spreadsheet you can download,

manipulate and do whatever you want with, and as of

2013 we ported five years of budget data into a

visualization tool that allows you to really explore where

your money is going, run reports, make comparisons and

hopefully feel like you can get a solid understanding of our

finances and budget.

- Beyond that for 2015, I have added 25 thousand

dollars into the budget that has been presented to the

trustees, for a Citizen Guided Budget Line, a small pot

of money that residents get to decide where it goes -

whether they want it right back in their pockets or

towards a new program, to supplement existing

programs, or anything else. This will not only give

residents complete, direct access to making a budget

decision, but it will show us, as representatives,

where our community’s priorities lie. This will be done

through the Peak Democracy software platform we

have purchased for the purpose of online

engagement with our residents, in a productive

fashion, about issues in town.

- The Peak Democracy platform is one of the several

engagement and communication initiatives of the

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Public Information and Marketing Committee, which is

a group where, with the assistance of just a couple

village officials, residents are helping direct the

projects that will help our village be better branded

and better prepared to not just communicate with the

community within South Orange, but to the

community beyond, as we’ll cover later, that’s an area

where we need to improve on.

- In our Board meetings, we made some simple changes

that have major impacts, such as rotating the order in

which things are voted on, so each vote starts with the

next person in line, rather than someone always being

forced to vote first, and someone always getting to vote

last. We also added a second public comment period to

every meeting, both before and after we take any action.

And after those comment periods, unlike many towns, we

run through the list of questions and complaints brought

up and try our best to address them right there, or get

back to the person with more information after the

meeting. We held a leadership summit at Seton Hall

University, that was directed by students, some of whom

are here tonight, and one of their thoughts was that the

frustration of governments not even recognizing or

engaging with difficult questions makes people less likely

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to want to participate. I agree, I think we all do, which is

why we do it differently here.

- All of the trustee committee reports now are asked to be,

and usually are outlined ahead of time, so that if you want

a quick update on what a committee is doing, or my report

for a meeting, you can get some bullet points ahead of

time on the publicly released agenda and then you can

decide whether you want to go to the meeting or tune-in.

The process by which agenda items get submitted, which

used to be an email with a vague one sentence request

and no backup material, is used without really any

problem now - where people complete a form that requires

background information, supporting documentation and

some context and explanation, a measure that was not

always supported, but has since shown to help provide the

governing body and public with more information.

- My official office hours every week have been attended

by, at last count, 160 people since starting, and hundreds

more have visited my “un-official” office hours, just doing

work downtown where people can just stop over and ask

questions. Accessibility to all of our elected officials has

expanded, and it’s almost impossible to go to any event

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around town and not see at least one of our elected

officials there, ready to represent the village in their

capacity as a trustee, and ready to take feedback back to

the whole group. We see this constantly, for example

through neighborhood meetings after Hurricane Sandy

and many meetings with different groups of people around

development on Irvington Ave, and senior citizens and

public safety issues, especially. It is not hard to find or get

in contact with us, and that’s how we like it. We have an

expectation on our Board that you will be accessible to

that degree, and I think people in town know that.

- We launched our 311 service, SO Connect, which is

powered by public stuff, which has fielded, as of tonight

over 2,200 requests for service. SO Connect is connecting

citizens directly to the department responsible, without

requiring they go through an elected official to get it done,

which slows the process down, gives volunteer elected

officials *more* work to do and encourages political

favoritism through very transactional relationships. SO

Connect was recently featured in new stories on CBS 2

News, News 12, and FiOS 1 last week in relation to

people submitting complaints about snow removal.

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And there’s many, many more including one of my

favorites, which is simply trying our best to explain

complicated issues to people and trying to make the

reasoning behind decisions as easy to understand and

find as possible, even if we can’t ultimately appease the

request the resident is making. Whether it’s the order the

roads are paved or why we’re switching water companies,

which is something we are doing and is an

accomplishment and feat of this village deserving of it’s

own night.

Yes, just a reminder, South Orange will be finally switching

away from East Orange Water Commission and will be

using New Jersey American Water instead - a decision

that has literally taken years of work to get to, and will

benefit all of us and future generations.

But there is an important distinction I want to make here

before we move off the subject of transparency. This is not

the kind of distinction that typically helps you win you a re-

election, but to take some words from President Obama - I

have no more campaigns to run.

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There is a big difference between personal accessibility

and accountability and institutional accessibility and

accountability. There are mayors who will give you their

cell phone numbers and setup job interviews and as

issues come in, just take care of them one by one in a

reactionary and transactional, but indeed very responsive

fashion, trying to make individual people happy one by

one as issues arise. But that’s not what I’ve done or the

kind of government I believe in. Sure, I’ve given my cell

phone number out publicly, especially during the storms

we’ve had, but it’s not about doing that. That doesn’t fix

the problem. It doesn’t advance the institution. It

advances the political actor individually, with the institution

riding on their coat tails.

There are no doubt some people who probably find me

less than what they expect typical politician

responsiveness to be. But I’m not interested in making

endorsements during campaigns, not really interested in

attending political events, not interested in taking personal

phone calls when it’s more appropriate for a staff

members to be taking point on the issue, nor am I trying to

make each individual person happy, rather, my job, the job

of this public institution is to make decisions that perform

the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of

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people. I’ve been emailed and asked about jobs in town

who knows how many times at this point, and those

people get a link to the employment page on the website,

and if it’s for a job and I happen to know an applicant, I’m

specifically staying out of it, not inserting myself into it. I’m

not interested in anyone doing me favors, nor am I

interested in giving any out. I’m interested in a government

that makes people because the whole institution works

well, and people know that services are delivered in an

equitable fashion.

Our transactional political environments often encourage

people to actually create an over-reliance on themselves,

as the political actors, some by mistake, and some to

guarantee their future in the organization. I’ve done

everything I can do to create the opposite of that culture,

and instead to ensure that anything we do, we do as an

institution, not on the shoulders of one elected official.

To that end, we’ve tried to make, and I think successfully

so, our entire government more accessible, more

transparent, more accountable and more responsive. You

shouldn’t need to know an elected official or be connected

to a single one of us to get something done, get an answer

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to a question or get the same level of service as anyone

else. That’s not government I believe in, and it’s not the

kind of governing the people who created our country

believed in. Requesting service from the Department of

Public Works isn’t and shouldn’t be a political issue. But by

simply creating a 311 system, for example, to route those

complaints directly to the people responsible for fixing

them, we can start connecting citizens to government in a

more direct way, where politics and “connections” don’t

come into play, where people get service faster and where

we can collect data to measure and improve our future

performance - an issue near and dear to all of us,

especially to Trustee Levison who leads the Finance and

IT Committee and is working with the administration on

setting some of those performance benchmarks right now.

What we’re doing here, tonight and in general, it isn’t

about me, or any one person. It’s not even about what we

can do this year, or what we can do before the next

election. It’s about the greater good of this organization,

serving the greater good of this community, not just now,

but for those who will come after. This organization should

be able to continue to use those values to guide its

progress whether I’m here or any of our elected officials

are here or not. In my opinion, a good leader instills these

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values in the institution and the culture, and actually

makes themselves almost obsolete in doing so.

It’s a topic we cover in the class I’ve started to teach at

Seton Hall, and I think it’s a topic worth bringing up,

because it rarely is, in a public setting like this. Although I

may be the face of the transparency, or anything else, that

occurs, good or bad, in the village, because I am the top

elected official, the focus, this entire time has been

building the institutional capacity and culture.

With credit to everyone in this room, I believe we have

done that, and our government will only continue to find

ways to be more accessible. Whether it’s Trustee

Schnall’s initiatives to get more volunteers involved and

organize how we do that kind of reach and finally put

together a dynamic online discussion forum or Trustee

Collum’s efforts at coordinating major improvements in

how we meet the needs of senior citizens or supporting

our police department’s community engagement practices,

or Trustee Rosner’s work with the development committee

in helping involve experts in the process of productively

contributing ideas towards our future redevelopment, there

is much work going on that is transparent, participatory

and productive.

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To help ensure that this continues that way, and it isn’t

only informally done, I will be shortly introducing an

ordinance to the Board that I wrote with the help of The

Citizens Campaign, the Sunlight Foundation, several other

elected officials, our professional staff and will be

discussed in trustee committees, which for the first time

possibly in the entire state of New Jersey, takes all of

these best practices and codifies them into law so that

everyone who follows us knows what is expected of them

from a transparency perspective. This ordinance will

require the disclaimer that we added to all outgoing emails

notifying people the communication is public, which many

people don’t know, will require the Village President

attempt to respond to every public comment made at a

Board meeting, and will require information be stored in

more accessible, searchable formats, among many other

stipulations.

So yes, transparency is important. Anyone running for

office will say so. But they’ll usually say they are being

transparent, whereas here, we are institutionalizing it in a

way that will continue to grow and outlive any one of us,

and that’s something that is a real accomplishment.

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Let’s move on to our budget and finances.

[slide]

Taxes for as long as I can remember and most of you can,

have been incredibly high in South Orange. For the

municipal portion, we have only a limited ability to make a

major impact, as we only receive 28% of each dollar that

homeowners pay in property taxes. Moreover, much of the

28% that we receive is locked into fixed costs and bills that

we get, salaries for employees that are negotiated through

contracts, insurance premiums, we get a bill for, utility

costs and other items that we have very little control over..

But, even so, last year’s tax levy increase was the lowest

in over 15 years, and we are on track to do the same for

2015, again, hopefully under 1% or right around there for

2015. In fact, the tax levy increases in 2011, 2012, 2013

and 2014 were, all the lowest increases since at least as

far back as 1999.

Every year the increases are going down, and we have

gotten to a place where not only have we stabilized the

budget, with the number of new properties that are

revenue positive that will be coming on board next year

and the year after, the village will be in an even better

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position to limit tax increases even more, maybe even

start to chip away at the actual numbers, and that will

continue as we continue to invest in the downtown.

As I mentioned, costs are hard to cut, especially without

cutting services that we know are one of the hallmarks of

living here in South Orange. So instead, enormous focus

has been put on generating new sources of revenue,

which as a local government, it’s one of the few areas

where we actually have a pretty fair ability to make an

impact - and we have. But this didn’t come easy. Our staff,

most notably in building and engineering are incredibly

responsive to developers and business owners, and our

land use boards are working with applicants to help them

understand how to get projects done within our guidelines,

not stand in the way of progress.

In the last four years, including both projects that have

been completed, and projects underway - not including

several projects that will almost double this number that

may take root in the next 3-6 months, we have been able

to create more than 165 million dollars of private

investment in South Orange

[164,000,000 (development) + storefront renovations]

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And this is a conservative calculation, as it doesn’t include

dozens of smaller investments in storefront renovations

and new businesses that add up to more than ten million

dollars. And this doesn’t include 2-3 development projects

that are too early to fairly include in this number. And for

transparency’s sake, this number was arrived at by using

● Underway: 3rd & Valley $ 65,000,000

● Completed: Gateway $ 15,000,000

● Proposed/Underway: Lustbader (115 units) $

35,000,000

● Propose/Underway: Church St. (160 Units) $

48,000,000

● Underway: Rescue Squad $ 1,100,000

And this isn’t just for providing new homes in South

Orange for people to move to, which itself is an amazing

thing to think us having the ability to do - allow more

people to move into and call this community their home - it

isn’t just for foot traffic to our business and for the

downtown, it’s for turning an underutilized piece of

property into something that makes a major contribution to

our budget, helping us to control your taxes.

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The Third and Valley project will provide 255 public

parking spaces, an increase of around 70 public spaces

more than we had before, and 215 apartments, with 21 of

those affordable, which, by the way, will be the first new

onsite affordable units built in South Orange’s history in

the downtown. This project will also be taking a piece of

municipal property that was tax exempt and turning into a

property generating over $570,000 to our budget every

year, with automatic increases built in. That is a huge

additional revenue when you consider the total municipal

budget is $33.5 million, and the tax levy is about $22

million The new revenue from 3rd & Valley represents

about 1.5% of the budget, right there, in one year, in one

property, coming from something that was generating

nothing previously. You can think of it this way: if we had

to raise the same $570,000 in new taxes instead, the

average assessed homeowner would pay an additional

$116.89. And again, this is just one project, that will have

that level of impact

And from a larger development perspective the future of

population growth shows people are moving towards

transit focused urban and semi-urban environments, and

the more we in-fill property that is already “developed” the

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more we can protect South Orange’s and New Jersey’s

beautiful, beautiful areas that should never, ever be

developed on. We have gained recognition state-wide on

numerous occasions for the smart and sustainable

development we’re doing. The difference in perception out

there, when I attend events and meet with people in other

parts of the state, and get asked to participate on panels

and lead discussions, and get introduced to new

developers, is 180 degrees from what it was four years

ago, when I had to go out to beg to get a developer to

come to South Orange - and now we get emails almost

every week or two from someone looking to invest in

South Orange. And considering how many business

owners who already own property are deciding to now

reinvest in new properties in South Orange, that’s the

ultimate endorsement of the confidence in our shared

future.

And we’re doing this development with an eye towards

sustainability. Because caring for our planet and doing

what we can to reduce our impact is a value we share.

Not only do our jitney’s run on biodiesel and more and

more of our municipal vehicle fleet is made up of more fuel

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efficient and hybrid vehicles, but we’re doing major

renovations of buildings like Village Hall with an eye

towards sustainability by improving HVAC efficiency and

with the plan to do geothermal. The 3rd and Valley project

will be LEED silver, and we hope any future municipal

building renovations will earn a LEED certification,

something we could require if we want to. We have

electric vehicle chargers in the downtown, and at the new

Gateway apartments. We have car sharing in our

downtown that’s been so widely used by residents that

zipcar added a third vehicle to the fleet recently. We’re

building our complete streets programs, tightening

regulations around impermeable surfaces, requiring new

buildings to have bicycle storage, and will even start to

have bike racks on our jitneys this upcoming year.

Citizens and government are working together to help

residents understand the value and make decisions about

solarizing their home. The best example of these

collaborations is that one of our former environmental

commission superstars, Walter Clarke is now a trustee,

and has been able to continue his great work around

environmental issues, for example taking point with

Howard Levison on solving our water problems, and

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working with our engineering office on a number of others,

as an elected official on the Board.

I was in Costa Rica in January, and after being amazed as

I rode a motorcycle through the mountains of the country,

at how many wind farms I saw, I looked up the statistics

on renewable energy in Costa Rica and found that over

99% of the country’s energy comes from renewable

sources. In the US it’s around 11 or 12%. By no means is

it fair to compare the two side by side, but we all know we

can and need to be doing better. So what if our federal

government can’t seem to make enough progress, let’s

show them how it’s done by setting an example in South

Orange, let’s set our own goal for us to hit regarding

where our municipal and town-wide energy use comes

from and work towards that. There are at least 30 solar

installations on private homes, and another 140 have

expressed interest in a system. Let’s keep that moving,

and keep improving what we do. Let’s show ‘em all how

it’s done.

Speaking of setting example, there aren’t many places

better to look to that than our police department.

[slide]

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Crime is going down in South Orange. Every year. And

last year to this year, we saw around a 20% decrease - in

one year, most of that in the “thefts” category, where the

diligence of our officers, especially our detectives, is a

reputation that is known. Our officers are incredibly

diligent, our detectives are creative and move fast, and our

technology is getting better and better at supporting them

in showing people how big of a mistake it is to come to

South Orange and commit a crime.

- We could spend the whole night here listening to

stories of our police department solving crimes, when

threats were made online anonymously directed

towards Seton Hall’s campus, the out of state person

was tracked down through a multi-agency

cooperative, was quickly found, or someone posing

as selling iPhones on Craigslist with the intention of

robbing the people who he would arrange meetings

with, who was tracked by our detectives and arrested.

Our officers stay ahead of the curve when it comes to

technology, from tracking movements and finding

early warning signs when we had “flash mob”

problems in our downtown, to the above mentioned

crimes.

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Our investments in the Police Department, which we value

so highly, includes the strengthening of our technology,

improving internet speeds, buying new cameras which are

unbelievably valuable in solving crime, purchasing of new

vehicles, that are now all wheel drive for inclement

weather, a brand new Records Management and

Computer Aided Dispatch system, and doing the biggest

overhaul to our radio system that’s ever been done in this

town, that when completed will literally put us on the

cutting edge of communications technology in the state

and country. Our investments include reshuffling space

and expanding the work environment for the detective

bureau, fixing up several aspects of the PD’s HQ that were

in desperate need of attention, and a process set in

motion to do a much more major overhaul. Many of these

initiatives came from dozens of community meetings and

programs, from discussions with Seton Hall students to

senior citizens, and all with an eye towards

professionalism and courtesy, which builds enormous

trust, for good reason, in our community around our police.

I’ve personally seen these men and women, not just as

the Village President, but as a volunteer with the Rescue

Squad, and they don’t hesitate to get their hands dirty,

sometimes, very dirty, to do what they can to help. This

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year, we’re even launching a good behavior citation where

our police will reward youths for their good actions, not just

stop the bad ones.

It’s worth especially these days, reflecting on the true

character of some of our officers, as being a police officer

is not just about catching the bad guys, but helping the

good guys -> Story from Lonero about medical call.

We were able to add a brand new ladder truck to our fleet,

at very little cost to the Village because of some

meticulous grant writing, and we have seen a change in

leadership as our longtime Chief Jeff Markey retired, and

the department has been handed to Acting Chief Sullivan,

with a permanent appointment imminent, which will lead

our department through another generation of growth and

professionalism. This is a fire department that has literally

led the way in the entire nation for fire safety in

collaboration with Seton Hall. Our department has gone on

over 1,800 many calls, including assisting with heavy

rescue operations on several serious motor vehicle

accidents, and they do so professionally and competently,

as they occupy our iconic and historic firehouse

downtown. They respond to smoke alarms, to downed

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trees, to downed wires, to flooding conditions to medical

calls needing rescue operations, and they are there in

seconds ready to assist in whatever way is needed - I’ve

been on many calls and seen them work both knocking

down fires in minutes before it can spread to the next

house, and assisting in medical and other situations and

they do a fantastic job.

Our Rescue squad, which is almost entirely donation

funded, with only the smallest support from the village,

operates something truly incredible, and I know that from

both being on the rescue squad since 2010 as well as

being the Village President. They responded to more calls

last year than years past, with a total volume of 1255 calls,

including over 200 to Maplewood, and mutual aid to

Newark, West Orange, Millburn and even Jersey City.

They’ve created a cadet program, bringing dozens of high

school students onto shifts, teaching them not only

valuable medical knowledge but real leadership and

teamwork skills you can only learn when someone else’s

life is literally on the line. And in addition to the well over

15,000 volunteer hours put in on shifts and responding to

calls, yes, 15,000 hours, the members found the time to

run the organization and participate in drills at Newark

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Airport, and teach over a dozen school classes in our

schools and with community groups.

Our Department of Public Works. Another busy winter for

them.

They don’t always get thought about in the public safety

category, but boy do they deserve to, as they are out there

when the weather is at the worst, not just salting and

plowing and clearing debris so people can get to work and

where they need to be the next day, but ensuring that

emergency vehicles, during the worst of weather, can get

to you if you need them.

Outside of that, through the year though, DPW collected

1,200 tons of recycling material, which netted us over

$150,000 in revenue. They planted 70 trees, pruned 400,

inspected an additional 100 trees, removed 125 trees and

ground 100 stumps. Part of this is in reaction to the

damage that old and ailing trees caused during the storms

we had in 2011 and 2012, and our DPW is going to

continue to be proactive about inspecting and fixing where

necessary.

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And remember, if you think something needs to be looked

at, hop on your mobile phone or computer and submit the

request right to them with our SOConnect app, which

DPW used to respond to over 400 direct issues this year.

We also have to thank DPW working with our engineering

office for all the work they’ve done to help beautify and

improve many of our parks, playgrounds and public

spaces, including a lot of the work around Spiotta Park

and in other areas of the downtown.

We’re also looking at plans to elevate the offices in their

garage on Walton by building a second floor to reduce the

impact severe weather has on their operations, finally

providing some relief for them from the weather they battle

with to keep us all safe.

Our public library, which as we find ourselves in a constant

mission to provide equitable access to information and

opportunity finds itself in a more and more important

position in our society, is on its 150th year in South

Orange.

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I was walking down the street one night in Manhattan and

had a thought that I should mention here, especially as the

library embarks on plans to not only renovate and restore

it’s now main building, but the beautiful historic Connett

building. Look at quality of architecture that went into

these buildings in the time period they were built in this

country.. libraries, schools, and other government or public

buildings, including not just our original library building, but

our Village Hall and Firehouse, among others. The

incredible care and detail exemplified in these buildings, it

shows our commitment to these public services. And our

library is no different.

Last year, 10,250 people attended 515 library programs, in

addition to 50 programs held by community groups. And a

whopping 77,800 items were checked out (about 6%

downloadable). And on top of that, they answered 13,000

reference desk questions and issues 1,200 new library

cards.

Our administration and our finance office is one of the

most streamlined in local government. And the people

working there are constantly trying to find ways to make

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things work better, to use less paper, to optimize how

quickly data is processed - all of these optimizations

saving us time and money. And working together with our

board, most notably Howard Levison as Chair of the

Trustee Finance Committee, we’ve restructured our long

term debt to take advantage of historically low interest

rates, saving taxpayers literally millions of dollars over the

life of the debt. We have also implemented a debt

reduction policy where we have paid down at least a half

million dollars more in debt that new debt authorized, for

three years in a row, and 2015 will make a fourth year in a

row that we are responsibly paying down our debt instead

of adding to it.

Working with Trustee Davis Ford, Chair of the Legal and

Personnel Committee, our Administration has overhauled

our personnel policy manual, upgraded our employee

performance evaluation program, encouraged much more

professional development and training in our staff. We

have also increased accountability for our staff and

implemented a single source employer medical

relationship for pre-employment physicals, workers

compensation injuries, and sick leave verification. The

result is a dramatic reduction in lost work days.

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Our IT department has built out a hardware infrastructure

that allows us power the mobile data usage that is getting

more and more built into operations at the police

department, fire department, code enforcement and

others, where they can use computers and tablets in the

field to access and sync information. Our IT experience

and expertise let to us now providing IT services for

Maplewood, a service which we are now one full year into,

which generates revenue for South Orange while vastly

improving Maplewood’s IT backbone. This is something

we hope to expand to other towns, doing our part to help

create regional cost-sharing initiatives.

As we modernize from an IT perspective, that brings about

modernization everywhere. Our village codes, many of

which have been out of date and disorganized, are being

brought up to modern standards and better organization,

through a recodification process, and the same time,

improving many of our internal regulations and policies.

Agendas will soon be entirely created electronically, and

the packets and supporting information will be part of

cloud-based workflow that will eliminate paper from the

process entirely, make the agenda creation process easier

and make it even easier to access public documents

through a major upgrade to our records systems,

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laserfiche, much of which are initiatives being led and run

out of our Clerk’s Office.

Our Engineering Department continues to improve our

infrastructure, reconstructing and repaving roads, and

overseeing improvements to our buildings, facilities and

parks across town.

Our Building Department has seen record years, with

business booming from all of the redevelopment activity I

discussed above, as well as many major projects by our

great partner in the Village, Seton Hall University. In fact,

building department revenues have risen from about

$350,000 in 2011 to over $1 million in 2014, and that’s

important, not to just the revenue, but to show how

remarkably active people are right now in investing back

into their properties in South Orange.

Our Recreation and Cultural Affairs Department continues

to host amazing art projects and galleries through the

Pierro Gallery, and offer sports, programming, classes and

activities that meet the needs of all of our residents, young

and old, and they assist in some of our most well-attended

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public events in and around town, from the historic softball

game, to opening day for our little league to many of our

concerts.

Our Tax Department, under the direction of our Tax

Collector, while not always seen as the most glamorous

job, is vital to our operations and continues to excel,

routinely boasting tax collection rates around 99%, much

higher than many local governments.

Our Health Department has made great strides in

connecting resources to the community, for example

hosting health fairs every year that increase both the

number of people who attend and the kinds of services

offered.

Also, while not a Department, an equally important part of

our success derives from the expertise, advice and hard

work of our Village professionals, including Village

Counsel, Redevelopment Counsel, our Village Planner,

and all of our other professionals.

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And we’re doing all of this while having fun!

Our relatively new South Orange Village Center Alliance,

and it’s working groups are keeping the downtown clean,

helping businesses renovate and new ones move in, and

helping us hold a ton of fantastic events.

Play Day in the downtown, sure to become one of

SOVCA’s signature events, was a massive success, as

was the historic softball game played where some of the

greats have walked. We held a food truck festival on

Irvington Avenue which brought in between 2,500 and

3,000 people from in town and out of town to an area they

didn’t necessarily know was teeming with great new

businesses.

We had more firsts this year too - our first official volunteer

appreciation event, thanking some of the people, some of

whom are here tonight for all the work they do. We had

our first menorah lighting to go with a christmas tree

lighting in as long as anyone can remember. And of

course, our movies in the park, Downtown after sundown,

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and concerts in the park brought in record attendance

levels and just were a hell of a good time.

And speaking of record attendance levels, the South

Orange Performing Arts Center has improved the

programming it offers, has improved how efficient its

operations are run, has gotten more grants, supported

more local arts and theater programming and every day is

becoming more and more of an institution in our

community that we find ourselves struggling to remember

having lived without.

And that only the scratches the surface of how much all of

our employees do on a regular basis.

Let’s think about it this way, to wrap up this section of

tonight’s talk….here’s a number

slide with 19

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No, that’s not how old I was when I was elected. Or how

many minutes are left in tonight’s talk. Or the temperature,

actually that last one might be right.

This number is how many pennies it costs each

homeowner for every hour of police services. Nineteen

cents. Per home. Per hour.

That’s almost a half dozen police patrol officers on the

street, several more detectives and dispatchers working,

all of whom are incredibly well trained and community

conscious. Nineteen cents an hour, is $4.62 per day. For

about what most people pay for home internet and TV you

get not just the benefit of police ready to respond to your

call in a time of need, but the proactive benefits this

community gets from having a reputation as a place where

police solve crimes as much as they do.

This makes it hard not to believe in what collective action

through our government can accomplish. There are

people out there, a few even in this community, who do

nothing but talk about problems with government, and they

attack anyone who tries to defend the potential of what

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government can do if it’s done right. But in the constant

desire to paint a bad picture, or attack people who are

trying to help, they miss the real story. The story of what

happens when things do go right, and how we learn from

them, how we share them, and how, simply to make more

of them. It’s the story of progress.

There is still the reality, of course, that when you do add

all that up, and the costs to the county and schools, the

taxes here are no doubt high, and although I think I’ve

outlined both the ways in which we’ve helped cut costs

and bring new revenue in, I hope, and do believe, that

most people live here because they fully understand and

have access to understand the immense value - the

quality - that not just a good village with a lowercase v can

provide, but what the larger one, the entire community, is

worth. And as someone who grew up here, who has lived

almost their entire life in Maplewood and South Orange,

and knows that who I am today was shaped by this

community, I know the value is priceless.

Speaking what the entire community is worth, let’s take a

little conceptual and philosophical adventure into what big

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G government means and why it’s so important for us to

talk about and think about here tonight.

Most of what we’ve heard so far you can think about as

the output side. We heard about the incredible

performance of the institution of government we have, and

just a taste of our plans for how we’re going to keep

improving it. But like I said before, that’s only one part of

the picture. Talking only about the institution of

government is like treating symptoms not the causes. The

other side is how we can think about the broader picture,

which you can think about almost as the input: How does

the institution get created? Where does it come from?

How is the framework thought about and advanced? In it’s

most basic form: What is all the stuff that goes into making

all those things that we just talked about actually happen?

It’s difficult to talk about, much less, understand, much

less measure. But we’ll do our best tonight to do so.

There is an incredibly basic starting point that is worth

mentioning but I don’t think we have the time to get fully

into.

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This basic starting point is this: How a person goes from

living in a particular environment, without necessarily

understanding or or even really genuinely interacting with

it, work -> eat -> watch netflix -> sleep -> repeat; to

becoming an active participant in that environment,

interacting with it and understanding it, and understanding

the limits of their understanding; to then acquiring the

agency of the idea of themselves being able to actually

not just live in, not just interact with, but to actually have

the idea and knowledge that they can change that

environment; to the last step, which is actually becoming

actively involved in shaping it. This idea, and this pathway

is a key component to something I spend a fair amount of

my time studying, and will continue to for much of this

year, as it underpins the entire concept of participatory

governance and democracy. We don’t have a great

understanding how people move along that pathway from

being governed to doing the governing, and what things

can stop them from doing so, and what things can help

them do so.

Several years ago, it was not uncommon to have a dozen

or more people at our board meetings, sometimes up to

hundred or more when a specific issue arose, often people

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with specific feedback, usually in the form of a complaint

or request for some type of service. The meetings were

longer and we spent more time behind closed doors in

executive session. We fielded more complaints at our

meetings, often complaints about things that could have

been easily resolved without the person having to spend

all of that energy to leave their home on a weekday night,

appear on TV and confront us sitting up high on our dais,

especially in such a non-interactive and kind of

oppositional setting.

These days, it is not uncommon now for our Board

meetings to have one person or two people, sometimes

with no comments at all, even as we take action on

important and very well publicly noticed pieces of action.

So what happened? Has our entire town become more

apathetic? Do we do everything perfect? Or did something

else much more interesting happen?

I believe what has happened is we have begun a

transformation in the culture of this big G Government.

Government isn’t just a place you go complain to when

something doesn’t work the right way, it’s not just a

vending machine. A vending machine where you put your

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tax dollars in, select your services, and pick it up from the

drawer, hoping what you selected doesn’t get stuck on

one of the little wires, and force you try to shake the

machine to get what you were expecting and paid for. This

is how, in many places people interact with their

government, and how it used to feel here. [one of my

favorite government analogies]

But now, more than ever in South Orange, our

government isn’t a vending machine you have to shake to

get what you paid for out of it, rather it’s a place you can

go to when you have an idea on how to improve

something. It’s a place you can go to participate and add

value to your surroundings and derive some value for

yourself too.

Now, you can’t just go to a place and make it productive,

wave a magic wand, and this group of people is now

dividing projects up, keeping track of their goals and

working towards something in a collaborative fashion. It’s

something that everyone who is a leader in the system

has to be on board with, and be able to set the right

example for everyone else. We now have with our

governing body, which we did not used to have, and

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assuming your larger population has some of the

prerequisites as we do here, you start to create a culture

where goal is advancing the organization, even if in certain

areas of the organization needs some real serious TLC,

rather than abandoning it, or calling for it’s destruction, or

constantly talking about its worthlessness or inability to do

things, which is how some people approach interacting

with government.

That attitude not only doesn’t get us anywhere, but it

creates an environment of negativity that actively

contributes to things only getting worse as the person

wanting to help worries, for fear of being lumped in with all

those bad things, about actually getting involved first hand.

But those aren’t the mainstream values anymore, not here

in South Orange. Rather the values more so these days

seem to be respecting the process and institution, even if

that means being critical of it, because the goals are

advancement, collaboration and progress, with the

understanding this government is ours to control and use

as we see fit. And if we want to use it for making things

better, well that’s a fundamental right, and responsibility

we have as Americans and as members of this particular

community, to do just that.

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We could measure how many people are on committees

now, active committees, which is a big distinction itself,

which is literally in the hundreds between the Public

Information and Marketing committee, our existing

statutory boards, the library board, the Friends of the

Library, the Community Coalition on Race, the Community

Relations Committee, the Environmental Commission, the

newly re-named Seton Village Advisory Committee, the

unbelievably successful South Orange Village Center

Alliance, the Transportation Advisory Committee, the

Senior Citizens Committee, the Development Committee,

our many ad hoc single issue committees, and so many

more…. we could add up the number of active people on

neighborhood watches lists, thanks in large part to Janine

Buckner, which totals in the thousands, we can look at all

the active and growing neighborhood associations and

block parties and events.

But this isn’t about the numbers, this isn’t a measurement

of quantity it’s a measurement of quality - we have a

community that genuinely values itself, and values being

active, and values being constructive, and values the role

that they as residents, and we as the institution of

government can play together. This is not a small feat.

And it isn’t something that is important to think about just

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within the borders of South Orange. Our community has

always had those values, to some degree. And now that

our political leaders, the people in this room have those

values too, it’s only bringing more people into the process

and creating more environments for collaboration.

Let’s take a moment to place this culture in a larger

context. Obviously this has massive benefit to South

orange, as much of the work I’ve talked about tonight

couldn’t have been done without not just productive and

collaborative elected officials, but without productive and

collaborative community members. But there is something

bigger than that at play too. Collectively, we, as a state, as

a nation and as a world are facing some unbelievable

issues and challenges.

Every day these challenges seem to multiply in their

quantity, in their seriousness, in their complexity and in

their future consequences. Let’s be real: Between urban

violence here in the US and abroad, taking the lives of

tens of thousands per year and wrecking economic

opportunities in areas that need it most, poverty, lack of

access to food, shelter and clean drinking water, a state, a

country and a world where there is simultaneously hunger

49

and starvation as well as food-obsession and obesity,

urban over-crowding, major infrastructure problems that

seriously threaten our safety and our economic future,

ethnic, religious or other historical disputes around the

world that seem to be intensifying and that subsequently

drive extremism in political views elsewhere in the world,

warfare that is becoming more deadly, less accountable

and more easily proliferated, technology that is changing

the very nature of our existence, our thinking, our

interactions, literally, slowly changing what it means to be

human with almost no discussion or understanding of that,

and an entire planet that is reacting to our industrialized

habitation of it in ways that could have the most serious

consequences for us and future generations. And I could

go on. All of these things are real, and they are happening

right now, no matter how much we try to isolate ourselves

from it - some just miles down the road some thousands of

miles across the world.

Yet, somehow as these massive and real problems grow,

and as our ability to learn grows, and our access to

knowledge and science and data grows, and as our ability

to quickly access and talk to other people and cultures

grows, our institutions of governments, especially at larger

levels appear, every day, less and less capable of actually

50

doing anything about any of it. Our leaders appear to be

more and more divided as they are forced to posture for

their party’s own self interests, or run for re-election in

political environments that are superficial, drowning with

anonymous money and just downright bloodthirsty as

many attempt to hijack the system for their own interests

leaving the rest fighting to hold on for the good guys. And

our citizens, they appear to be becoming more civically

apathetic as they lose faith in the leaders and institutions

that are supposed to be bringing us together and forward

not driving us apart and us taking us backwards. Frankly, I

think many of us on a daily basis simply feel overwhelmed,

confused and frustrated, but we’re not sure with what

exactly. We know it’s happening. But we don’t really know

what to do about it, or what it is. We haven’t even figured

out how to talk about these things that bother us. There is

a suicide every 12 minutes in the United States. How can

we have everything that we have, and be so connected as

we believe we are, and be such a developed nation, and

yet every 12 minutes someone takes their own life, a

relative number even higher for people who have already

sacrificed so much for all of us in military service.

Now what does this have to do with the state of this

village? Good question.

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We all live in this world. And whether we want to believe it

or not, or think about it or not, all of those things I just

talked about are not only monumentally important on their

own terms, but they impact our lives, and the lives of the

generations that will come after us, directly and in ways

that deserve the most urgent attention.

And although so many of those problems exist, the

leadership environments, the places where problems are

supposed to be solved are more often than not echo

chambers filled with empty rhetoric based on anger,

hatred and intentional divisiveness that only gets us

farther from a solution.

But that’s not why we need to talk about it. We need to talk

about it because it’s not just about the impact these things

have on us, it’s about the impact that we need to have on

them.

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Now, there are a few people like that in this town, but not

many, maybe a half dozen or dozen at most I think, and

although they still go about their lives in a fashion that’s

built on divisiveness, and do things like generally pursue a

line of public, often anonymous or online discussion that is

entirely focused on the negative and entirely driven by

anger towards everything and everyone with whom they

don’t agree. But those people are not here tonight and no

longer do they really play a role or even influence much of

anything that happens in town anymore. The anger, the

intentional dividing of people for personal or political gains,

the personal attacks, the hatred, the back stabbing, the

egoism…. things that we have all come to almost expect

in “politics” to some degree, doesn’t really exist in our

political environment anymore. It’s been replaced by

something much better - residents, and business owners

and students and elected officials and other community

members who value constructive critical feedback,

honesty, fact-finding, duty, community and collective

progress. These are their values - and their goals are a

better South Orange. That’s why those people are

involved. Not to get something for themselves, or for one

interest group - but because they believe in the future and

a constantly improving South Orange. And that’s amazing,

in itself.

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This culture of big G government, our collective actions,

and what we incentivize and what we allow and value as a

community, and how those ideas and values are codified

into policy and the institutions that carry out those policies

is an outlier, for sure. It is not normal. And it hasn’t always

even existed in South Orange. And it doesn’t in most

places. But that’s why it needs to be talked about it.

Although our responsibility is to encourage this kind of

respectful and collaborative culture here in town, our

responsibility does not end where the next town’s border

begins. We don’t live in a vacuum, and because we are

living in a world and in a country where the government,

with a big g or little g, appears incapable right now of

doing what we are doing, we have to tell our story.

This isn’t about marketing, or about spin or about photo-

ops or anything along those lines that some people who

don’t understand the true meaning of why we’re all here

sometimes call it. It isn’t even about any one of us, it’s

about the role that each of us plays in the larger story.

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A story of a culture of real collaboration, where when you

know you’re doing something right, you don’t protect it,

and hold it close to wield the power that comes with

owning that resource, but rather you take that information

and you tell the world, you broadcast it, and you write

about it, and you tweet about it, and you email about it and

you shout it from the rooftops - you do everything in your

power, which we have a lot of in 2015, to shine light on an

example of good Government in an effort to help others

find a way to do the same.

And that’s what we’re here to do. All of us. Figure out what

good government means, whether it’s the property tax rate

or the culture around how to contribute your ideas to your

community, how to recycle more efficiently or how to

report gaslamp outages better.

Our job is to figure out what those things are, and our job

is bring people into that process, people who want to

contribute, and find a role for anyone who wants to add a

value to it. And we have tremendous human capital in this

community to do that. That’s the input side, the big G

Government.

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And then our job, in little g government - in the institution -

is to get it done, and we have the employees here that will

do that.

And then our job, all of us, is to tell that story, as i’m

attempting to do tonight here with the tradition of the State

Of The Village which I started in 2011 and will hopefully

carry on into the future.

We have shown that when you have the right input - a

community and governing body committed to progress,

you get the right output - a government that performs

exceptionally well.

The tax increases are going down and the budget is

stabilized. More money and investment is coming into the

town right now than ever before in it’s history. Crime is

going down every single year and our police are building

even more and more trust with our community not only

using their smarts, but using smart technology. Our entire

technology infrastructure is being upgraded and going to

be able to support whatever it is we decide in the future

we want it to support. Our employees, who are being

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treated with respect and dignity, are performing incredibly

well, and put more passion into their jobs when they know

they’re truly respected. Our roads get plowed when the

snow comes down [just like we saw this past weekend]

Your kids can find an unbelievable array of options of

things to get involved with at the library or at the Baird.

Our arts and cultural standing is not only becoming more

and more known state-wide, but our performing arts center

is becoming an incredibly well visited and respected

institution within South Orange. Our government

operations are more transparent than they ever have

been, and it’s safe to say, I think more than any other town

in the state, and certainly one of the best in the entire

country. Our governing body, Oh, our governing body the

driver of so much of this direction is not focused on petty

personal squabbles, but is mature, and reasonable and

productive, with every single trustee who was introduced

earlier working hard at making a difference, not making a

point, and they are responsive, and long-term and willing

to always put South Orange first. And our community is

involved and finding ways not only to derive value for

themselves in their participation, but adding tremendous

critical value to everyone around them. We have more

events in our downtown and around town than we ever

have, bringing people together in an age when sometimes

technology can actually drive us farther apart. We have so

many new businesses opening up in our downtown,

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enough that it has brought myself and other members of

the village government around the state talking about

business recruitment and downtown revitalization. We

have a relationship with Seton Hall University that’s more

amicable, and closer than anyone can remember it being,

with excitement and interest not coming from any one

group, but from elected officials, residents, students and

faculty and administrators all at the same time. South

Orange is on the map - no doubt - not just as a place

where the government is performing well, which is just the

easy story to tell, but South Orange is on the map as a

place where people want to visit and want to move and

want to raise their families in and want to be part of,

because the community is performing well.

So yes, I stand here confidently tonight to tell you the state

of the village is strong - both the small v village and the big

V Villlage. And I am not only happy to report that to you

tonight, I am proud, and honored and humbled to have the

opportunity to participate in this epic story with all of you -

not just for what we’re doing here in town, but for the

example we are, and must set, for the rest of the state and

the rest of the country at a time when they need leaders

like us.

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And I am excited, thrilled and ready for the challenges that

we all will face, because I know, without a drop of

uncertainty that by truly working together, we will meet and

overcome those daunting challenges I mentioned, and

more that we don’t even know yet, challenges here in

South Orange and challenges beyond our borders. And in

doing that, we will show those who don’t yet know the

power inside each of them and all of them together, that

they have the power and ability to shape the world around

them into what we all dream of it to be.

So thank you to everyone for being here tonight and those

of you watching and at home for contributing to what we

have here - this would not be possible without all of you.

Our job is nowhere near done, and no matter what role

any of us plays in this process, I thank you for your service

and your commitment to a better Village and ultimately a

better world. The State of the Village is strong, yes, and I

know and trust it will become stronger, thanks to all of you.

Thank you.