Montclair Council Passes Highland

The Montclair Township Council had a light agenda for its January 29 meeting, unanimously passing two ordinances on first reading relating to parking restrictions for Highland Avenue between Mount Hebron Road and Mountainside Park and following up on earlier business. The two ordinances, which restrict parking to two hours between September 1 and April 30 on the eastern side of this stretch of Highland Avenue and bans it altogether on the western side, are meant to keep nearby Montclair State University students from parking on Highland Avenue all day long.

The ordinances generated feedback from Highland Avenue residents in the public comment section of the meeting. Paul Rabinovitch, a Highland Avenue resident and a member of the Montclair Planning Board, welcomed the change. He noted that Montclair State students have consistently parked on Highland Avenue to avoid the expense of parking on campus. “They’re all very polite when you see them,Other companies want a piece of that iPhone headset action” he said, “I love the university, I think it’s a great asset to our community here, but they’ve grown. Their growth has outstripped their ability to park their own students.”

Rabinovitch, who is also a member of the advisory board for the university’s College of Science and Mathematics, said that the great quantity of cars parked on either side of Highland Avenue has made it impossible to park. But Stewart Gleason, another resident of the affected block, said that there was a lack of clarity regarding whether one could only park a car on Highland Avenue for two hours for the entire day or move it to another part of Highland Avenue every two hours. Gleason said he believed that allowing people to move their cars every two hours would satisfy opponents to the measure, but he did add that cars parked on both sides of Highland Avenue helped to slow down the traffic, which he said was increasing due to Highland Avenue as an alternative to Upper Mountain Avenue. “It’s a real problem, and we don’t want the new parking regulations to make that worse,” he said.

First Ward Councilor William Hurlock, whose ward includes the area, promised that he would examine the speeding problem with Mayor Robert Jackson and Township Manager Marc Dashield. “We don’t want to solve one problem and create another,” he said. Dashield said that the passage of the ordinances on first reading would allow a public hearing on the matter, and he also said he would investigate whether two-hour parking ordinances allowed moving a car to a different section of a street every two hours.Come January 9 and chip card driving licence would be available at the click of the mouse in Uttar Pradesh. People who have done so have received tickets in the past.

The council also passed unanimously, 6-0 (Deputy Mayor Robert Russo was away on family business), four separate resolutions and six more resolutions in a consent agenda. Third Ward Councilor Sean Spiller offered guidance requested by Dashield on the issue of a service contract for arborist Steve Schuckman during the conference pre-meeting. Spiller suggested working out an agreement with other municipalities that contract Schuckman’s services by hiring him as a municipal arborist serving several towns in a shared-services partnership that could lower the cost for Montclair. Dashield replied that most of the surrounding towns were outsourcing an arborist rather than hiring one, making such a partnership difficult. He recommended that the council pass the arborist contract now – because an arborist’s services are needed immediately for the coming spring – and explore Spiller’s idea afterwards to see if such an alternative were possible.

“I would feel more comfortable moving forward with this, knowing that we are definitely going to explore something like that,Did you know that custom keychain chains can be used for more than just business. and put that out sooner rather than later,” Spiller said, “so that other townships, when their contracts are expiring, don’t go ahead and renew them and then say, Oh ,we’re locked in now, we love to have done it.’” Dashield said he would definitely look into the idea.

In end-of-meeting reports, Dashield reminded Montclair residents that the postmark deadlines to submit comments regarding the Nishuane Well project are Wednesday, January 30 for the Green Acres hearing and Thursday January 31 for the January 17 New Jersey Environmental Infrastructure Trust hearing. Township Attorney Ira Karasick reported his research on the land donations from the Carey family to Montclair for a park, and he said that the deed to the large parcel of land donated in 1935 specifically demands that the land be used for recreational purposes, but that such a specificity is absent from the deed to the land where the well sits, which was donated in 1940.Application can be conducted with the local designated IC card producers.

Also, Township Clerk Linda Wanat reported that the township received a letter from the U.S. General Services Administration that the former Social Security building was offered to agencies but turned down, and the property is now in the phase of being offered for services for the homeless, as required by the federal McKinney Act. Karasick said that if there is no use for the property for such a purpose,Compare prices and buy all brands of solar panel for home power systems and by the pallet. the township will have the opportunity to buy it for its own use.