Evesham Town Council Meeting 3/19/2019 - New Public Information Officer and the Sports Unity Program.






The Evesham Town Council Meeting on Tuesday March 19th began with a presentation to the Sports Unity Program of the Marlton Rec Council.  The program is designed to allow children of all abilities to play sports.  It is geared towards disabled children, who work with peer buddies, along with over 125 adult volunteers.  It is a free program that began in 2012 and offers programs in 9 sports, with over 600 'buddies'.  State Senator Dawn Addiego read a proclamation recognizing Mark vonBerg and the entire Sports Unity program for their efforts.

Next was a presentation by David L Wyche for the County Small Business Loan Program, which allows small businesses in Burlington County the ability to borrow funds for their businesses for capital projects for less than the going rate at a bank.  Locally, it allowed Primo's to purchase the building the occupy across Route 70 from Shop Rite.



Following the presentations, the meeting commenced with agenda items.  The entire agenda can be found here.

Ordinance 3-3-2019 and 4-3-2019 both passed 5-0 with no public or council comment.

A lot of time was spent on Ordinance 5-3-2019.  Mayor Veasy began, noting that the ordinance being voted on tonight has two parts.  The first was to reorganize and split the public affairs department into two parts.  Currently Monica Vandenberg is the Director of Public Affairs and Senior Services. Under the new structure, "there shall be a Division of Community Affairs and Senior & Disability Services, the head of which shall be the Director of Community Affairs."  As explained by Mayor Veasy, this new role would essentially expand senior services to include veterans and the disabled.  According to the 2017 census, there are between 9,000 and 11,000 people (between 22% and 26% of the population) that are being under-served in town and would be served by this new role.  Ms Vandenberg would assume this role, and as per Ms Vandenberg, this would allow services to be raised back "to their prior level."

 As part of this ordinance, there would also be created a new Division of Public Information and Municipal Operations, "the head of which shall be the Director of Public Information."    Mayor Veasy talked about how the way the citizens of the town communicates with its government, and vice versa, is not working well.   This new Division would have one employee, the Director.  There would be no staff.

In case that is not clear, this Ordinance changes the title of one directorship and creates one new position, the Director of Public Information.

It was noted repeatedly that a salary has not been set at this time - procedurally, this measure enabling the reorganization had to come first, and then a new position, with a new job description and new salary could be created.

There were a lot of members of the public that came to the meeting to speak out regarding this ordinance, some in favor and some opposed.  There were seniors and some disabled residents, and people who work with them, who praised the council for their initiative.  Those opposed, while making clear they were for expansion of services, were opposed to the ordinance for one of two reasons - they were opposed to the additional expense of the new Director position, or were opposed to expansion of government in any fashion.

During Council remarks, Ms Cooper stated the following:  "I have heard from our CFO... reviewing the capital budget and operational budget that there is room for resources and resource allocation without having to raise taxes for this position and for this expansion of services."  This point was reiterated later in the session by Mayor Veasy, that no new budget allocation or taxes were needed to create this position.

Regarding the expansion of the government, the number of government employees has always fluctuated.  As towns grow and evolve, government has to expand. In 1968 there were 9 members of the Evesham Township Police Department.  By 2018, that number was well over 100.  From 2016 to 2018, full time township employees increased from 183 to 265!  During budget season in those years, I do not recall any protests over the expansion of government, so I am unsure why the creation of a single new position brought out the protest it did.   At the bottom of this post are the snapshots of the "User Friendly Budget"s from the last 3 years showing the increase in employees of the town.  They are available online here.  User Friendly Budgets are only available for the last 3 years.

Councilman D'Andrea noted that different options were looked at including hiring a part time employee at first and determining if that was sufficient, having a shared services agreement with the Evesham Township School District, or expanding a current township job.  He stated he has always been in favor of this resolution.

Councilman DiEnna called for a resolution to table this ordinance, as he felt there were many 'loose ends'.  He did not receive a second.  He then noted that NJ is the most taxed state in the union and people were drowning in taxes.

The measure passed 4-1, with Councilman DiEnna the lone 'no' vote.

Ordinance 6-4-2019 was passed by a 4-1 vote with Councilman DiEnna voting no, without comment.

The rest of the agenda passed by 5-0 votes.

Mayor Veasy stated that the new Farmers Market Adhoc Committee had its first meeting, and appointed David Nett and Gina Marie Cordero to the Committee.  (I think David's last name may be incorrect - I cannot read my own handwriting.)

User Friendly Budget 2016

User Friendly Budget 2017

User Friendly Budget 2018

Note: While I did attend the 3/5/2019 Town Council meeting, I was not able to write up a summary.  For posterity, everything on the agenda passed 5-0 with the following exceptions:

Ordinance 5-3-2019 passed 3-2, with DiEnna and D'Andrea voting no.

Resolutions 102-2019, 103-2019 and 106-2019 through 114-2019 passed 4-0, with D'Andrea not voting.  I spoke with Township Soliticor Primo Cruz after the meeting regarding the non-vote.  He said he would be advising Council members not to vote, rather than abstaining, if they have a conflict.  There was an obscure legal reason for this, but in its most simplistic form, an abstention still counts as a vote and it is safer not to vote at all.  Mr D'Andrea serves on the Evesham Celebration Foundation, and did not vote on any Resolutions involving the ECF.




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