Council Approves Referendum Question for Open Space Funds

Believe it or not, the next election is right around the corner and so is a referendum question for borough residents.

On Monday night, the Borough Council unanimously approved a resolution that authorizes a non-binding referendum question on the November ballot that proposes amending the “Open Space ordinance to allow the funds to be used for acquisition of open space and improvements to recreation facilities.”

Approval was delayed at recent council meetings so the exact language of the resolution could be hammered out, and last night was no exception. After the explanatory statement was modified with new language at the June 13 meeting and the resolution was tabled, the statement was altered again last night at the recommendation of Council President Michael Gennaro.

Gennaro asked that the words “and maintenance of” remain in the statement, while the words “long term capital” not be added in before "improvements" in the last line. Therefore, the explanatory statement would read: “The non-binding public question herein proposes expansion of the permitted use of the funds collected in accordance with the Open Space Ordinance (§70-1). In addition to acquisition of open space, improvement to and maintenance of both passive and active recreation facilities, which may include fields, parks, playgrounds, and other similar or related improvements, would be a permitted use of said funds.”

“The reason being is I think when you’re doing something like this, you want to give the governing body the maximum discretion necessary to be able to spend funds as it sees fit,” Gennaro said. “I think we ran into problems with this particular referendum in the past where our hands were tied and I don’t think we ought to be tying any of those hands going into the future.”

Hern said although the items Gennaro took issue with were recommendations from the Community Activities Advisory Board, and the council appreciates their perspective, he agrees with Gennaro.

“I tend to agree with the Council President in terms of giving this council and future councils the ability to respond to needs that may arise, and are not necessarily perceivable at this point, in order to achieve the goals we’re trying to achieve right here with this resolution and that’s to improve the condition of our athletic fields,” Hern said.

The council came to a consensus and the resolution unanimously passed.

This idea for an open space referendum was first introduced for discussion at the March 29 meeting by Hern.

“I don’t know whether a referendum such as this would pass or not, but I do think the times have certainly changed, perspectives have changed and it could be that there’s support for using open space funds to pay, for instance, debt service on bonds that might be used to turf fields and to address that,” Hern said at the March 29 meeting.

At that same meeting, Gennaro said he thinks the biggest impediment toward improving fields in the borough has been the source to do it.

“We’ve all been through a lot of discussions and decisions over the last year about where those sources might come from and some of us I think are concerned about increasing burdens on tax payers to raise taxes to pay for the fields,” Gennaro said.

When the last referendum came out, there was concern among people that perhaps the language of the open space enabling language for the tax and the change was designed to allow funds to be expended on fields,  Gennaro said.

“Oddly enough, I can tell you in my conversations with the then mayor and other council people, there wasn’t any intent to use it to improve fields at the time but nevertheless, people thought there might be and they voted against.” Gennaro said. “But a lot has happened since then and certainly if we were going to consider using those funds for fields, I think it’s only appropriate to ask the tax payers as to whether or not they would approve it since that referendum was held in the past.”

After further discussion at both council meetings in April, along with draft referendum language, the council had a referendum resolution on the May 9 meeting agenda for any further discussion and hopefully for a council vote.

At that meeting, the council briefly addressed