Led by President Ray Blanco, City Council will be faced tonight with deciding on a proposal which only saw the light of night at Monday's agenda session and would change Plainfield forever. That course of action? To designate the Union County Improvement Authority [UCIA] the "developing entity" for four named redevelopment areas -- and potentially unlimited others.
Bernice gives a review of the presentation to Council and sketches the areas proposed in her post today, "UCIA May Redevelop Four Sites", which you should check out if you have not already done so.
There will be plenty to watch and discuss as this unfolds, and designating the UCIA does not automatically have to mean Plainfield has been sold out. However, we have been down this primrose path before and caution is definitely in order. [Think teenage boys hustling their dates to get to 'third base' -- you get the idea.]
For now, the most important question seems to be What's the rush?
Either the Council has been privy to the development of the proposed interlocal services agreement [ILSA] which would bind the parties or it has not. Or some Councillors have been involved and others not. And the reactions Bernice reports from Monday: Were they feigned or real? Don't you hate having to be so cynical? But what option are you left with when faced with this kind of 'transparency'?
That this all would transpire between a Monday and a Wednesday, with no thorough public discussion and without any coverage by the mainstream media, makes one wonder about whether the shift of Council meetings to this new scheme had more to do with shutting the public out of the process than it did with accommodating Jenny Wenson Maier. You would not even know the details of the proposal if you did not go into the Clerk's office to inspect the resolution--and who has time for that between essentially Tuesday and Wednesday?
Judging from Bernice's quote, Council President Blanco is on fire to get this passed tonight. Looks like someone is taking a page from Sharpe James' playbook [I am thinking of the night Sharpe introduced, and the Newark City Council passed, the infamous 'slush fund' ordinance -- all in one evening].
You may want to check this one out. Council's business meeting is tonight at 8:00 PM in the courthouse, Watchung Avenue and East 4th Street.
"Marry in haste, repent at leisure."
Stay tuned...
-- Dan Damon
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