Board of Trustees Strike Stipends, Title Changes From Village Charter

The South Orange Board of Trustees unanimously voted to strike a resolution to approve a Charter Review, which included controversial items, and instead approved a new version of the Charter on first reading.

The Village Charter has to come before the Board no less than once every 12 years for approval. Although most of the changes to the charter are uncontroversial, a few aspects had the Trustees in disagreement.

“This ordinance makes a handful of changes to our charter,” said Village President Alex Torpey during a previous meeting. “A bunch of them are outdated, gender specific and parts of it talk about local laws that are now trumped by state statute. There are many, many changes that nobody is that concerned about.”

However, the Board was could not agree on several aspects which include dropping “Township” from the The Township of South Orange Village, changing the title of the Village President to Mayor and the Board of Trustees to Village Council or adding stipends for elected officials with $1,800 for Trustees and $2,400 for the Village President.

The controversial items were put to a referendum in 2011 and each were passed by voters. 2,067 residents voted in favor of dropping “Township” from the town's name. 1,561 people voted in favor of changing the titles and 1,333, or 50.5 percent voted in favor of stipends.

Collum made the motion to strike the ordinance once it was apparent that a majority of the Trustees would be voting against the first draft.

Instead, the Board unanimously voted in favor of the revised version, which did not include stipends or title changes, to applause from more than 30 residents in attendance of the Dec. 23 meeting. Trustee Steve Schnall was absent from the meeting.

The passed ordinance does include dropping "Township" from the title of The Township of South Orange Village, said Collum. According to Torpey, the word “Township” was only added to the title to make South Orange eligible for one specific grant, which because of the wording, was only available to townships in New Jersey.

“I would say voting on this particular version, without the recommendations of the charter review committee and without the recommendations of the voters, I'm a little disappointed and it's disrespectful to well over 1,000 voters who asked us to make these changes.”

The ordinance will come back before the Board for a public hearing, second reading and adoption at a future public Board of Trustees meeting.