CITY COUNCIL: Crime, bubble gum, trees (again) and potholes - No one was happy

PLAINFIELD (July 5, 2005) - Tuesday night’s post-holiday council meeting began with a temporary suspension of the regular business for the purpose of making a public statement. City Council President Linda Carter addressed the public in order to make clear the Council’s distress about crime in the city and to acknowledge the many phone calls they have received from residents.

“This City Council is very concerned - we have been concerned for quite a while now,” she said.

The city has had 10 homicides so far this year and a shooting victim was clinging to life as Carter spoke. She pledged that the council will be “working every avenue so that citizen feel safe,” and called on City Administrator Norton N. Bonaparte, Jr. to schedule the meeting as soon as next week.

Carter asked that participants include herself, two other council members, Mayor Albert T. McWilliams, Public Safety Director Jiles Ship, Police Chief Edward Santiago, a resident and a police officer to discuss four critical issues about public safety.:

• a seeming increase of guns in the city
• implementation of a crime plan Ship proposed in June
• investigating the kind of help local parolees receive upon re-entry to the city
• need for a communication plan to let the public know what is being done to keep the city safe.

“There are many families that have been affected,” she said, noting that the safety of both city residents and visitors is at stake.

After a brief council meeting that included approval of changes to the city’s juvenile curfew and a revival of the anti-crime “National Night Out,” citizens came up to the microphone with a litany of complaints on “quality of life” issues.

Nancy Piwowar said there are still problems at a liquor store on West Front Street about which she complained previously. Piwowar said she saw three prostitutes in front of it Tuesday evening and the owner is still conducting a flea market and used car business on his property. She also questioned whether city taxis are equipped with child safety seats since they appear to transport many families who don’t have cars. She also said the city should consider requiring permits for house parties which are getting noisier and more frequent.

The council received a set of downtown photos from Rasheed Abdul-Haqq showing new cement sidewalks already marred with chewing gum.

“You’re probably going to have to pass an ordinance prohibiting bubble gum,“ he said. “In Plainfield it’s a disaster.“

The white sidewalks are part of a downtown streetscape project that also included removal of 80 trees and a brick plaza for replacement with new trees and stamped brickwork. Abdul-Haqq and others questioned why one tree was placed in the middle of a narrow sidewalk on Somerset Street, but City Engineer Carl Turner said the tree was not in the middle, rather that it was in a crack between the sidewalk and the impressed brick.

His defense was met with much head-shaking and muttering by citizens in the audience.

The annual Plainfield Art Festival will be held in Library Park on Saturday, July 16th.

Sandra Gurshman testified that the park needs to be cleaned up and nearby potholes should be filled before an expected large crowd comes. Echoing her, Frank D’Aversa said a fountain in the park is not working and was not clean for last year’s festival.

Councilman Ray Blanco agreed about the importance of cleaning up the park and the city’s image in general.

“The trees, the bubblegum - I don’t know where we’re heading,” he said.

Other issues raised included speeding, lack of property code enforcement, not enough public information on city regulations and -- apparently -- not enough accountability to see that the quality-of-life issues brought forward by citizens are followed up by the city and resolved.

When Carter called on Santiago to respond to the public safety complaints, he said eight of the 10 murders involved people who knew each other, meaning there was no danger to the community at large. On speeding, he said the city could go to the state legislature to ask that photo radar be permitted to cut down on speeding. And even when a special Union County police team comes in to help with crime, he said, “We’ll still get 40 phone calls per shift.”

Santiago said Plainfield’s crime rate has gone down 9 percent in the same time frame that New York saw only a 4 percent reduction and the national crime rate went down just 1.4 percent.

Council members grew testy with Santiago’s responses.

“I‘m very willing to consider increasing the resources on the street,“ Councilman Cory Storch said, but he asked what the Police Division would do with the extra officers.

“What is your plan?” Carter asked.

Blanco gestured toward the audience of citizens saying, “They’re angry -- they have a right to be angry.”

--Bernice Paglia

KEYWORDS: city council, crime, police, trees