City Council would take control over the Special Improvement District (SID), relegating the Rahway Arts & Business Partnership (RABP) as an advisory board, under legislation to be approved later this month.
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City Council introduced an ordinance (O-22-21) during a May 19 special meeting that designates itself as the district management corporation controlling the SID. A public hearing and final adoption of the ordinance is scheduled for the June 14 City Council meeting.
The RABP Board of Trustees is currently comprised of seven voting members. There are two managing directors, one whose salary is shared with the city, who run operations of the RABP. Under the new ordinance, a Rahway Arts and Business Advisory Board would include five members appointed by the mayor.
Each of the five voting members would be a member of at least one of the following categories:
- An owner of property within the SID;
- An owner or operator of a business within the SID;
- An owner whose property within the SID is primarily residential use; and,
- President of the Chamber of Commerce.
Terms would be three years in length and begin July 1, except for the chamber president, who serves one-year terms. The terms would end Dec. 31 and then be staggered beginning Jan. 1, 2022, with the mayor appointing two members to one-year terms and two others to two- and three-year terms, respectively.
Five non-voting members would include the mayor, city administrator, city engineer, police director, and director of engineering and land use, if that person is not also city engineer.
During the RABP’s quarterly board meeting on May 20 — a day after City Council introduced the ordinance — several members sought clarification as to why the council took action, with some saying they were taken “by complete surprise.” Board members asked why it’s happening and why the board was given such short notice about the decision and receiving information. “I’m just disturbed in the way we were treated and I expected better from City Council,” Trustee Ron Dolce said.
Councilwoman At-large Joanna Miles was in attendance at the RABP’s meeting and recorded questions to take back to the governing body. Trustee Larry Fishman asked Miles whether she was aware of any dissatisfaction by council members with the operation of the board and the SID. “I will take this back to City Council and respond to all the questions,” Miles replied.
Schwartz did not make a comment during the discussion at the the May 20 RABP. He did not return an email seeking comment by presstime on Tuesday morning.
In a telephone interview on Friday, City Administrator Robert Landolfi said he had a conversation with Board Chairman Joel Schwartz about a month ago, looking at a new direction for the board and bringing some diversity and new blood. “He said a couple of things and it struck a chord. I don’t think it would’ve been as sweeping as he would’ve envisioned but you plant a seed, it grows a tree,” he said.
The SID has been very much an events-oriented organization., Landolfi said. The biggest change is going to be philosophical, with the board becoming much more of an economic development and support organization, he added.
The first step in that transformation will be a “visioning plan” to define the downtown and what it should be, being “very, very aggressive” in implementing that vision to the benefit of hopefully all the current members. “That’s not to say that events weren’t good. At the end of the day, there’s much more concrete or definitive approaches to that type of development and support,” Landolfi said. “To a certain extent, that needs to be from the ground up, not top down, and needs to flow from business community and not forced upon from on top. That type of dialogue doesn’t seem to have been taking place,” he said.
City Council approves the annual SID budget, which typically had been about $140,000, generated by a special assessment on about 138 downtown properties since the early 1990s. An expanded SID would have a budget of about $700,000. The council recently approved a budget of $325,000 for 2021.
In 2010, the city transferred management of the SID from the now-defunct Rahway Center Partnership to the Rahway Arts District, now the RABP. A month after the 2014 mayoral election, City Council approved the expansion of the Special Improvement District beyond its downtown borders to include all commercial properties throughout the city, which spurred a lawsuit by a group of business owners that was finally decided in 2019.
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