Check out the press release from South Orange below:

Village officials last night announced that the Public Information & Marketing Committee has been re-established and is looking for community volunteers. The Commitee was originally established in 2008 by resolution, re-established in 2011 by resolution and most recently re-established by the Village President under an executive declaration in the September 10th Board of Trustees meeting.

The committee's goals will be:

1. Advising the Village on timely and effective communication to the community 

2. Assisting in the implementation and execution of marketing, communication and outreach strategies on behalf of the Village

3. Assisting the Village President in recommending to the Board of Trustees policies needed to further these goals

The committee will have five resident seats, in addition to roles for representatives from the South Orange Performing Arts Center, Seton Hall University, the School District, the newly formed Special Improvement District Board, and a trustee liaison and the Village President, as well as an ex-officio representative from the village administration. 

Village President Torpey remarked, "I'm really happy to be bringing some more residents into the process of how we do our communications... they are the best to know what the community needs and we are going to have some really fun and interesting projects to work on, like helping re-do the website, advising the Board on policy, exploring ways to improve informal/conversational meeting spaces, as well as possibly my favorite, the creation of the South Orange Social Media Force Multipliers, a wider group of people dedicated to helping improving South Orange's exposure on social media."  

Trustee Howard Levison, who has expressed interest in serving as the trustee liaison to this committee said, "I'm looking forward to the PIC getting going again. There are a number of projects that enhance our communications and transparency we have wanted to work on, and having resident input will be valuable in assisting us with these various projects." 

Village officials expect positions to fill quickly, and encourage anyone interested to visit the Volunteer Application on the South Orange website at southorange.org/volunteerApply/volunteerApplication.asp.

Any questions please email Cathy Cameron at ccameron@southorange.org or call 973 378 7715 ext 2. Visit southorange.org for more information and the latest news. 

Instead of providing the usual update about various projects in town, I wanted to take this opportunity to share some information about South Orange's municipal budget, the recent reassessment and property taxes. Considering the 3rd quarter tax bills were recently delivered, I thought this would be a good chance to share some information on the process. We have compiled a much more thorough description of these issues and it is posted on southorange.org under 'Understanding your 2012 Tax Bill" on the homepage, and we encourage anyone interested in learning more, or if you have more questions to visit the website and take a look at this document. Here is a summary of the some of the information that we compiled.

 Tax bill due dates: 3rd quarter taxes are due August 20, 2012 (with no grace period).  4th quarter taxes are due November 1, 2012 with a 10 day grace period. Because we adopted our budget earlier this year than in the past, recently mailed bills are actual bills, not estimated as historically sent, and no further bills will be sent.

Tax Levy Increase: South Orange’s total municipal tax levy increased only 1.46% from 2011 to 2012. The municipal tax levy is only 27.7% of your total taxes, with school being the majority at 56.6% and Essex County being 15.7%. This is the second lowest tax levy increase in over a decade in South Orange. The municipal tax increase on the average home was approximately $83, and from 2011 to 2012, we cut budgeted spending (appropriations) by over $1,000,000. If you combine the Village, school and county taxes, the total levy increase is 1.83%.

We have worked hard to keep tax increases as low as possible, and although we all know that our local property taxes are challenging for many of us, especially in this economy, we feel confident that this budget does a good job of keeping the increases to a minimum while still maintaining all of our services and investing in long-term infrastructure and capital projects. Our budget also retains a decent safety net that will ensure we don't get hit with a large increase in years following due to an emergency or large unexpected expense. You can learn a little more about the cost saving measures that we have taken with this year's budget from the 2012 State Of The Village address atsouthorange.org/SOTV. You can also download the 2012 budget in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, and plug your own numbers in to see what impact changes would have.  Unlike the past “read-only” .pdf format, South Orange is one of the first municipalities ever to offer its budget in this accessible format.

Reassessment and Tax Impact: A reassessment was recently done to equalize Village-wide property values due to an extremely high volume of tax appeals (over 12% of all households). The reassessment was performed by independent licensed real estate appraisers, not by the Village or Board of Trustees. There was an overall property value decline in the Village of about 19.2%. However, if your value went down more than 19.2% your taxes would decrease, yet if your value held better and went down less than 19.2%, your taxes would increase. The reassessment impact is in addition to 1.83% tax levy increase. To help ensure residents understand the process and the impact of both the budget and reassessment, we have put together an interactive calculator you can use to see the impact of the tax levy Increase and of the reassessment of your property on your tax bill. You can simply input your 2011 and 2012 assessed values in the calculator on the link at the end of the article on our website at southorange.org to use this calculator.

As always, please contact myself or our administration in Village Hall if you have any questions on the budget, your reassessment or any other information contained in this update. You can contact me by email at atorpey@southorange.org, or contact our administration at 973 378 7715, extension 2 and we can help make sure to speak to the right person and get whatever information you need. Please also feel free to stop by my office hours every Tuesday afternoon.

Make sure to head downtown and to Flood's Hill for free live music in South Orange this summer!

View the schedule of Downtown After Sundown performers. 

Every year after I attend the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City, I am left with an energized and inspired feeling about how government can be a positive force in people’s lives, and how technology can help play a role in making that happen. PDF (Not to be confused with Adobe .pdf files), is one of the largest gatherings of people discussing the intersection of technology and government/politics, and this year I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to present a keynote talk to this amazing audience of technologists, journalists, activists, programmers and, well, government nerds (which you can watch at personaldemocracy.com)

Single Stream recycling is beginning in South Orange and we couldn't be more excited! But there is important information that every resident needs to know. Share and email to your friends and neighbors to ensure everyone has all the info!

South Orange has long been known as a diverse and inclusive community. We were happy to continue that tradition by proclaiming June 2012 as LGBT Pride Month in South Orange, which I presented to the South Orange and Maplewood communities alongside Maplewood Deputy Mayor Kathy Leventhal's proclamation from Maplewood at the SOMA Pride Festival. 

Check out my keynote address at the 2012 Personal Democracy Forum entitled 'The Local Revolution' and why you should consider getting involved and running for office at the local level. 

Russell Thompkins, Jr. performs last Friday night at SOPAC with the Stylistics. Read about this great concert and other's in the South Orange Patch's latest recap of what's happening at SOPAC. 

If you haven't been down to SOPAC lately, check out http://sopacnow.org for full lineups and show information or follow SOPAC on Twitter!

Photo credit Micha Hamilton, SO Patch.