Blog

Please head over to the Village website to read the summary from our Annual Organization Meeting from May 19th.

You can find the latest summary from our Board meetings here! Don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions!

To view the summary from the April 28th 2014 Board of Trustees meeting, please visit the South Orange website!

Watch below, the panel: How are cities like Belfast more and more embracing a culture of innovation? Watch Kainos's Tom Gray chair a discussion with then Mayor of Belfast Mairtin O Muilleor, Martin Reilly; Mayor of Derry, Mike Savage; Mayor of Halifax, Canada, and Alex Torpey; Mayor of South Orange, NJ. 

After our own internal discussions and agreement from the Board that the more ways that we can help summarize and share information about what happens during the Board meetings the better, my administration will now be releasing a short summary of the prior Board meeting after each one. These summaries aren't the official record, but rather one sustainable, institutionalized place (rather than having it written by one particular elected official), where people can go to get information on what happened in the last Board meeting. Check it out on the South Orange website.

The Millennial Action Project, a DC-based post-partisan leadership organization, featured South Orange's new Village President for a Day program, highlighting the importance of helping inspire young people towards civics participation. Click the image below to head over to their blog to read more!

One of the most important things a public servant can do is help inspire those who will one day replace them. Even though we've been hard at work in town, with a budget that’ll include what’s likely to be the lowest tax increase since the 1990s, the groundbreaking with Jonathan Rose Companies on the 215 rental unit, 533 parking space, LEED-silver mixed-use project on Third and Valley, getting a $340k grant for the Fire Department and $150k for the library and so much more, investment in our future is still a top priority, and not just from a budgeting perspective. This was more clear to me than ever this past December, when I was speaking to classes at South Mountain elementary. A third grade student asked whether a woman could be mayor. After explaining that fortunately people are much more open minded than they used to be about politics, and that with hard work and the right motivations, anyone can be anything, I was inspired by the reaction from the young girl, who clearly from this moment forward was determined to hold public office. In recognition of this student's interest in civics participation, I began the "Village President For A Day" program in...

South Orange's transparent budget tool powered by OpenGov, often cited as one of the most transparent municipal budgets in New Jersey, if not the United States, helped earned the Village recognition in the Belfast Telegraph following my visit to the Belfast Technology Conference on a panel with several other mayors. There is a more in-depth write-up coming from the conference, but please take a look at the article below. We're happy to have our initiatives discussed on the international stage with other leading voices like the City of Belfast! Read the article by clicking below: