SPMC Funds New Sound Speakers for Memorial Day Parade

The Scotch Plains special improvement district voted this week to use some of its fund to rent speakers for the Memorial Day parade.

The decision followed complaints from several residents at the council meeting on Tuesday, who said that they and others have had trouble in the past hearing comments from the mayor and others because of the sound system used at the parades.

The Scotch Plains Management Corporation will be renting an 8-speaker system for $975, using miscellaneous funds in the existing budget.

"If this is something that the taxpayers want, we should give it to them," Dominick Verdic, a local property owner and SPMC member, said Wednesday.

The board also approved joining a magazine with several other SIDs that could, among other things, list store vacancies. It could also help in retaining and recruiting businesses, said David Biagini of FirsTEAM Management, the firm recently hired to manage SPMC.

SPMC is also soliciting advertisements for a Scotch Plains magazine it hopes to publish next month or in July and distribute to all Scotch Plains residences.

The magazine will serve as a directory of the businesses and property owners in the SID. The group will also accept ads from businesses outside the improvement district, include a town calendar and possibly other features that have helped stores and professionals in other towns bring in more business, Biagini said.

"This organization, at this point, needs to focus on renting empty stores and ads to get people into town," Verdic said.

Further in the future, the board plans to create a 30-second television commercial to air on local TV, possibly as soon as August, and is planning to continue its TV show on SPTV a couple times a month starting in September.

The SPMC's 2010 budget, which allocates funds for many of these projects, was approved by the township council on Tuesday.