Politics & Government

Council, Management Corp. Begin Working Toward Compromise

The two groups met Wednesday afternoon.

The Scotch Plains Township Council and Scotch Plains Management Corp. on Wednesday took the first steps toward reaching an agreement over the future of the business improvement district.

In a special meeting, the mayor and council, along with a subcommittee of the SPMC, discussed a proposal that would refocus the role of Lisa Schiller and allocate more of the budget toward programming.

The proposed changes come after a very long and contentious council meeting on Feb. 16, in which members of the council, the SPMC and residents argued about whether the SPMC was right in hiring Schiller as a part-time manager, given the cost and her relation to the treasurer, Ted Schiller.

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David Biagini of FirsTEAManagement, the consulting firm now guiding the SPMC's efforts, presented the council Wednesday with a budget approach he said would allow the group to focus more on programs and promotions and less on administration.

"The majority of the budget has to go to programming, that's the bottom line," Biagini said.

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Rather than hiring Schiller as a part-time manager with office space, Biagini suggested allowing her to bid for the role of project manager on each of the group's activities. In other words, Schiller would be eligible to be hired on contract to help organize efforts like the Music Festival.

"She would not be on a weekly salary with office hours," Biagini said. "She'd be hired on an as-needed basis to do projects from the beginning to end. She wouldn't do every project, and the people from FirsTEAManagement would work with her to lessen her hours."

Schiller would have to propose to the SPMC board how many hours she thinks it would take for her to complete a project and what other resources it would entail. Funds to pay her would come out of the amount already allocated in the budget for that particular project.

Biagini presented a proposed reworking of the $62,000 budget that apportions $22,000 to go toward paying his team, $2,500 for operating costs, $5,000 for recruitment, $5,000 for beautification and $2,000 for the "This Week in Scotch Plains" TV show. For activities, $15,000 could go toward the Music Festival, $5,000 toward something like a holiday promotion, and $3,000 toward a smaller scale promotion like a back-to-school event.

Biagini emphasized that his proposal, which hadn't even been reviewed by the SPMC board of directors yet, was simply an idea of what could be accomplished.

"This sounds a lot to me like a compromise," said Mayor Malool of Schiller's decreased role.

Still, she and Councilman Kevin Glover both requested for Biagini to give them a better understanding of what the SPMC may feasibly be paying Schiller out of those project allocations.

"Can we get a better understanding of what the promotional costs for salary would be?" Glover asked.

Schiller reiterated Wednesday that her husband, treasurer Ted Schiller, was willing to step down from his role on the board if the council felt it would eliminate the perception of a conflict of interest.

"Consider trying this experiment as I've outlined it," Biagini said. "We have to step up to that end of it, and I pledge that I'll work with Mrs. Schiller to make it the best it can be."

Another issue that still has to be settled is how to fix the issues with the ordinance that originally created the SPMC.

As it stands, the SPMC is operating as a "hybrid" business improvement district, meaning that the ordinance has elements of a municipal BID, which gives control to the governing body, and a private nonprofit, which gives control to the board of directors.

Malool said the hybrid was intentional at the time of the BID's creation because she asked the attorneys to create an ordinance that allowed the board of directors to take charge, while also allowing the council to maintain some input.

While Biagini said the SPMC could technically still work under this arrangement, Malool said she really felt "we need to figure out what we are and stick with it."

"It seems to me that there's too many questions and we need to really set some rules," she said. "There's an issue with the number of board members—other BIDs have smaller boards, the bylaws have issues."

Malool proposed exploring redoing the ordinance and adopting new bylaws, while Councilman Jeffrey Strauss argued that the council should leave the original ordinance intact because a new one would mean repeating the public hearing process that created the SID in the first place. Strauss instead proposed reworking the bylaws to forge the compromises suggested.

Something else to be resolved is whether the SPMC should be filed with the IRS as a 501(c)(6) instead of a 501(c)(4). Biagini said that a (c)(6) has to have members similar to a chamber of commerce, but that because the businesses pay an assessment fee, they are technically a group with members.

"With David's experience we have a good opportunity to draft an ordinance with management input that's so critical," Malool said. "I don't think it's working for a whole bunch of things. I guess it's good to start over. We should redraft the ordinance or make amendments and then new bylaws can be drafted."

In other news, the mayor and members of the council agreed the SPMC should be able to use some of its funds to pay for its needed audit and to formally enter into a contract with Biagini, who prepared the information for Wednesday night without a payment agreement.

At the Feb. 16 council meeting, the council passed a resolution urging the group to freeze all use of its funds until it could resolve its issues with the council over how the money was being spent.

In light of last week's heated council meeting, several members of the business community showed up at Wednesday's meeting to express their distaste with what went down.

"I think the meeting was an absolute atrocity," said Elena Schatz, owner of Look Twice. "The vision must be revisited. It's not working out as planned, and there's nothing bad to this approach. It can only make it better."

Scotch Plains resident George Gowen continued to call into question the success of the Memorial Day Music Festival, labeling it a "big free day with all these ancillary costs." He also criticized the TV program  "This Week in Scotch Plains," stating that the show highlighted the wrong aspects of the business community.

"Last week's meeting was not the type of meeting we like to have in Scotch Plains," the mayor said. "Everybody's tempers were a little out of control and the meeting did not go well for anyone."

At last night's meeting, the mayor asked Biagini to meet with the SPMC board of directors to go over his proposal, then come back to the council to continue the conversation.

"We've gotten a lot of questions answered to put together a fair compromise," she said. "I don't want to belabor this. Let's get our questions answered and then meet again."

 


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