By Sunayana Prabhu
RED BANK – The newly elected governing body set some ground rules for governance at its first meeting July 6 since all members and the mayor were installed five days earlier.
Going forward, council meetings will now be held every second and fourth Thursday of the month – instead of Wednesday – at 6:30 p.m., one of several changes Mayor Billy Portman announced at the meeting.
Portman also announced appointments to volunteer boards, commissions and committees, adding a new position for a Council Representative to Education which would cover all the schools in the borough, including the Red Bank Charter School. Ben Forest, absent from the swearing-in July 1 because of a family matter, assumed this role after taking his oath of office from Sen. Vin Gopal (D-11) at the meeting.
The special meeting also marked the return of Greg Cannon as the borough’s attorney. Cannon was fired by the former administration last year without prior notice or explanation.
Among changes to the borough’s administrative code as it transitions to a council-manager form of government was the appointment of a deputy mayor in place of a council president. At the meeting the council unanimously voted to name Kate Triggiano to that position.
“Because we are changing form of government, we’re no longer going to have direct council representatives to any of the offices in the government,” Portman explained. “That’ll be handled by the manager.” That means there will be no direct council liaison to the Senior Center, the Office of Emergency Management and Public Safety and the Department of Public Works (DPW). All of these will fall under the purview of the manager who will act as a CEO for borough operations.
The Red Bank Charter Study’s Final Report recommended the new council-manager form of government with staggered nonpartisan elections with the mayor directly elected by voters to a four-year term and council members to staggered four-year terms.
In order to initiate staggered terms, four of the council members elected May 9 will only serve two years, determined by a drawing at the council’s first organization meeting. The remaining two council members and the mayor will each serve a full four-year term. Municipal elections will be held every two years.
At the meeting borough clerk Laura Reinertsen had council members draw in the order of their roll call to determine the four two-year members. Those are Forest, David Cassidy, Laura Jannone and Kristina Bonatakis. Nancy Facey-Blackwood and Triggiano will serve four-year terms with Portman.
Portman made the following commission and committee appointments for one-year terms: Jannone – Animal Welfare Advisory Committee and Library Board of Directors; Facey-Blackwood – Environmental Commission/ Green & Creative Teams, Community Engagement & Equity Advisory Committee, Shade Tree Committee and council representative to Senior Citizen Center Committee; Triggiano – Community Engagement & Equity Advisory Committee, council representative to RiverCenter, and OEM/Public Safety; Forest – Parks and Recreation Committee and Board of Education; Bonatakis – Rent Leveling Board and Historic Preservation Commission; Cassidy – Red Bank Housing Authority.
Additional details on the new form of government and the complete list of all new appointments are available on the borough’s website.
“I’m sure as a community we’ll have a bit of a learning curve here,” Portman said in closing. “But I know I speak for the whole council, and we are very excited to get to work.”
The next council meeting is scheduled for Thursday, July 13.
The article originally appeared in the July 13 – 19, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
