State of the Borough Address: January 3, 2008

Good evening honored guests, valued volunteers, Dumont’s first responders, family, friends and citizens of the Borough of Dumont. Welcome to your Borough Hall.

I am deeply honored and humbled to be here this evening to take the oath of the Office of Mayor for the Borough of Dumont for a full four year term. However, I must admit the past two years has felt like a full term.

This personal accomplishment is not mine alone. With great appreciation, humility, and respect I share this with my family, friends, colleagues, and the many well wishers who have taken active roles in the person that I have become. “Thank you” does not fully capture the range of emotions that I feel while reflecting on the influences and lessons I have been taught by these many diverse, accomplished, and loving individuals.

Early in my youth, I developed the perspective that life is a journey in which there are times of struggle and growth, failure and success. This perspective reinforced my resolve when I first became the Mayor of Dumont and has guided me as Dumont confronted some of the most difficult and unique issues in its history. Our collective history is something that cannot be ignored, and from this great struggle and angst was the possibility of great triumph and success. 2007 was a year of such achievement.

In July, Dumont’s fiscal standing was rehabilitated by the State of New Jersey when the Local Finance Board unanimously released the Borough from State oversight, a year ahead of schedule. Under the leadership and guidance of our Finance Chairman, Councilman Bob McQuade, we were able to stabilize spending, expand services such as the newly instituted twice a week garbage collection, and close an unprecedented $1.4 million deficit.

This success is larger than any elected or appointed official or any administration. Instead, this success is shared by all of Dumont and is a direct result of the community’s three main traits: strength, tenacity, and resiliency. This experience is an example of how government can fail their constituencies, about how different levels of government can work cooperatively, and how a community’s commitment to move forward can neutralize and overcome any crisis.

The state of the Borough of Dumont has never been better.

Municipal government is the purest form of government. It provides the basic services that affect our daily life and, most importantly, it establishes our quality of life. In 2007, we finally began to address our chronic and persistent quality of life issues while resolving our financial crisis.

Besides ending State oversight, the Borough of Dumont was able to:

• Secure $500,000 in extraordinary aid from the State of New Jersey and an additional $1.4 million in other grants.

• Receive commitments from the County of Bergen to provide infrastructure improvements on Washington Avenue along the Grant Street/Cresskill Avenue Corridor and upgrading the intersection of Washington and New Milford Avenues.

• Improve our Parks and Recreation by installing a walk path along the perimeter of Memorial Park, replacing and upgrading playground equipment throughout the Dumont parks system, and begin a Parks and Recreation Master Plan which will be implemented in 2008.

• Improve parking in our business areas by redesigning the Dumont municipal lot on Brook Street and reconfiguring Grant Avenue.

• Reconstruct Sunset, Oxford, and Huntting roads as well as Grant and Pershing Avenues. In addition, we awarded contracts to reconstruct McKinley, Roosevelt and Dixon Streets, with work currently underway.

• Revamp our Teen Center located on the third floor of Borough Hall.

• Adopt ordinances that will protect Dumont such as the Master Plan Reexamination, an updated Zoning Code, and stringent communication tower regulations that will shelter our community from unwanted and obtrusive structures.

• Stabilize spending and begin to expand and improve the services so many of us take for granted.

While there has been a drastic and vast improvement in the future of Dumont during the last year, we must let the prior years guide us and force us to remain vigilant and true to our common commitment of moving Dumont forward.

Now is the time to seize upon the civic rejuvenation in giving back to our community. I am proud to report that we now have:

• A reenergized Board of Adjustment and Planning Board.

• A Shade Tree Commission and an Environmental Commission that are dedicated and committed to ensuring that the air we breathe, the trees that shade us, and the town we love remains clean, strong and beautiful.

• A reestablished Rent Leveling Board to protect the rights of both our tenants and landlords.

• A Library Board of Trustees that is committed to improving and expanding Dumont’s intellectual and informational resources.

• A full and active Board of Health.

• A Recreation Commission determined to expand and improve Dumont’s recreational opportunities for all of our residents.

• A Board of Ethics to ensure that the public trust is protected and that the Borough’s elected officials and appointees remain committed to serving the public’s interest and not their own.

Harnessing this civic energy and renewal will be essential in setting the course and future of Dumont for 2008 and years to come. Though I have the privilege to serve as your Mayor, together with my colleagues on the Council, it is the public discourse – the constant exchange of ideas - that will ultimately determine in which direction our town moves. I have great faith that we will collectively agree to keep our community moving in the right direction.

Initially in 2008, the Borough of Dumont will focus on:

• Implementing a web-based interactive system known as C-3 that will allow the Borough to engage our residents through telecommunications such as text message, emails, and voicemails. This new initiative will make government more proactive as well as responsive.

• Continuing to improve our infrastructure by beginning the expansive New Jersey Environmental Infrastructure Trust Project which addresses chronic flooding in the Firemen’s Park neighborhood, working with the County of Bergen to address Washington, New Milford, and Madison Avenues, and rebuilding our roads.

• Discovering new and innovative ways to manage our finances by reducing them if possible and if not, expanding the services offered while cooperating with neighboring communities to find cost effective measures to reduce or control the burden of property taxes.

• Working with the Recreation Commission on a multi-year and multi-faceted Parks and Recreation Improvement program in order to ensure the fields that our children play on are adequate, that courts that our adult teams play on and the parks that our seniors visit are satisfactory, safe, and user friendly.

• Reestablishing our relationship with the Dumont Chamber of Commerce to set achievable goals to foster a sustainable and economically viable business district in the short and long term, and to encourage both residents and non-residents to re-discover downtown Dumont.

• Celebrating our community through expanding Dumont Day and the Fall Street Fair and by creating new traditions such as the Halloween Parade and the Christmas Tree Celebration at Memorial Park.

• Expanding and ensuring that the ethical standards that this governing body pledged to in 2006 are adequately, honestly, and practically enforced.

This future would not look as bright if it was not for the hard work of our borough employees, especially our Borough Clerk Sue Connelly, one of the 25% of successful candidates for this year’s Registered Municipal Clerk’s exam. With this result, Dumont will have a registered municipal clerk, which is required by state statute, for the first time in over twenty years. Other participants in the bright future are Borough Administrator John Perkins, DPW Superintendent Bill Ebenhack, CFO Terrie Giotis, and the many committed people who work so diligently on a daily basis to make sure our lives are comfortable and not disrupted. I would also like to recognize the members of our Police Department under the command of Chief Brian Venezio, our Dumont Volunteer Fire Department, and the Dumont Volunteer Ambulance Corps who keep us safe and protected. And lastly, to the individuals whether they serve in an appointed position or not, who volunteer hours of their time away from their loved ones to make this community – Dumont – a great and proud place to live.

Looking forward to the next four years, we will strive to continue growing, and to succeed in protecting Dumont and making it a more inviting and exceptionally unique community in which to raise our children and live our shared lives. There will be issues and unforeseen challenges, but how we respond and choose to address them will be the measure of our success. It gives me great pleasure and pride to have been elected to lead this Borough into a dawning renaissance of rediscovery, expansion, and community pride.

Thank you and God bless you and yours in this New Year.

Mayor Matthew P. McHale

MESSAGE ARCHIVE

September 2007 August 2007 January 2007