JACKSON – Residents and even officials have questions about volunteer boards: How do you apply? Who gets the resumes/applications? Where are the applications kept? Who decides who gets the spot?
These are some of the questions that were brought up during recent Township Council meetings. Applicants have complained that they haven’t received acknowledgement of having submitted an application while some have wondered why they didn’t get the non-paying job they volunteered for.
Still others wanted to know the status of their application which begins with a leadership form that is available on the township’s website.
As to who decides who will serve, that all depends on the board/commission in question. If it is a spot on the Open Space Commission or the Planning Board, that is a decision that involves Mayor Michael Reina. If it is the Zoning Board of Adjustment, that falls to the Township Council.
Resident Peter Vincinio questioned Councilwoman Jennifer Kuhn about his Zoning Board application during a recent council meeting.
Kuhn said she had asked for all the Zoning Board applications from January 1, 2022 and expressed concern that vacancies on that board needed to be filled soon.
“I never received your application. That was the case in point. It never came to me,” Kuhn said.
“I submitted another application today,” Vincinio said asking if she had received that one.
Kuhn said Vincinio’s original application had been reviewed by her and went to “then-Council President (Martin) Flemming and reviewed some things about your social media and felt it was probably not a great fit and I brought it to Council President Flemming.”
“He took you off the agenda because of your social media,” Kuhn added. She said that when she asked for the applications from January 2022 to now, “somehow your application is no longer existing. I did not receive it a second time.”
Vincinio asked where applications are sent.
“They come in different ways,” Business Administrator Terence Wall explained. “They come in through different e-mails because some folks can go on site and send them through the administrative e-mail or the clerk’s e-mail.”
He said that typically, the town would want a copy at the Clerk’s office because the clerk is the official keeper of the records from the State of New Jersey’s perspective.
“Every week we see arguing up here, ‘I didn’t see this,’ ‘I didn’t see that.’ If you give everyone access that would cut all that out,” Vincinio suggested.
“Aren’t we concerned that mine disappeared? These are documents as he said that should be preserved. I submitted six applications in the last year.”
He also recommended that the applicants be interviewed in person. “I find it very unusual. There are people in here in this room regularly and then we see people get these positions that I’ve never seen in this room in my life.”
“I find that very unusual, too. People who sit in this room come here to see what is going on. I’ve been coming here for 19 years,” Vincinio said.
“I don’t disagree with you sir,” Kuhn responded.
Vincinio replied, “well I’ve never seen you here either actually.”
“No, you haven’t. I was asked to run for council and I accepted because I am a resident of Jackson and I love our town. I wasn’t coming to council meetings,” she replied.
“Isn’t that unusual?” the resident asked.
“No, I thought the town was being run fine. I didn’t feel a need to. Obviously, you are here because you have a question. I didn’t have any questions therefore I didn’t attend.”
Former Zoning Board President Sheldon Hofstein noted that “usually when a new member comes on, no matter how much experience they’ve had, they usually start as an alternate member. They don’t become a regular voting member and I think that should continue.”
Hofstein commented on the prior meeting of the governing body which also included accusations of transparency, the sunshine law and alleged secret meetings between council members.
“I’ve attended hundreds of council meetings in my 23 years as a Jackson resident. Many of those meetings were very long and very contentious especially when we had a viable two-party system here,” he added.
Hofstein said, “never at any of those meetings did I ever witness a meeting as chaotic as the last one. Never had I seen a council president lose control of the meeting.” He thanked Kuhn for “stepping up and putting an end to that fiasco.”
Council President Steve Chisholm has called recent accusations between council members – or council members and residents – as politically motivated “chicanery.”
