South Orange Board of Trustees Candidate Forum

Join SOMA Action on May 2 at 8 PM at the Baird Center for a South Orange Board of Trustees Candidate Forum.  Meet and hear the four candidates for the three seats on the Board of Trustees for the Township of South Orange.

Voting for the Board will take place on May 9th.

I have no idea why they asked us to write questions which I did in my best penmanship, thoughtfully considering the most succinct way to make my point and then they called it a night after only a couple of questions from the crowd. Mary Mann got her questions answered but of course no one addressed the topic on the minds of the ever present animal activists. So just to know that I didn't give up, and I spoke out for them again, I'll post it for the record.

What will the candidates do to remediate the endless horrific solutions to our animal control problems.

To a candidates passion for transparency I nod approvingly.

It was not transparent to tell your constituents before a vote on the former JAC animal shelter, that there is an alternate solution when that is as we now say, an alternative fact.

There was no alternate solution because no one from South Orange, including the proclaimer had bothered to go visit the facility in Livingston.

As coincidence would have it, I visited the alternate facility right after the Health Officer, ACO and Deputy Administrator finally stopped in.

The best part is that the very people in charge of decisions on the life and death of our animals approved a garage, with a mix of cats and dogs in cages and drumroll please, no isolation room. Anyone out there remember the screaming and gnashing of teeth over the fact that a couple of cats with ringworm were not properly quarantined at the old JAC?

Now, the same Health Dept. that accompanied Linda Frese head of the NJDOH on an all day inspection of the JAC noting every lack of compliance suddenly threw out all the law that they had learned and said "Yes, give us the keys to this garage! It will do brilliantly!

And it was proclaimed as an agreement with Livingston. And despite the photos of the garage next to the Livingston sewage processing plant being posted everywhere and presented to the BOT, nothing has been actually done to protect our animals.

Oh there are talks and emails and warnings to Livingston about the difficult animal advocates but there we are with more promises.

For the animals we who care, ask South Orange to follow in Maplewood's footsteps and contract with St. Hubert's.

We have worked with Associated Humane one of the highest kill shelters, then Dr. Kimani Griffith who mysteriously claims he was told to put down 4 cats, that we rescuers were told would be boarded, we followed that with the vague answer that we didn't have any animals for awhile and then the term local vets was used. Now we have the Livingston pound, which Linda Frese has declared to all parties that you can not have a shelter with no isolation room.

As an advocate ranting on MOL, I call out to the candidates who never answered my question.

"What will you do to turn the tide? What will you do to protect our animals at long last?

Morganna, I take issue with the characterization, "Mary Mann got her questions answered." They were not "my" questions; they were questions from readers and from SOMA Action members. I was there to moderate. I'm sorry we didn't get to your question; it was extraordinarily long, and Sally Unsworth, Michael Paris and I were working to vet the questions quickly. As we noted at the forum, you were free to talk to the candidates after the forum or follow up with them individually.

Hopefully, in the next election cycle there will be more forums and more time to ask a wider range of questions. 

I'm working on an update on the animal situation in South Orange. I'm hoping to post soon. Village Green will continue to follow this story.

marybarrmann said:

Morganna, I take issue with the characterization, "Mary Mann got her questions answered." They were not "my" questions; they were questions from readers and from SOMA Action members. I was there to moderate. I'm sorry we didn't get to your question; it was extraordinarily long, and Sally Unsworth, Michael Paris and I were working to vet the questions quickly. As we noted at the forum, you were free to talk to the candidates after the forum or follow up with them individually.

Hopefully, in the next election cycle there will be more forums and more time to ask a wider range of questions. 

I'm working on an update on the animal situation in South Orange. I'm hoping to post soon. Village Green will continue to follow this story.

The person sitting near me had written a similar question that was perhaps 2 sentences. The immediate care of lost animals is more pertinent to voters than the hypothetical question of the pros and cons of joining South Orange and Maplewood. The two new candidates could have offered their stance on the issue and distinguished themselves from the current board members who are responsible for years of inhumane solutions. Please remember that one of those new candidates had a positive statement to make on the issue and a fresh view. She lost by only 20 votes.

Thanks for your feedback. Again, we did our best to get in as many questions as possible in the short time that we had.